Glossary - exWitch Australia (formerly 'Born Again Pagan')

RASPUTIN, Grigory Yefimovich (1865?-1916)

A Russian mystic and prophet whose malign influence over the Russian imperial family contributed directly to the collapse of the Romanov dynasty shortly after his own death. Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin, originally surnamed Novykh, was born into a peasant family in Siberia and spent much of his youth in debauchery, receiving the name Rasputin ('debaucher').

After entering the church, however, he experienced a vision of the Virgin Mary and afterwards gained fame locally as a faith healer. Appearing at the imperial court, in the Russian capital of St Petersburg about 1907, Rasputin soon acquired a reputation as a mystic and healer and became a favourite of Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna and through her influenced Tsar Nicholas II.

Rasputin's hold over Alexandra stemmed from his hypnotic power to alleviate the suffering of the haemophiliac crown prince, Aleksei, and from her belief that this scruffy self-styled priest was a genuine representative of the Russian people. When Nicholas took personal command of Russian troops in 1915, Alexandra and Rasputin were virtually in charge of the government.

Rasputin's licentious personal behaviour increasingly scandalised the Russian public. In 1916 a group of conservative nobles, concerned over Rasputin's pernicious political influence, plotted to assasinate him. Rasputin predicted his own death in a letter, stating that he would not live beyond 1 January 1917. He also predicted the downfall of the royal family within two years and the destruction of the aristocracy within a generation.

At the end of December 1916, Rasputin was invited to tea at the house of one of the noble conspirators and was fed cake and wine laced with cyanide. Unaffected by the poison, he was then shot several times and beaten with an iron bar. Still alive, he was dragged to the frozen River Neva, tied-up, and thrown through a hole in the ice. Within two years Tsar Nicholas and his family were dead, executed by the Bolsheviks, and within a generation, Stalinist policies had eliminated the old Russian aristocracy.

PLEASE NOTE:
One of the major problems with 'defining' Paganism and/or its beliefs and practices is that it is an 'organic' movement, in that it is undergoing constant change and re-evaluation from within, and as such any 'one-size-fits-all' approach to understanding Paganism will be found wanting.

Due to the very 'organic' nature of Paganism, and the many differing Paths and Traditions within it, in many cases no one definition may be universally accepted by all Pagans. Therefore, where such cases of possible conflicting and/or contradictory meanings of certain terms occur I have endevoured to give not only the generally accepted meaning, but also any major 'variations' in belief and/or practice.

Christians who believe this difference in meaning of certain key terms, beliefs and practices to be unique to Paganism need to remember that such conflicts also arise within the Body of Christ - the Church. Take for instance the differing practices amongst Christians concerning Baptism and the different attitudes towards women in the clergy.

- Jean-Luc