Occult ideas in the book “The Unfading Light”: Kabbalistic anthropology
Abstract
The article examines the specificity of the anthropological doctrine of Father Sergiy Bulgakov, a prominent representative of Russian religious philosophy of the Silver Age and emigration, based on his book “The Unfading Light” (1917). The relevance of the topic is conditioned by the need for a strict demarcation between Orthodox theology and unconventional religious concepts in the thinker’s heritage. On the basis of historical and philosophical analysis and the monograph by P.G. Nosachev, a profound connection between Bulgakov’s conception of man and the occult traditions of the turn of the 19th–20th centuries is revealed. The work provides a detailed explication of two key esoteric ideas: the concept of the primordial man-microcosm (Adam Kadmon) borrowed from the Kabbalah, and the doctrine of the transmigration of souls (karma), characteristic of R. Steiner’s anthroposophy. The author argues that at this stage of his creative work, Bulgakov used the occult apparatus as a methodological basis for overcoming the spiritual crisis of the era of wars and revolutions, which unfortunately and inevitably led to a profound and highly controversial blending of traditional Christian and complex occult anthropology in his works. In conclusion, it is stated that the anthropology of the book “The Unfading Light” is abstract in nature and reproduces the Gnostic archetype of escaping the world, which directly contradicts the concrete Christian anthropology of personal transfiguration, to which the philosopher arrived only at the end of his life in his commentary on the Apocalypse. It is asserted that a detailed explication of the Gnostic and Hermetic anthropological ideas in Bulgakov’s book is a promising direction for further independent research.
