From Russia with love

"Russian Spirituality and Other Essays" is a book containing articles by Valentin Tomberg, a Russian-born esotericist who started out as an Anthroposophist, but later converted to Catholicism, which he attempted to amalgamate with Hermetism. Tomberg's most famous work is "Meditations on the Tarot", published anonymously. "Russian Spirituality", by contrast, contains relatively unknown articles written during the 1930's, when Tomberg was still an Anthroposophist.

The articles are extremely difficult to comprehend, unless you are very familiar with the Anthroposophical worldview. In the main essay, Tomberg discusses how Anthroposophy could be introduced into Russia, reaching the conclusion that it must somehow be connected to the thought of Vladimir Solovyov. The Russian sage spoke about Sophia, and this "semi-incarnate" spirit-entity has now appeared on Earth in the form of Anthroposophy (Anthropo-Sophia). This balance between individual freedom and social cooperation is threatened by the utter materialism of Bolshevism, but also by "Chinese" or "Mongolian" spirituality which Tomberg fears might replace (or fuse with?) Bolshevism.

Unfortunately, Tomberg lost me about here, and I didn't really comprehend the rest of his work...I'm not sure how to rate a book I don't really understand, but since I don't wish to scare off anyone interested in Tomberg, I eventually decided on the OK rating (three stars).