About Me

My name is Stanislav Panin, I am a scholar interested in the study of contemporary forms of spirituality, philosophy of culture, psychological roots of religion, and social functions of religion and esotericism. I am also fascinated with programming and data science and explore intersections between humanities and new technologies.

E-mail: YouTube: stanislav_panin

Curriculum Vitae

Recent Publications

  1. Conspiracy Narratives in Russia: A Search for Identity, Religious Worldviews, and Russian Politics
    Religion Compass, vol. 16, issue 8, 2022
  2. Soviet Atlantis: Between Science Fiction and Esoteric Communities
    Literary History, vol. 52, no. 171, 2020, p. 123-147
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Digital Projects

Interactive tools in this section are aimed to facilitate learning, research, and teaching history of philosophy, religion, and esotericism.

  • Timelines  2023-01-01  New data points and descriptions were added to the American Metaphysical Movements timeline. It currently features 21 unique events with 8 descriptions.
Explore all projects

Programming with Bahá'ís

Created 2022-12-13 #technology

The post begins with a particular Linux program that has an unexpected connection to Bahá'í Faith and explores Bahá'í attitudes towards science and new technologies specifically focusing on the conversation about the transformative power and possible perils of the Internet.

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A Computer is a Plato's Cave

Created 2022-12-05 #technology

From the early days of personal computers, they were used as a metaphor for esoteric reality that resembles Renaissance visions of Hermetic universe. This metaphor emerged, at least in part, because computers themselves were a product of esoteric imagination. However, do they still retain this emancipatory esoteric power?

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Bibliography of Ioan Couliano

Created 2021-05-29 #esoterica

This post includes a selected and annotated bibliography of books by Ioan Petru Couliano (Culianu) (1950 – 1991). I focus primarily on books attempting to provide a better sense of continuity within Coulianos corpus by highlighting connections between different texts.

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Castaneda and the Soviet Union

Created 2020-07-31 #esoterica

For some, popularity of Carlos Castaneda in Soviet and post-Soviet esoteric milieu comes as a surprise. In this post, I will try to briefly discuss reasons for popularity of Castaneda in Russia and a way in which his works were adopted in post-Soviet context.

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