CHURCH OF APHRODITE TIMELINE
1900: Gleb Evgenyevich Botkin was born in Russia.
1929: Gleb Botkin, a Russian émigré in New York published The God Who Didn’t Laugh, his first novel. He mentioned the religion of Aphrodite, a goddess of love and sexual pleasure, which was posited as an alternative to Christianity.
1933: The Immortal Woman, Botkin’s second novel, featured a protagonist who established regular worship of Aphrodite in contemporary New York.
1939: The Church of Aphrodite was incorporated in a New York court; the church was headed by Gleb Botkin, its Archierarch and Aphrodisios.
1967 (?): In Search of Reality was published by Botkin in Charlotteville, Virginia. This treatise was the only systematic outline of the religion of Aphrodite as envisaged by Botkin.
1969: Gleb Botkin died, apparently with no spiritual heirs or followers. He has received most attention among scholars of contemporary Paganism as an early precursor of this religious movement.
FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY
Gleb Evgenyevich Botkin was born in Russia in 1900, the youngest child of Evgeny Sergeyevich Botkin, the physician to Czar Nicolas II. As a child and an adolescent Gleb, was friends with the children of the royal family and the court; he also acquired interest in religion and the arts early in life. Gleb was a teenager when his elder brother Dmitry was killed in action during World War I; later his other brother, Yuri, was captured as a war prisoner by the Austrians. Gleb was sixteen, when Nicolas II abdicated in 1917. The two Russian revolutions, of February and October, made the royal family prisoners, first, of the Temporary Government and then of the Bolshevist regime. Dr Evgeny Botkin, with his children Tatiana and Gleb, followed the exiled sovereigns to Tobolsk, where they lived practically under arrest. “The winter of 1917-18 will forever remain in my memory as a nightmare of indescribable ghastliness,” Botkin wrote twelve years later (Botkin 1930). In 1918, Dr Evgeny Botkin was sent from Tobolsk to Ekaterinburg with the royal family, only to find his death there. His children went further to Siberia, which fell into the hands of the White regimes, hostile to the Bolsheviks. Perhaps, it was the tragedy of these years that made Gleb seek novitiate in one of the monasteries in Siberia. However, he never became a monk. Botkin’s novel God Who Didn’t Laugh (1929), which has, as have almost all his novels, an autobiographical ring. It tells of the early disappointment in Christianity, which he could have experienced having lived in a Russian Orthodox monastery.
With the Bolsheviks moving eastwards, Gleb and his relatives, following the White armies, retreated towards the Pacific. When Bolsheviks captured Vladivostok, Gleb escaped to Japan. There, in 1920 or 1921, he married Nadezhda (Nadin) Mandraji-Konshina, with whom he lived till her death in 1968. In 1922, the Botkins emigrated from Japan to the Russian diaspora in New York. In America, Gleb became disappointed with monarchism and Russian aristocracy. He earned a “reputation of a dangerous revolutionary,” having refused to participate in forming Russia’s monarchist shadow government, and having derided Great Duke Cyrill Vladimirovich, who proclaimed himself Emperor of Russia in exile. The Romanovs saw a fiend in Botkin when he started to defend the claims of Anna Anderson as a survived princess Anastasia. For his own part, he, evidently, believed his whole life that she was the girl he had known in his childhood. Since 1927, Botkin has served as the main public voice for Anna. He wrote articles, tried to convince others of the ingenuity of her claims and stood for her in court. By 1930, Botkin was on bad terms with the most of the Russian émigré establishment. At the same time, he became a U.S. citizen, and, moreover, “an ardent Crusader of Americanism” (Botkin 1930).
Gleb worked as book illustrator and wrote novels with action mostly set in Russia under the last Czar and during the Revolution. These novels recurrently speak of the main characters’ personal belief in the Goddess of Love and Beauty, whom they refer to as Aphrodite. As a rule, this Goddess has her earthly avatars in brave, emancipated and explicitly sexual heroines. Another recurrent topic is the critique of Christianity as an “irrational” religion that has “distorted” ideas about the Deity, the world and the human. Botkin’s critique was especially bitter in The God Who Didn’t Laugh (1929).
In The Immortal Woman (1933), “the religion of Aphrodite” takes its shape as a religious and aesthetic program. The main character, composer Nikolai Dirin, who, just like Botkin himself, left Bolshevist Russia for America, studies the ancient religions, trying to find the Goddess whom he had instinctually worshipped from his childhood (Botkin 1933):
The more he studied the more convinced he became that his Goddess was no myth, that millions upon millions of human beings had worshiped her for thousands of years and that many continued to worship her in the present. She was the Star of Love of the ancient Semites, the Astarte of the Phoenicians, the Eastre of the Anglo-Saxons, the Aphrodite of the Greeks, the Kwanon of the Japanese. Those many variations of the same conception of a beautiful Goddess of Love and Beauty, of Mercy and fertility, who had created and was ruling the universe through love, precisely corresponded to Nikolai’s own imaginings about the mysterious Divine Woman, the Great Cosmic Mother. This discovery became for Nikolai a source of enormous satisfaction. Now he had again a deity to whom he could pray and appeal for help and courage. Now his life had again a mystical significance, independent of all earthly affairs.
Having gained success as a composer in America, Nikolai purported to build a shrine to Aphrodite in Long-Island (Botkin was a resident there, first in West Hempstead in the 1930s, then in Cassville in 1950-1962). The scene of the visit paid to Nikolai by Aphrodite later in the novel could be a reflection of a genuine mystical experience Botkin may have had himself.
Six years after The Immortal Woman was published, the Supreme Court of the state of New York issued a charter to Long Island Church of Aphrodite. The magazine Life wrote about the establishment of a “frankly pagan church” as a triumph of religious freedom. It told of the congregation of thirty-five people and that “sex, its central theme, plays its part in the church not in orgiastic ritual, but as an ideal “divine and wonderful” (Church of Aphrodite 1939). The note in the magazine featured photographs of Gleb and Nadezhda Botkin, a charter of the new church, and an altar to Aphrodite that Gleb made at his home. From 1939 till his death in 1969 Botkin served as the “Archierarch” and “Aphrodisios” of the Church of Aphrodite, the two terms he coined to use interchangeably for his office as the chief minister of his religion. He published no more novels in his last three decades, and his career as an illustrator had apparently come to an end. He devoted himself full-time to the theology and liturgy of his religion.
Apparently, in the 1940s and most of the 1950s very few people, if any at all, participated in the rites and liturgies of Aphrodite, which Botkin conducted weekly in his private residence. In late 1958 or early 1959, several delegations visited Botkin’s house in Cassville, which served as the church’s headquarters. These were “three priests of whom one turned out to be a Greek Catholic and the other two Roman Catholic, as well as professors in a Catholic college in Boston” (Proctor 1959, November 2). In addition, there was a group of students from New York with their professor and a military commission from Washington D.C., who was collecting data concerning the religious groups. One of the officers from the latter group said to Botkin: “Do you realize that you have millions of adherents in this country? You are saying the very things which most Americans long to hear?” (Proctor 1959, July 9). However, there is no evidence of the continuous Church of Aphrodite attendance in Botkin’s “Cassville period.”
The situation changed when the Botkins moved to Charlottesville, Virginia in 1960. According to the memories of one of the Church of Aphrodite attendees, left at an Internet forum devoted to the history of the last Romanovs, in 1960s Gleb became a center of a small circle of people interested in the religion of Aphrodite and/or Russian history of which Botkin was an expert. It mostly consisted of local students and professors. The membership in the church was informal and the copying and publication of the church materials was done by unpaid volunteers. Botkin confirmed at least one marriage in late 1960s according to the rite of the Church of Aphrodite. Gleb’s wife Nadin converted into the religion of her husband later in the decade; Gleb claimed that he had never ““pressured” her to do so” (Nichols 2005). Andrew Hartsook, ordained by Gleb as a priest, later sought the office of an army chaplain, being a minister of an officially recognized religion, but “[t]he Army very politely said “No”” (Nichols 2005). The religion of Aphrodite apparently didn’t survive the death of its prophet: nothing is known of its activity after Botkin’s death in 1969.
DOCTRINES/BELIEFS
The treatise In Search of Reality was published by Botkin two years before his death. It can be regarded as his programmatic theological statement, explaining the “religion of Aphrodite” as it was practiced in the Church of Aphrodite through the three decades of its existence. Undoubtedly, Botkin himself was the chief (and, maybe, the only) theologian of the church.
In Search of Reality starts with a brief foreword, where the author states plainly that “prevalent religious beliefs and standards of morality…are based chiefly on…fantasies…of primitive people of an ancient past” and therefore are not meet for the problems of today. The treatise is focused on formulating the philosophy which could help humanity “to develop morally and intellectually, as well as enable us to lead happier lives” (Botkin 1967).
The central concept in Botkin’s ontology is Love (Botkin 1967):
Love is not – as most people seem to think – just an emotion. Love is an energy – indeed, the basic creative energy in the cosmos. Life itself is naught else, but the blossoming of love. Every living organism exists only because it contains love, and the degree of its vitality is determined by the amount of love it contains.
As any energy, love presupposes a current between the two poles, a subject and object of love. The commandment to love one’s neighbor, as well as “the so called Golden Rule” are meaningless, as it is impossible to love oneself by definition – it is only possible to love the other (Botkin 1967):
love only begins when the happiness of its object becomes of greater importance to its subject than the latter’s own happiness; and love impels people to do for others far more than they ever expect others to do for them.
Anything can serve as an object of human love: things, people, ideals, aspirations. All kinds of love “are identical in substance and hence conductive to goodness and happiness”. There are no different species of love; it is especially dangerous to divide love into the sensual and the ideal ones (Botkin 1967):
[T]here is no love which is totally void of a sexual element. It is present, however unnoticeably, in any form of love, not only for persons, but also for things, phenomena and ideas. There is a sexual element even in, let us say, love for music or the beauty of nature. Conversely, there is no manifestation of love which does not contain what is usually referred to as the spiritual element.
Contempt for the body as something contrary to the spirit is the basis of civilizations “marked by extreme cruelty and bloodthirstiness.” These civilizations cultivate not only wars and violence, but also sex without love, which is like “counterfeit money” or “poisoned food” (Botkin 1967):
…[H]ad human beings, in the course of so many centuries, been taught not to despise, but to respect, admire, cherish and love the human body, they would long since have, not only become incapable of murdering and maiming one another, but also cured themselves of most forms of cruelty; and modern mankind would by now be well on its way towards a new Golden Age.
However, the capability to love is not limitless (Botkin 1967):
Created organisms are only secondary generators of love. They can at will direct such love as they possess at any object of their own choice, respond or fail to respond to the love directed at them and, in responding to such love, intensify or weaken it in the process. But they cannot generate love independently, or hold it within themselves in a static condition. They must be constantly recharged with love; and the only way in which a created organism can be recharged with love is to keep discharging the love it contains.
Thus, for Botkin, the idea that love is energy is far from being simply a metaphor: “Like any other energy, electricity for instance, love is present and functions only when and where it is generated; and it is impossible to know in advance that any two organisms will keep exchanging steadily currents of love with each other throughout their terrestrial sojourn”. Multiplying objects of love doesn’t mean diminishing its intensity, for “each new object of love represents a new fountainhead of it and, hence, tends to intensify – not weaken – the love directed by the same subject at other objects”. Love, Beauty and Harmony are “different aspects of one single phenomenon” (Botkin 1967).
An antithesis of love, beauty and harmony, “the source of all man-made evil and suffering” is the trinity “hatred, ugliness and discord”. Its ultimate manifestation is cruelty; if love is accompanied by respect and gratitude, hatred begets anger and unhappiness. Botkin fiercely rejected the notion that love and hatred alike are of the same kind, as they are both “strong emotions”: love for him is not an emotion, but “the basic creative energy in the cosmos” and hatred – an emotion indeed, though a “pathological and destructive one” (Botkin 1967).
The only “inexhaustible Generator of Love – its Prime Source and Ultimate Object is the Supreme Deity and Creator”. The Deity is Creator by the very reason it radiates love, which creates the cosmos. The process of this emanation is “an organic one”, and therefore “the cosmos must be regarded as a fruit of the Divine Organism – not an arbitrarily created artifact”. This is why the Supreme Deity should be visualized “not as a Father God, but the Mother Goddess”, since “it is only the feminine organism which is capable of bearing fruit”. She is the Goddess of Love, Beauty and Harmony: “…the name Aphrodite which means “Foam Revealed”, was coined on the basis of the cosmogonal theory that originally our visible world was in a state of chaos which culminated in a gigantic explosion, whereupon the Goddess revealed Herself in the fiery foam of the sundered world, imposing the order of harmony upon chaos, replacing ugliness with beauty and infusing dead matter with the life born of Her love, thus inaugurating the process of orderly creation” (Botkin 1967).
Love to any object is “a form of communion” with Goddess, and “creative activity” fostered by love is her worship. Though any love “conductive to goodness and happiness”, yet “[o]nly a direct, conscious communion with the Goddess can satisfy completely all the aspirations of the human heart…At the same time, a conscious love for the Goddess places all the other objects of one’s love in the right perspective, on the one hand, making one tolerant of their limitations and, on the other hand, enabling one to perceive the full measure of their goodness – reflection of the Goddess Herself in them” (Botkin 1967).
Since “love is eternal” in Botkin’s view, any
“organism which contains love is potentially immortal. Whether that potentiality, as so many churches teach, is realized in one sudden leap from this earth to Heaven, seems open to question. It may well be that human beings have to undergo repeated incarnations on this earth. It may also be that our visible world is only a cosmic kindergarten and that we have to graduate successively from many worlds until we finally ripen for that cosmic core of absolute reality and Divine and eternal goodness and happiness, which we call Heaven. But those details hardly matter. The laws of love are exactly the same in all those worlds, including Heaven itself…” (Botkin 1967)
Though we can say nothing definite about “the Beyond”, “we know our earth to be beautiful and therefore can be certain that the Beyons is also beautiful – indeed, more beautiful, by far” (Botkin 1967).
Having expounded his theory of love and its source, Botkin writes about the “true religion”, the religion of Aphrodite. The true religion, according to Botkin, means the “perception of truth” about the Deity. One of the grossest misconceptions about the Deity is the idea that it is almighty. An almighty god becomes responsible for all evil that happens in the world, “[h]ence such a creator and cosmic ruler would be, not a God, but a Monster”. On the contrary, “if we accept the axiom that the Deity is the very Source and Supreme Expression of all love, we thereby assert that the Deity does not possess the power of doing anything incompatible with love”. The Deity of love equally can’t be represented as male: males are incapable of giving birth, therefore, the god “could only be thought of as an arbitrary creator who does not give birth to things, but invents and fashions them at will”. Such god becomes responsible for his creation, and particularly for the evil inherent in it. For Botkin “it is as impossible to assume that the Deity has created and is tolerating evil, as it is to assume our visible world to be an arbitrarily fashioned artifact”. Though we can’t know the Creator’s mind, “we have substantial reasons for accepting certain conclusions about the Godhead as axiomatic”, namely, that “the Supreme Deity is the very Source of life, love, goodness and happiness”, that this Deity creates the world with Love, Beauty and Harmony, “which emanate from the Divine Being”. The cosmos should be seen as “a fruit of the Divine organism and hence owing its existence not to a Divine caprice, but to an organic need of the Divine organism. In consequence we also must visualize the Divine Being, not as God, but Goddess, or, more specifically, as the Goddess of Love, Beauty and Harmony” (Botkin 1967).
In contrast to the cosmos created by the Deity, evil is “chaos, that is, a negative condition of the absence of order”. Evil is not created; in fact, it preexists creation. Goddess, “by imposing the order of harmony upon that primordial chaos, changing ugliness into beauty and infusing the whole with love automatically productive of life, …started the process of creation by transforming a wholly evil world into an essentially good one”. The act of creation is not limited in time, as Goddess “has continues and still continues to develop it towards greater excellence”. The ideal of development is, for Botkin, “a world of high moral excellence, in which the chaotic element has shrunk to the role of shadows which only serve to accentuate the beauty of triumphant light” (Botkin 1967).
Botkin thought that the ultimate aim of all living beings in the material world is cooperation in its development toward this ideal: “the only way for humans to fulfill the purpose of their existence is to pursue love, beauty and harmony and shun their opposites, hatred, ugliness and discord”. Evil cannot be simply abolished by the Deity’s will, for the chief evil is the absence of love, and love can’t be incited by compulsion (Botkin 1967).
Botkin appended the treatise with an “Explanatory note”, which briefly sketches the history of the religion of Aphrodite, as Botkin perceived it. The origins of the religion are “lost in pre-history”. It was brought to Greece by Orpheus. In Asia Aphrodite since time immemorial was worshipped as “Kwannon”. The ancient Hebrews, King Solomon among them, worshipped Aphrodite as “Ashtoret”, for which they were scalded by Jerusalem priests. The Christian Church proclaimed Aphrodite to be a demon and Emperor Justinian in the 6th century has prohibited her worship under penalty of death. However, “itself borrowed – and thus preserved – many concepts, symbols and rites of the religion of Aphrodite” (the borrowings included the cross, “the oldest known symbol of love”, the Holy Ghost, Mother of God and Logos). For centuries the religion of Aphrodite was preserved by “peasants in remote villages and by secret societies in urban centers”. The foundation of his church Botkin saw as the restoration of “the open worship of Aphrodite in the Christian world” (Botkin 1967).
The picture is complemented by the evidence from Botkin’s letters to his friend Philip Proctor. In these letters Botkin speaks harshly against Christianity, yet proposes to distinguish in the Christ of the Gospels “a Hebrew monk” and “an Aphrodisian Christ”; while the former’s teaching is the “religion of death”, the latter is “an entirely different Christ, the radiant “Lord” (Adonai, Adonis), who speaks of benevolence and kindness, performs salutary miracles and keeps invoking the Holy Ghost (Aphrodite). That Christ is, of course, but another version of Osiris, Horus, Krishna, Dionysus, Adonis, Orpheus – all of them Priests of the Goddess of Love and Beauty”. These figures, though not necessarily historically true, are examples of love, which, according to the teaching of the Church of Aphrodite, one can “love worshipfully”, but cannot worship. “I have always been a strict monotheist in heart” – Botkin wrote (Proctor 1960).
Botkin, who positioned the religion of Aphrodite as the only true one, nevertheless, admitted inclusivist views on prayer: “I am… convinced that a prayer prompted by true love will whenever possible be answered by the Goddess of Love even if the person who prays to her addresses Her as Jehovah, or Allah, or Buddha, or Christ” (Proctor 22.08.1957).
ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP
Botkin’s church was created as a hierarchical organization with a strict distinction between the clergy and the laity, and an exclusivist doctrine, which any member had to accept. The most crucial tenet was a belief in Aphrodite as the one true deity. From “In Search of Reality” we learn of an “Aphrodisian Creed”, the “21 Articles of Aphrodisian Faith” and “Fundamental Beliefs of the Church of Aphrodite” (Botkin 1967). According to W. Holman Keith, a member of the Church of Aphrodite, who was later active in other American Pagan groups, about fifty people frequented Botkin’s services (Clifton 2006). He was probably exaggerating.
There were three kinds of liturgy written by Botkin for the church. The services were held four times a week before an altar with a plaster statuette of Venus de Medici and nine or seven burning candles. The ritual garment of the Church of Aphrodite priests was much alike to the vestments of Catholic and Eastern Orthodox clergy. Nothing can be said now of the special holidays or of the liturgical calendar of the church.
The symbol of the church was “the mirror of Venus”, the astronomical sign of the planet Venus. The picture of Gleb Botkin in a mitre topped with a cross and a circle appeared in “Richmond Times” in 1965 (Moore 1965). The symbol was printed on the paper which Botkin sometimes used to write letters to Philip Proctor, and appears on the gravestone of Gleb and Nadin Botkins in Charlottesville, Virginia. According to Gleb, this symbol has from time immemorial meant the attainment of immortality through love (Proctor 13.08.1961).
The liturgy comprised a separate volume of the writings of the church named “The Ritual of the Church of Aphrodite”. The treatise “In Search of Reality” gives us a sample of what Aphrodisian services may have sounded like by citing “The Thanksgiving Hymn”:
For the light and warmth of our sun, for the radiance of our moon, for the brilliance of our stars, we thank Thee, O Aphrodite. For the loveliness of our sky, for the sweetness of our air, for the magnificence of our seas, we thank Thee, O Aphrodite. For the fertility of our valleys, for the grandeur of our mountains, for the beauty of our forests, we thank Thee, O Aphrodite.
For, Thou art the Universal Cause, and everything that breathes in Heaven, on earth and in the deep of the sea, is Thy Creation…
For the tenderness of our parents, for the embraces of our lovers, for the caresses of our children, we thank Thee, O Aphrodite. For the goodness of friendship, for the delight of cognition, for the enchantment of arts, we thank Thee, O Aphrodite…
For Thy goodness to us, we thank Thee; for Thy goodness to us we laud Thee; for Thy goodness to us we extol Thee, O Aphrodite the Universal Cause…Thy goodness is the Source of all life. Thy goodness is the Core of all truth. Through Thy goodness alone the whole cosmos exists, O Aphrodite the Universal Cause.
Blessed Thou art, O Mother of the cosmos, and our gratitude to Thee is like the sky that has no bounds, like eternity that has no ending, like Thy Own beauty that no words could describe. For, we thank Thee with every atom of our souls and bodies. O Aphrodite, holiest, sweetest, loveliest, most blessed, most glorious, most loving Goddess of Love” (Botkin 1967).
Botkin shared with Philip Proctor his personal prayer to Aphrodite: “Let my mind be like a quiet pool which reflects Thy beauty, O Aphrodite. Let my heart be like a golden harp which vibrates, O Goddess, with Thy love”. Of course, Botkin added, “like every prayer, in order to be fully effective, it has to be not merely recited, but as much as possible, lived”, and though it is not easy, “the mere effort at becalming one’s mind and filling it with the image of the Goddess and searching in one’s heart for the tender yet powerful strings of Divine love, does help a great deal to perceive things in their right perspective”. The ultimate goal of praying was, according to Botkin, moral behavior (Proctor 4.06.1957).
John Nichols, who as an eighteen year-old youngster visited the Botkins in Charlottesville in late 1960s and claims to have made a typewritten copy of the volume of Botkin’s rituals for his church, recalled two liturgical refrains used by Botkin: “Like Psyche let us abandon our hearts” and “Blessed is Aphrodite”, sung thrice in the manner of Russian Orthodox “Gospodi Pomiluy” (Lord, have mercy).
ISSUES/CHALLENGES
From the letters to Proctor, we learn of an interesting episode, where Botkin’s Aphrodite religion, his anti-Communism and pacifism met the events of world politics in 1962 (namely, the Cuban Missile Crisis). Botkin was a keen observer of world politics and since at least 1944 has been waiting with fear for a Third World War. In November, 1962, after the main USSR-USA tension over missile carriers in Cuba started to fade, Botkin wrote to Proctor: “On Tuesday, October 23rd, I could all but see the Goddess and became completely convinced that She can prevent the war from exploding. On Wednesday mornings I usually celebrate the Liturgy.” Before the Liturgy on October 24, “I all but heard a voice telling me that the danger of war was over and that, therefore, I no longer had to pray for its prevention, but could make the service a wholly joyful one, thinking of nothing but Aphrodite, Her love for us and our love for Her; and a very joyful service it proved for me. Immediately after the service, I turned on the radio and the very first words I heard were those of the announcement of Russia’s complete surrender” (Proctor 8.11.1962).
Many ideas which Gleb Botkin put forth in his treatise “In Search of Reality” have independently played their crucial role in the American Neo-Pagan boom of the 1960-1970s. These include the Divine Feminine, the sacredness of sexuality, and the story of a clandestine religion that survived through ages of Christianity and worshipped a Goddess. It is hard to say, whether Botkin knew about Gerald Gardner and the emerging Wicca or whether he read books by Robert Graves. It is obvious, however, that the religion of Aphrodite had taken shape already in late 1920-early 1930s when Botkin wrote God Who Didn’t Laugh and The Immortal Woman. For later Neo-Pagans, Gleb Botkin has become a pioneer, being the first religious leader, who had openly proclaimed the existence of a spiritual movement with which they identify. However, Botkin’s monotheistic religion of Aphrodite and his hierarchical church differ drastically from most of contemporary Pagan religions.
REFERENCES
Botkin, Gleb. 1967. In Search of Reality. A Publication of the Church of Aphrodite, Charlottesville: Publication of the Church of Aphrodite.
Botkin, Gleb. 1933. The Immortal Woman. New York: The Macaulay Company.
Botkin, Gleb. 1930. “An American in the Making.” The North American Review 229:23-29.
Botkin, Gleb. 1929. The God Who Didn’t Laugh. New York: Payson & Clarke Ltd.
“Church of Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, Is Chartered in New York.” Life, December 4, p. 101,
Clifton, Сhas S. 2006. Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America. Lanham: AltaMira Press.
Moore O. 1965. “Founder Tells of Church.” Richmond Times-Dispatch, April, 12, p. 2.
Nichols, John. 2016. Correspondence with author.
Nichols, John. 2005. “Memoire about Gleb Botkin.” Accessed from: http://forum.alexanderpalace.org/index.php/topic,3126.0.html on 10 August 2024.
Proctor, Philip. Correspondence with Anna Anderson and Gleb Botkin. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University: Folders 3 (1944–1947); 4 (1948–1956); 5 (1957); 7 (1959–1960); 8 (1961); 9 (1962); 10 (1963).
Publication Date:
14 August 2024
