The book by the historian of religion Boris Falikov is devoted to such a little-studied topic as the influence of the occult and Eastern religions (primarily Hinduism and Buddhism) on the art of the 20th century. Her heroes include famous gurus and occultists—Helena Blavatsky and Rudolf Steiner, Peter Ouspensky and George Gurdjieff, Aleister Crowley, and those who brought Zen Buddhism and Hinduism into Western culture. And also writers and artists, directors and musicians - Kazimir Malevich and Wassily Kandinsky, Tristan Tzara and Andre Breton, Peter Brook and Jerome David Salinger... Many surprises await readers as they read. Who, for example, could have imagined that Kandinsky traveled through the astral worlds, and the opera of the futurists Matyushin, Kruchenykh and Malevich “Victory over the Sun” was conceived as an event designed to magically bring the future closer?