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.
stanislav_panin
stanislav_panin
Recent Publications
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Conspiracy Narratives in Russia: A Search for Identity, Religious Worldviews, and Russian Politics
Religion Compass, vol. 16, issue 8, 2022
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Soviet Atlantis: Between Science Fiction and Esoteric Communities
Literary History, vol. 52, no. 171, 2020, p. 123-147
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.
Programming with Bahá'ís
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
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
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
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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