The article investigates the workings of a conspiritual community focused on the 'Tartarian Empir... more The article investigates the workings of a conspiritual community focused on the 'Tartarian Empire'. Its members see this as a lost, utopian empire erased from memory by a conspiracy. They claim that it was home to a highly spiritual, peaceful society based on the use of free energy. To study the dynamics of this community, the content of a subreddit linked to it was analyzed, and an interdisciplinary theoretical framework was employed to study key narratives and findings on the community. The results show how much grassroots movements shape modern esoteric discourse, how much it depends on its technical environment, and how important it is to study media use in this context. Following the community's media usage trail, a deeper contextualization is proposed: The view of history found here can be analyzed as a symptom of a general crisis of social-historical consciousness. The study is a step in reorienting the study of esotericism from elite discourse to popular movements and bringing it into conversation with other fields in cultural studies.
This article explores a specific case of premodern social thought, the Middle Persian Zoroastrian... more This article explores a specific case of premodern social thought, the Middle Persian Zoroastrian system of estates, MP pēšagān, sg. pēšag, which originated in Sasanian Iran, and its link to the social position of priests in the empire. It is argued that Zoroastrian religious experts tried to impose a totalizing system of social organization and heuristic possibility in a situation characterized by competition for resources in a tributary society. Against a widely held belief, it will be shown that this system was only loosely based on an Avestan predecessor-an observation that should caution against broader attempts to project Middle Persian concepts onto the Avesta and vice versa. The findings also contribute to our understanding of the relationship between the Sasanians and the Zoroastrian tradition .
The article investigates the workings of a conspiritual community focused on the 'Tartarian Empir... more The article investigates the workings of a conspiritual community focused on the 'Tartarian Empire'. Its members see this as a lost, utopian empire erased from memory by a conspiracy. They claim that it was home to a highly spiritual, peaceful society based on the use of free energy. To study the dynamics of this community, the content of a subreddit linked to it was analyzed, and an interdisciplinary theoretical framework was employed to study key narratives and findings on the community. The results show how much grassroots movements shape modern esoteric discourse, how much it depends on its technical environment, and how important it is to study media use in this context. Following the community's media usage trail, a deeper contextualization is proposed: The view of history found here can be analyzed as a symptom of a general crisis of social-historical consciousness. The study is a step in reorienting the study of esotericism from elite discourse to popular movements and bringing it into conversation with other fields in cultural studies.
This article explores a specific case of premodern social thought, the Middle Persian Zoroastrian... more This article explores a specific case of premodern social thought, the Middle Persian Zoroastrian system of estates, MP pēšagān, sg. pēšag, which originated in Sasanian Iran, and its link to the social position of priests in the empire. It is argued that Zoroastrian religious experts tried to impose a totalizing system of social organization and heuristic possibility in a situation characterized by competition for resources in a tributary society. Against a widely held belief, it will be shown that this system was only loosely based on an Avestan predecessor-an observation that should caution against broader attempts to project Middle Persian concepts onto the Avesta and vice versa. The findings also contribute to our understanding of the relationship between the Sasanians and the Zoroastrian tradition .
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