On the other side of the coin, criticism has been fierce, sometimes unfairly so. The art historian Kenneth Archer notes how the "saint-making rhetoric" of Roerich's followers has provoked an unfortunate but predictable backlash, in which many of those engaged in the much-needed stripping away of Roerich's facade go too far, damaging the underlying structure.18 Robert Craft, Stravinsky's longtime secretary, is guilty of this when he brands Roerich "a monumental con artist," as are those who marginalize him as a spy, a huckster, or a lunatic.19 Such rhetorical excess has gone farthest in post-Soviet Russia, where journalists have spun lurid speculations about Roerich as a "terrorist" or a Comintern mastermind, and where the Orthodox Church has denounced him as a "satanist."20 Not everyone writing about
Roerich has been a partisan or a detractor, but much room remains for studies that combine dispassionate judgment with close attention to sources.
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Apart from the Roerichs' furtiveness and the mutability of their motives, the thorniest issue confronting anyone studying their lives is how to construe their mysticism. Simply understanding the basics of what the Roerichs did and believed can be a challenge, thanks to the esoteric tone that pervades nearly everything they wrote. Even to comment on mundane topics, the family used the rarefied vocabulary of transcendence, and when they spoke of their experiences in Asia or the rapturous future they believed was fast approaching, their language became more oracular yet. Excerpts like this, from Helena's On Eastern Crossroads, are routine fare: "Through the desert I come—I bring the Chalice covered with the Shield. Within it is a treasure—the Gift of Orion. By the sign of the seven stars shall the Gates be opened. Let us retire into the city on the White Mountain and hearken to the Great Book."21 These sentences were not meant merely as rhetoric, but as a guide to practical action, although knowing this makes it no easier to fix a specific meaning to prose so impenetrably gnomic. The Indian critic B. N. Goswamy has noted, "While the flow of [the Roerichs'] words is quite remarkable, the sequence of thoughts [is] as hard to follow as the jagged peaks of the mountains."22
Poring over such passages, one is left wondering how best to answer the most fundamental questions about sincerity, hypocrisy, and the family's actual intentions.23
But the problem runs deeper. Ultimately, any researcher dealing with Roerich's life has to render a judgment about his belief system: If one does not share it, does one consider it the product of a cold-blooded spiritual con? Or of sheer mental folly? Or does Agni Yoga deserve to be studied the way any other religion would be? This last option—critical but nonprejudicial skepticism—follows the pattern set by a growing number of scholars and journalists who find themselves examining the modern era's profusion of synthetic doctrines. Regardless of how one feels about Scientology or the Reverend Moon, for instance, how does one objectively distinguish them from more mainstream belief systems as objects of academic inquiry? An arresting passage from The Quiet American, Graham Greene's classic novel of the Indochina wars, addresses this conundrum. The scene in question places the main character, a British reporter, at a temple in the town of Tay Ninh, where he observes a Caodai ritual. A young and consciously syncretic doctrine, Caodai blends Catholicism with elements of Confucianism and Vietnamese Buddhism, and the sight of such reverence being paid to this "Walt Disney fantasia of the East" moves the narrator to reflect that only durability and good luck distinguish cults from accepted religions. "If this cathedral had existed for five centuries instead of two decades," he muses, "would it have gathered a kind of convincingness with the scratches of feet and the erosion of weather?"24
Despite the oceans of ink spilled over this question by theologians, anthropologists, and philosophers, there is, beyond a point, no logically consistent way to differentiate "authentic" faiths from those on the so-called fringe. I am not an Agni Yogist or a Theosophist, nor am I convinced that the Roerichs possessed supernatural gifts. Yet I believe that nonmainstream creeds can be studied in terms similar to longer-established ones as genuine expressions of spiritual conviction, and my aim has been to discuss the Roerichs' beliefs as open-mindedly as academic responsibility will permit.
I have felt aided here by the Roerichs' apparent earnestness with respect to their teachings and actions. This is not to deny the couple's frequent duplicity or their emotionally manipulative handling of supporters, or even the chance that their talk of Shambhala was rank charlatanism. As the Vedantist monk Vivekananda—a teacher highly regarded by the Roerichs themselves—once remarked, when people attempt religious leadership, "eighty percent of them turn into cheats, and about fifteen percent go mad. So beware!"25 Still, protracted examination has led me to conclude that the Roerichs believed in what they prophesied. Readers will cherish or deride those prophecies as they will, but I do not consider them fraudulent in the sense of having been manufactured solely to deceive.
In this, I am not alone among Roerich scholars: I share Alexandre Andreyev's opinion that the family's predictions and pronouncements were "mental constructs or dreams," and Markus Osterrieder's that they "understood themselves and their 'mission' as part of some larger spiritual plan [and] did not consciously act as imposters."26 Although it is risky without clinical records to attempt the diagnosis of long-dead historical figures, physiological and psychological factors appear to have affected the Roerichs. Migraines plagued Helena from an early age, and in her later years, her family physician believed her to be prone to some form of long-term epileptic distress; either or both could account for the visions and psychic communications she claimed to have.27 Andreyev confidently labels Roerich himself "a typical neurotic," and one or both of the Roerichs may have suffered narcissistic personality disorder, which many scholars associate with the founders of new spiritual movements. "Whether gurus have suffered from manic-depressive illness, schizophrenia, or any other form of recognized, diagnosable mental illness is interesting but ultimately unimportant," notes the Oxford psychiatrist Anthony Storr. "What distinguishes gurus from more orthodox teachers is not their manic-depressive mood swings, not their thought disorders, not their delusional beliefs, not their hallucinatory visions, not
their mystical state of ecstasy: it is their nar-
cissism."28 Narcissism's chief symptoms—a "pervasive pattern of grandiosity" and a yearning for "excessive admiration"—seem to go a long way toward explaining much of the Roerichs' conduct. Either way, the family's stated beliefs, even at their most unconventional, strike me as having been sincerely held.
Consequently, I have not engaged in a line-by-line debunking of the Roerichs' precepts. I provide context as needed; where I appear to be speaking of revelations as "true," or of spirit entities as engaged in discourse with the Roerichs, readers should understand me to be writing from the family's perspective, not my own. I have endeavored to show good judgment about Roerich without being judgmental. How far I have
succeeded will be for each reader to decide. •
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