New Ageism in Siberia

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New Ageism in Siberia

Long before the soveits, the orthodox church or the Russian monarchy colonised Siberia, this land to the east of the Ural mountains was home to early Altaic people and Mongol clans.

These tribes held old shamanistic religious beliefs, strongly influenced by the spirit of animism and sympathetic magic.

It is perhaps therefore no surprise that my visit to Novosibirsk, the capital of Siberia, should have coincided with an exhibition promoting all manner of modern new age and spiritualist practices.

The fair was held in a small modern office complex on Dimitrova Prospekt. The event was called Aeternum, and its logo was a single human eye set in a golden triangle. This eye adorned a giant poster hanging in front of the shiny yellow and black glass of the exhibition centre.

The eye stared out across the street watching the material world go by. The flow of cars heading towards the Dimitrovsky Bridge; the half-finished glass and concrete shells of new office blocks and luxury hotels; the warm steam rising up through the drain covers; and the well-preserved relic of a Soviet steam engine, named Felix Dzerzhinsky, which had carried soldiers westward in the time of the Great Patriotic War.

I made my way up the stairs of the office complex to the second floor. The spacious room was crammed with dozens of small stalls and booths. Many people pressed into the narrow passageways between these stands.

Some were smartly and formally dressed, but many wore the traditional clothes of the region - ornate flowing colourful dresses, headscarves, and woven necklaces.

The room was filled with a slow relaxing and sensual music. The sound was coming from a set of large speakers at the far end of the hall. Beside these speakers was a small stage where a man was speaking into a microphone. A small crowd was standing around the stage listening to him.

As I approached he finished speaking and a pair of dancers jumped onto the stage. One was a tall man with a goatee beard and long blac hair tied in a ponytail behind his head. He wore loose fitting trousers and a t-shirt showing the head and trunk of an elephant - a design I thought reminiscent of some Indian animal deity.

The woman wore a shiny blue silk skirt and a tight-fitting white top.

As the music grew louder, they began to dance - a slow passionate and vigorous routine, which seemed part erotic ritual and part sensual body massage.

As they danced, a troupe of other female dancers sat cross-legged on matting on the floor. All wore the same shiny silky skirts and white tops. A polite round of applause followed the end of the dance, and a different group of performers began a new routine.

I turned away from the stage and began to walk around the other stalls to see what could be found there. There seemed to be every kind of art of product, ancient or modern, represented there.

Beside the stage was a small table selling traditional corn dolls, as well as glass animals, flowers and CDs with Chinese/Oriental relaxation music.

Nearby were similar stalls covered in Russian dolls, painted glass, boxes, embroidered necklaces and children's toys.

A more modern stand displayed a stack of special massage accupuncture sandals with numerous large bumps across the insole. There were also numerous relaxation cushions which customers were testing as they lay back in green plastic chairs.

Opposite was a stall with ethnic artefacts of the neighbouring Altay region: wooden spoons and rolling pins, breadboards, pots, mirrors, leather wallets, horseshoes, amulets and necklaces. There were carved deities in the shape of human heads, bear heads and horses heads.

There were other lucky charms, mostly consisting of variations upon the ancient good luck symbol of the swastika.

Back in the 21st Century, I saw a woman sitting wearing sunglasses with green and red flashing lights behind the lenses. Beside her was a stall selling slimming and shaping women's underwear. The design of these garments seemed voluminous and unflattering.

Another stall was evidently of Chinese origin - for there was a large red and gold Chinese lantern hanging from its roof, and a larger than life size portrait of a traditional Chinese maiden in a flower garden on the canvas at the back. This stall was selling a variety of skincare products, all neatly arranged in differently coloured bottles.

Other stalls passed before my eyes: richly decorated bags, colourful plates, paintings depicting relaxing and isolated mountain landscapes, nuts, seeds, painted eggs, stuffed dolls, oriental spices, health foods, and even some sort of water purifier that was designed to look very similar to a beer barrel.

My eye stopped for a moment on a stall selling a strange 5-noded shape, set roughly into the form of a pyramid. These were made of a soft rubbery material and came in a variety of flourescent colours. They had the brand name Pharoah. These seemed to be some kind of automatic massage device, as several woman were rubbing this up and down their arms, with varying degrees of satisfaction.

Other massage techniques were on display further along the room. Two women, with their trousers rolled up to their knees, were being attended to by massuers. One of their lower legs had been wrapped in a kind of gauze kitchen towel, while the other leg had been covered in a thick transparent massage oil. The masseurs were engaged in kneading this oil into their patients' calves.

A third masseur was operating on a mat on the floor just behind the other two. Her patient had been laid out on the ground in something akin to the recovery position, while the practitioner was vigorously manipulating her back and shoulders, sometimes throwing in a violent backwards jerk to loosen up tense muscles.

A group of onlookers watched this demonstration. They were joined in this activity by several ornamental silver elephants who viewed the proceedings from the comfort of the designs on fat puffy cushions on either side of the massage area.

Several other pictures of the third eye also calmly surveyed the bustle of the exhibition hall.

One of the eyes was set in a triangle above the head of a woman who reached upwards with her arms to embrace the eye - her arms turning to feathery white wings as she did so. A bright white light glowed from her heart, as she turned her head skywards to gaze upon the eye.

Another portrait showed a real life portrait of an elderly Indian woman, with a face calm and placid from age and wisdom. She was standing in front of a beautiful and rocky snowy mountain landscape, presumably in the Himalayas. She too had a bright red spot painted in the centre of her forehead.

Next to the eyes there were two stalls with complex charts showing the various pressure points and chakras of the human body.

Another chart showed the seven points of the heart, the yin and the yang, and the relationship between the mind and the sun.

Beside this diagram there was a life size image of an angel woman dressed in white with a rainbow disc of colours behind her. In front of her was the figure of a human woman - and on either side of her, there were male and female figures.

In front of this pair was a human heart, together with its seven points. A shining white line ran through the heart, between the couple, and directly through the centre of the angel woman's head up to the sky and an image of the home.

A fortune teller sat at a nearby table. Before her was a candle, a black book with a design like a religious icon on the front, and several crystal balls. These were really transparent orbs with colourful and strangely formed shapes inside.

The woman was dressed all in black. She held the hand of her client, gently and slowly feeling the fingers as if drawing energy through the tips. She then began to deal out some cards.

Around the corner there was a stall with a wide array of runestones. Some of the stones were small nuggets, medium pieces had been hung on necklaces, while the largest stones were either in the shape of eggs, or in clear orange sized balls. Several pouches and woven bags hung by the side of the stall, and these were decorated with characters from the traditional futharc.

There were other curious modern practices too, whose exact methods could not be determined.

Beside the photograph of a woman staring at a man's finger in the familiar pose of one being hypnotised, were the words 'EMDR therapy in action'. Other photographs showed only a woman's eyes looking back at me. One pair looked to the left. One pair looked to the right. And the third pair stared, unblinking, straight ahead.

Another poster displayed only the image of a cheerful green cartoon snake in what looked like a goldfish bowl. Above this was the silhouette motif of another snake, winding itself around a wine glass. Various medical remedies were promised on the poster, but the role of the snake in this treatment remained unclear.

Equally inexplicable weere the methods of the Academy Yasnovidenia Energoterapia. Their display showed only charts full of symobls and circles covered in multi-coloured lines.

No explanation could be found either for the centre Ra-Svot. in front of their stand there was a woman sitting in a wooden chair. Her head and shoulders were entirely concealed beneath a large blue pyramid, shaped a little like the top of a Japanes pagoda, which was supported above the seat by of the chair by four upright pillars which ran directly up from the chair legs.

The design on the roof of this pyramid consisted of six circles forming the nodes of a hexagon, with a similar pattern creating a smaller hexagon inside the first. Further examination confirmed that the woman was also listening to some headphones plugged in to a portable CD player beneath her chair.

A woman pressed some fliers into my hand while I was standing by the stall. A strange mixture. Mantra yoga. An oriental woman, naked apart from a tattoo on her back, promoting some relaxation technique; and a woman wearing a dance leotard and shiny black 6 inch heel boots inviting me to strip dance and erotic theatre.

To my left a woman had a stall covered in bags of leaves and books showing the wise bearded faces of men looking like prophets or Russian orthodox patriarchs.

To my right there were two large wall hangings of the Buddha. The first incarnation of the Buddha wore orange robes and sat in the lotus position against a yellow background. He appeared to be resting on a large pile of rocks. His right hand was raised in a gesture of peaceful benevolence. He wore an orange t-shirt with a large swastika emblazoned in the middle.

The second incarnation of the Buddha was yellow and green. He likewise sat in the lotus position, but seemed to be naked apart from something similar in shape to a cardinal's hat which was worn upon his head. He had decided to meditate outside a cave.

The Novosibirsk yoga group was selling miniature Buddhas as well as ear-rings, pots, and multi-coloured loose-fitting tunics.

In a similar vein, the Sibyoga stand opposite also had various oils on offer. Stranger, though, was the Vedic Pulse Machine they had advertised behind the stall - a kind of electro-cardiogram incorporated into aromatherapy and diet.

Stranger still, and more menacing, was the stretching bench which stood off to one side. Although this looked like a normal folding bench press which could be found in any gym, some sinister looking small wheels were located just where the small of the back would lie. Coupled with some other mechanisms at the side of the bench which looked as though they could lengthen or shorten it, the whole effect was more reminiscent of a classical or medieval torture device than the product of the Age of Aquarius. This was obviously some new meaning of the phrase "alternative medicine" that I had previously been unaware of.

By now, the exhibition was almost coming to an end. People were beginning to make their way past me to the exit and the dance troupe on stage were finishing their final routine - a group chorus line with lots of singing, jumping and clapping.

As I was about to leave, I saw a large video screen by the door which seemed to be showing a DVD about the evils of money. A photo montage of sights from Novosibirsk had been interspersed with images of ancient artefacts and the eye and pyramid symbol from the American dollar.

My final encounter at the show was with a man standing at the door. He was fairly short and squat, and he wore a thick pair of sunglasses. He had a thick golden band around his head with a large black feather attached to the side by his right ear.

He also wore a kind of sheepskin gilet and a pair of army combat trousers. In his left hand he carried two wooden sticks which he used to beat on a drum made of some animal skin which was propped up on a chair in front of him.

The drumbeats were accompanied by some repetitive synthetic music on a CD player. The whole melodious effect was completed by his own deep and rythmical chanting. Discs with these songs were laid out for sale on a table beside him.

This had been a strange and unexpected event to find in Novosibirsk. But in a land too ofent known only for cold weather and Gulag labour camps, this proved to be a refreshing insight into the continuation and development of older and spiritual native traditions.

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