Lecture: Occultism in Serbia and ex Yugoslavia, María Pinal Villanueva

The speaker introduces the topic of occultism in Yugoslavia and discusses the pioneer, Živorad Mihajlović Slaviński, who published books on various topics related to spirituality and the occult. These books were significant because they made this material accessible to the people in Serbia and Yugoslavia for the first time. The speaker also mentions the Psychotronic Society, which studied parapsychological phenomena, and the Enlightenment intensive technique, which involved intense self-reflection. Slaviński also had correspondence with occultists Kenneth Grant and Michael Vertue. The speaker mentions that the intensives gained popularity but also faced backlash from the authorities. Dobroveče, dobrodošli u Društveni centar KROV i dobroveče svim slušalcima na radio KROV koji će uživo pratiti predavanje. Ja ću samo ukratko da ispričem nešto o Društvenom centaru KROV. On je nastao 29. februara pre 4 godine. Skoro smo postavili svoj četvrti rođendan u KROV u kojem mogu da isprati na KROĐENDANSKOM FESTIVALU. Ovo je novi serijel i ciklus predavanja pod nazivom ANTROPOLOŠKI RADAR 2 i zadovoljstvo mi je što je Marija Pinjela htela da drži o predavanje i odezvala se na naš poziv sa temom OKULTIZAM U SRBI I BIVŠOJ JUGOSLAVI. Nakon predavanja imat ćete priliku da 15 minuta postavite pitanja i također ćemo čitati pitanja sa radio prenosom. Tako da uživajte. Hvala Marija. Hvala. Da iskuću se. I bit će kao pre teško sa mene i pre cringe sa vama and therefore I will speak in English if that's OK. So, I introduce myself as Regi already introduced me. My name is Marija Pinjel. I am an anthropologist from Argentina and I am currently doing my PhD in the faculty of philosophy. So, today... So, at first I want to offer you a road map so you can know what to expect from this talk. In the beginning we will speak briefly, very briefly about what is OKULTIZAM and a little bit about his pioneer who is Živorad Mihajlović Slaviński and... why is that... Živorad Mihajlović Slaviński and who also be the common denominator of all the groups that we will be speaking about. After we will talk about the beginnings, the developments and until nowadays. But don't worry, we will see all this if the letter is a little bit small. So, we will start basically with what is OKULTIZAM. OKULTIZAM is a very big and quite a broad term that has several, if not plenty, academic definitions. But I will start with its Latin roots that means hidden or covered. Usually the definition that I usually stick to that is very simplified of course is that OKULTIZAM is the interactions or interventions through different rituals that people do with the other realm the one that is not tangible to... like with entities or elements to have an impact on this tangible realm for example gaining some special knowledge having some special outcomes etc. and that it needs some type of initiation. This initiation doesn't necessarily need to be complicated and formal but sometimes it's just someone telling you what to do, how, for what etc. So... So, when and how does OKULTIZAM as a systematic practice begin here in Yugoslavia? We will travel in time a little bit until the 1970s We are in this context in Tito's Yugoslavia and there is this young man called Živorad Mihajlović Slavinski who was a psychologist from Belgrade. He was always curious about these topics related to spirituality, self-development and the occult and he was lucky enough to have access to several books on the topics from his grandmother and other sources. With all this that he had read plus some personal experimenting he decided to reunite this incipient knowledge and publish these first books. As you can see the topics of the books are quite diverse and a little bit chaotic, no? From yoga training to psychology and magic hermeticism it's a little bit of a salad but besides this eclectic nature these books will signify a milestone in the story of Yugoslav field of belief. Why? Because these books meant the first time in the history of the country that this material was available for people like in Serbo-Croatian language or Serbian Yugoslav and therefore it made it accessible to many, many people because before that it was necessary to buy them from abroad or to have the possibility to go abroad and also have spare money to buy books and also you needed to know other languages because they weren't published in Serbian. So, of course, as this was very new material there was no publishing house who agreed to publish this type of material so he decided to do like self-editions and how he advertised it it was very DIY like he would do this little leaflets and he, with the help of friends they would put them, you know in the people's mailboxes and there were not only the books promotions that he would do this way but also his contact details so readers could, I don't know write letters with their questions their practices, experiences, etc. Here, for example, there is one Yeah, there were some promotions that buy three, get four, etc. But indeed, this, as you see really captured the attention of many of its readers because from postal communications and letters, little by little in the 1970s it emerged or it was established what was called the Psychotronic Society What are psychotronics in the first place? It's the study of the interaction between mind and matter Basically, they study very similar topics with what we call parapsychology but this term was coined in Eastern Europe and also it had more implications of some more scientific approach and also they wanted to separate themselves with the pseudo-scientific fame that parapsychology had Here are, for example, so basically this group mainly consisted in a set of people interested in studying these parapsychological phenomena What, for example, telepathy psychokinesis, etc. which many were even published in Slavinsky's books Here, for example, in the picture Of course, I will do again Bye Here in the picture, for example we have the diagram of how to do a Kirlian camera for the ones that are not familiar with what a Kirlian camera is It's some type of photographic camera but that uses very high voltage to generate this type of aura around the objects like you can see that it's a human hand and it's believed that it can take pictures of the energy of the aura or however you want to call it Also, this is another part of the book and shows us what they were researching Here there is, as you see, some theories like to see through some experiments if people had this type of special abilities like telepathy or retrocognition, that is knowing the past without actually being there or foreseeing, that is seeing the future These studies and experiments were tried to be conducted in the most rigorous and scientific manner possible In the meantime the data are not very precise of what I'm telling you now because there's not many documentation on this topic, sadly but he kept exploring with some other techniques and other ideas and even with Scientology back in the day and after some pleasant experience and some not so pleasant the Enlightenment intensive technique that was coined by Charles Werner or also known as Yogeshwar Muni What is Enlightenment intensive? It's a technique that now when I'm describing it to you it's going to sound super simple but you have to imagine what is to go through it because in fact it's very very hard both in the body and in the mind or soul Basically Enlightenment intensive it's done in pairs and consists on the we have a pair of people and the first person says to the second one tell me who you are the other person will answer for 5 minutes non-stop who he or she is and everything that crosses their mind on that 5 minutes while the other person has to listen for 5 minutes without judging without anything then of course they switch roles and the other person speaks and tells who they are until now it sounds very simple but in this Enlightenment intensive they did that for several hours if not several several hours more than 8 hours just making pauses like to sleep and to eat so imagine how much intensity that was and also the minimum of this retirement was 3 days 3 days non-stop speaking who you are what was the goal of this technique that in some point after so many hours and so much repetition the words will lose their meaning and therefore there is going to be this breaking of the ego because you have no more words to describe who you are and ideally that would take in some point to have an experience of the unity of yourself like you lose this connection with the ego and you experience yourself in union with the whole however this is important to clarify this type of Enlightenment it's not final not like the Buddhist body or the Nirvana that once you reach it you are in Enlightenment forever but it's rather a transitory experience it's like a glimpse that you can see into that Enlightenment and then you have to come back although that of course doesn't make it less of a valuable tool of self-knowledge of course so in the meanwhile and now we are in the 1980s these intensives they become very very popular and then Slavinsky starts exchanging letters with two very important occultists Kenneth Grant and Michael Vertue with whom he will develop both a spiritual and a personal relationship who are these people you might be asking Michael Vertue as you can see is an occultist from the USA who is alive until today and he is the creator of the Wudon Gnostic Church which is a tradition which combines elements for example from the Haitian Wudu, he lived in Haiti a few years with Gnosticism and other western traditions and Kenneth Grant who passed away in 2011 he was the creator of the Typhonian branch of the Ordo Templi Orientis and also before that he was the personal secretary of Aleister Cross we go back to our story so the intensives by this time they were already gaining some popularity especially among young people and they were held in different flats like people who had space they would offer their living rooms etc. for these intensives to have place but we have to remember that we are in the middle of the 80s so you can imagine that for some people like a group of many many youngsters like entering in a flat for 3 days and you could hear for example these expressions of catharsis like people laughing maniacally or people crying because of this intense thing of course all that sounds started to annoy or to make people a little bit paranoid and they started calling the police and that's why then Rivolat and company were interrogated several times and also because the regime started having these suspicions that they were conspiring about the regime or so which literally it didn't happen so the in all this like the letters with Berthiaud and Grant they continue and in 1986 sorry in 1986 we are still in the 80s with the support of both of them Slavinsky established the Ecclesia Gnostica Alba oh here sorry these are for example the schedules for the intensives, you see all this it's like the intensive work that's why the name so Slavinsky establishes the Ecclesia Gnostica Alba or Gnostica Bella Cerca sorry the pronunciation of course he was the patriarch of this church besides the activities they were the same as they were before this mainly served as an officialisation and as a legal framework to stop you know this harassment this interrogations etc so before we continue with the story I would like to make a little pause or a little digression if you like me to show you some pictures also and to clarify some ideas usually when I say that I work with the topic of occultism or that this is my research etc people tend to have like this image you know of practitioners as some scary looking people with robes, this is like the stereotypical image that they have and doing some complicated rituals and so but of course although sometimes robes depending on the tradition and ceremonial attire are sometimes needed of course again I don't know what's with this hotspot ok but besides the robes and that sometimes are needed here as we can see in this picture this is how usually these things look, this is one of the first intensives and here we can see in this I didn't find the color picture but that's a red very fashion what I'm trying to say with this I'm trying to debunk this usual prejudice regarding this topic which I know it's fault but the fact that we are very disinformed usually by the press for example here in Serbia we have until nowadays these satanic panics where everything that is not orthodox or Christian is cult or sect and you see this typical of the robe that you cannot see the face that of course it is in our minds even more or less subconsciously so I wanted to debunk that and also because those prejudices they have two wrong things first they are assuming that everyone that is deviated from the norm is ill-intended that they are doing something evil they have some evil plan and second that they are all the same from the Jehovah witnesses to the occultists to the Hare Krishna so I wanted just to debunk that prejudice it was more people that look basically like any of us ok, now we continue I'm sorry so, coming back to the Ecclesia they even had their official manifesto that you can see in the picture their logo that is the doll and the serpent and at some point they started modifying some of the intensives for example experimenting with the vibrations of sounds or doing retreats of this intensive of even 30 days non-stop that happened in a little house in Yoshibo they got mostly they did that to be away as I told about the nosy neighbors they had like this little space in Serbia and therefore they could do their thing they still relied of course on mail communication we didn't have internet and the leaflets in the mailboxes but what started happening after this very intense level of practices usually there were some people that they weren't the same so after all this cathartic and this very intense emotional experiences they started to develop some type of synergy and that's when they declared that some other phenomena started happening for example telepathic communication about some of them for example there were three ex-members that they said because in the intensives you also have to write a diary everyday reflecting on the visions that you had whatever you have to write and it happened that I was informed that three different people had the exact same things written in their notebooks although they weren't allowed to speak among each other so this type of connection we are talking or also some people started channeling communications with LAM or IBAS who are LAM or IBAS? this is LAM and IBAS it was never represented but who are these entities? LAM and IBAS are entities that they were contacted for the first time by Aleister Crowley which probably most of you have heard about at least the picture is some portrait of LAM that he channeled back on the day and IBAS was the entity that is believed dictated Crowley the famous book of the law whether if there are two aspects of the same entity or they are two separate beings that still debate even between Salemites and occultists in general so I don't have an answer for that but coming back to the story, there were in this group these mediumic experiences where some members could channel messages from IBAS and several words which later came to become a little dictionary of terms used by the other patient. It was never a spoken language, it's not that they would communicate this way but more of a ritual language, there were some words that they had some special meaning here for example there is an extract of a song that was all written in Ayrgolian, that's the name of the language that there were two plays, IBAS also another of the main concepts of the Ecclesia is in this language that it's Arelena. Arelena is a word that means something between the lines of supreme love or eternal love but sadly after all of these beautiful experiences or intense experiences the 90s came and therefore the political and economical problems that you might know even better than I because of this some of the members of the Ecclesia had to move away there were also some money problems like to maintain the housing, personal problems about the members that probably they were very stressed, etc so this lot of tensions ended up in the dissolution of the Ecclesia in 1996 it's also a little bit paradoxical if we think about that the 90s, that is the decade where all this fell apart, it's exactly the time when occultism became more accepted and even talked about in the mainstream media with popular figures that did for example divination in TV even, like Cleopatra Love Gershman or Vidovita Zorka, etc which of course their practices are totally different of what we are talking about and the ones of the church, but what I'm trying to say is that this marks a change of mentality in the society in Serbian society regarding these topics for that time so, what happened next? it's not the end of the story through the next years Rivola continued experimenting with some spiritual practices and rituals with a close group of friends and acquaintances until he developed his own system that is called spiritual technology this system combined elements of psychology, spirituality and of course the occult to help individuals to achieve some personal growth and self-realization among others he developed techniques as piet that means primary energetic activation and transformation that is still very very popular nowadays and also it's used, for example if you are asking what it is, it's used to integrate different polarities whose opposition is believed to be the root of lots of the problems, so when you integrate and you don't have that inner contradiction you can go on and you can solve the problem then you have another like Excalibur, Creaton Aspectix, etc so spiritual technology will mark another break of what was being done at the time also of course with the church as we are moving now from a pyramidal structure with these memberships, initiations a patriarch, grades etc we are moving we are leaving aside the membership of a group and we are moving towards a more individual and also more pragmatic if we want to say approach where you have the problem and you go there for it to be solved in one session two at most without the need to belong to the organization or to follow any specific belief this allowed more people to benefit from the techniques without committing to this traditional hierarchical structure something that is also related I think in my opinion with the spirit of the times, we also have to remember that in the 90s and the 2000s it's like the almost global expansion of the practices that were closer towards the new age however this doesn't necessarily mean that there was no community, although it was different since the early 2000s members of spiritual technology could use like this online community of yahoo groups through which the participants could keep up to date with the latest news the courses, workshops, etc this community, although of course now looks a little bit precarious because we are talking about the early years of the internet this screenshot is from 2003 I think, or 4 very very early it's also nevertheless a precedent for what would later be one of the biggest occult communities online of ex-Yugoslavia which is the chaotica forum now we are jumping around 2005-2006 very early still this forum started with the name chaospira and then it changed to chaotica and it was active even until 2021 very very recently and it was a space which of course like it had this is not surprising, it had lots of the members of the ecclesia being members there and lots of other people in which they could debate very diverse topics related to the occult for example maybe you can see, I don't know the resolution but from new age to parapsychology, chaos magic paganism, tarot and even it had a space that it was for example for socializing and I don't know sharing things about rock concerts or sharing material such as pdf books or movies, etc but there we go so this forum in my personal opinion, it also marks a milestone in this field why? because it's another democratization and dissemination of the access of this information practices, etc first, not only for those who could buy the books or assist to the workshops because we have to remember that besides Jival was very popular in Belgrade and so there were lots of people in the town who didn't know about it so now this becomes accessible to everyone who knows about this forum and everyone that has an internet connection so it's another type of occult community generated no longer limited by spatiality and also somehow more anonymous because back in the day, in those early days of the internet and the forums the pseudonyms were kind of mandatory and people wouldn't box themselves online so this forum would represent for the older members maybe such a continuity of everything that was built back in the day and for other people it would be like some place of discovery talking about the continuity, now I want to make another digression just to tell a very sweet story that I saw when I was surfing this forum once they were sharing some anecdotes about, I don't know, some things that they lived in the times of the Ega and some of the members said a reference very specific, like, yes I was here when that happened, and then another member, she's like, hey, wait I was also there, weren't you when this, this happened? Yes, I think we might know each other, yeah, great, and then they continued it in private which for me is very wholesome because I don't know if they were still in touch before or not but it was very wholesome so nowadays, although Harahotica is not working, you can still go on it but there's still some groups like on Facebook, for example, that they talk about these topics, or many paired trainers and practitioners in general, they have their websites or Instagram accounts there's also some material in YouTube, and probably also in TikTok, although here I have to admit that I'm very millennial to keep up with that, I have no clue but, in conclusion and what this talk is generally aiming to it's that it will be 50 years now since occultism as an official practice and as a subject arrived in the region, although the format of course has changed, unfortunately it's no longer secret or necessarily secret or not persecuted as it once was it's interesting that since its arrival, it has never stopped to exist, and its practices have spread and branched out a great deal since then Today, occultism has evolved with technology and expanded through digital platforms, keeping its tradition alive despite the changes it remains a fascinating subject that continues to attract people from all over the world, and Serbia, as we can see it's not an exception, so thank you very much, and now I will leave you in the next slide just some books I recommend on the subject if you are interested and of course we can still chat about it, like now in the questions and answers, but later Thank you Thank you Maria Wonderful lecture Now I will let the audience and people who are listening to the radio can also question Maria about the subject about what we heard Just a second I would like to know if you found some information on what was the kind of political basis of Zivorad and his company, and like what were the political motivations or implications of them doing occultism because I think today a lot of people who do some sort of introspection using I don't know, psychoactive drugs and things like this, often do it in some sort of liberal individualist way, or with these implications I think it would be interesting to know how during socialism with completely different values being dominant in society that are more collectivist and solidary, how did this influence the way occultism was conceived of Great, that's a great question Thank you very much Honestly I cannot tell you because the figure of Zivorad, first I didn't get to interview him, because when I arrived to the country then sadly he passed away and also I think he always although he wrote in the press for example in the magazine Taine, that was edited like in the 90s and so he had a column, but as far as I know he never pronounced himself politically, and also I mean this is just conjecture that I'm making, but he was in one side persecuted by Tito's regime, and then in the 90s he was also persecuted by the church and all the conservative parties, so he was between two fires so really I couldn't tell you which was the thing, I know again that he was receiving fire from both extremes, but what were his political views or his political concepts, sadly I have no idea to answer concretely Thank you You did mention that there used to be some sort of close knit community that was doing this, and then afterwards this community was more like dispersed and not so knit together, so I was also I didn't mean really political in the narrow sense, but more like this sort of assumptions about the role of occultism in society, things like this but yeah, thank you Now I can also add, because I had the exact same question, like it was one of my interrogations, what happened from this very tight community, this church suddenly this changed, I was trying to search in the same sites what could have happened, and then speaking with some close friends or family of Gibraltar, which of course I will not mention who, they gave me a more pragmatic and kind of disappointment answer, that is that he was exhausted of sustaining all that retirement with lots of youth and sustaining emotionally all those processes, and also he had his own family and so in one point he was like and also of course the stress of the economy and everything from the 90s so he was like, I don't know he made a step aside, and then he wanted to keep helping people, but he was like, ok, I will put these techniques to come and go, but he couldn't sustain that anymore, so that's as far as I know until now Thank you Thank you My question, I have two questions, so how did you choose this topic what inspired you to take it as a challenge and what is special in Serbian occultism, because if I understood correctly, it's just like many things in Serbia, just the translations from what is already known in the West so, yeah, that two questions, thank you Great, thank you, first how I it's also very pragmatic and very disappointing the answer, so I'm sorry how I arrived here in Argentina, in my homeland I was researching new religious movements and I came to research some new age leader who made it even to mainstream TV and he had some special characteristics like he was the first new age leader that was appealing to the lower class people and so on, so I was very into that topic and then when I decided to migrate and I found myself here in Serbia, I thought very ethnocentrically that I would find some very similar type of phenomena and that maybe then I could make some comparative things that was my idea of course then reality hit and Serbia is not the same as Argentina, so the history was very different and then my mentor decided, hey, but there is this figure that was the first of bringing occultism here so and so, maybe you could study him and that's how I got kind of obsessed with the topic and it's now my PhD topic and the second question was, yeah, what's special about about Serbian occultism first, again, it's a topic that it wasn't studied about how it arrived how it changed, first there was like a hole in the knowledge there second, it came quite late compared to the west which started for example in the 18th century in the end of the 18th century here as a practice I mean, of course, in literature, as you can see for example, in Potemkin's talk of Nemanja Radulevic, there were some influences in literature and so but it didn't arrive as a practice until the 70s because we have to think that like also in Russia they had lots of occultism but here in Yugoslavia we were close to that influence also from the west and that's why it took so much to arrive and second, for me it's special because in some of the books of Rigoran, which is a part that I don't have that much developed but he also mixes all of these beliefs and this western esotericism for example, with the figure of Tesla, in one of his books there is some relationship between Tesla and Lam or also in some other books he connects some of the folk traditional stories and beliefs with the western esotericism so that's why it's special at least for me thank you more questions? well, I would not like to ask some questions just to give some illustrations about this wonderful evening I know of this little workshop I met her I think last year after a short email you were at my workshop or something, asking me to meet and to talk about Serbian occult scene I was so delighted to see that somebody come and to have not as a hobby job but from university, so the level of your thoughts are probably just wider than this small account of time and I come now to put a respect to you because I don't know, maybe if we have a lot of people like you, toward our own spiritual legacy then some things could be much better just to give you an illustration after 80s I knew Živorad and I knew a lot of people from pictures even now Serbia was only at the level of publishing books, was after United States, second in worldwide by the number of registrated books in the national library mentioning the occult scene about Talima, Serbian to Templi Orientis the vision was by the membership after United States again second in the world so, what happened what happened when there is a decreasing, obvious I don't know, but this is large collection of books you can still find on second hand you know, and everything and that was very nice time for investigate and for you to write maybe you will continue to do so and give us insight about some other topics, unfortunately without you as a researcher soon everything will be left to oblivion, I hope something you will give us and publish maybe in Serbia thank you very much thank you so much for those beautiful words and also for that information thank you so much one question similar question will your work around this subject be accessible online somewhere yes, of course I have to finish my thesis which I am half way there of course then it will be probably public the defenses of the thesis, I don't know how it works in Serbia yet but anyways it will be published of course like you have there something in the repository of the faculty yes, and that's mainly the idea most probably it's going to be published in English sadly but usually when the thesis are published in English anyways they ask us to have like a big not an introduction but basically like a summary in Serbian so I guess that's what I can offer so far thank you and thank you everyone for the interest hi, thank you for the talk my question is can you say something about how does this Serbian branch of occultism interact with Serbian folk magic maybe or is that outside of the scope of your research well, yes I think I mentioned very briefly there were like some small mentions again it wasn't his realm of specialty but for example in Adelena which is his auto-fiction novel where he speaks of course he's using like the shield of fiction maybe to share some personal anecdotes there for example he speaks a little bit about the practices and beliefs from town etc and how maybe they connect with his own beliefs more about that I really don't know because as you may well have intuited it's not my realm of expertise but again for example professor Nemanja Radulovic he worked also on that and for example on Neo-Paganism movements, the Wiccans in Serbia there are lots of this type of things that you can of course like search and so on and of course we can speak later and I will let you know ok, thank you somebody wants to ask something have you consulted with psychologists to see it from their perspective because I mean I'm not spiritual myself but I can see the mental impact of screaming and having these experiences all day every day for a month so I don't know if you talked to psychologists or someone in the field well first probably for a psychologist to have how you call like a thing they should have experienced it which of course I didn't and so didn't they but again this screaming is just an illustration of people doing catharsis but again we have to remember that Rival was a psychologist himself so I guess he had like the tools to contain people because if not probably it would have ended up in people's mind it could have ended very badly probably if you do this type of group intense things and if it didn't after so many years I guess he could control the situations of course it's a very valid concern because you have literally the minds of these people and their spirits there you know like in his hands so I guess he did it well because never it went under control and also once they sent in fact the regime they sent a psychologist psychiatrist I don't remember incognito exactly to see that and I think if I remember the story correctly he just got bored after the second or third day and he was like ok bye so he didn't denounce anything I guess it was good thank you anyone more? no any question from the radio? just let me see so Maria do you have anything to add like your some future fieldwork that you will have in close future? yes I mean I will keep doing some interviews I have done thankfully I was lucky enough that the community like all the ex-members and etc and some practitioners everyone like really I was very lucky that they opened you know their hearts and they told me their stories which I'm very very thankful and I'm very lucky because also I considered I mean the possibility of me being like some foreigner you know from another country asking these things to people that are very intimate I could have the possibility of them telling me cosity and that thankfully didn't happen so I guess I will keep processing that information and I was also writing some articles for example about how you call symbolic violence and all these satanic panics that are still nowadays in the media etc and of course I have to finish and defend my thesis back on the day that I will let you all know how much you will know so thank you very much thank you Mala Puno I just want to announce that on the 20th of March we will have another lecture Dejan Petković will have a lecture of Buddhism in Serbia it will start also from 7pm so you are welcome again in 5 days thank you and now we will continue with some music