Shambhala: In Search of the New Era

Rating:
Summary: The politics/mysticism of aesthetics.
Review: Roerich, Nicolas. Shambhala. This is a collection of dispatches during travels in Tibet and the borderlands of the eastern Russian frontier by the Russo-American painter, poet and mystic which date from the late 20's and early 1930's. If you like Gurdjieff, Roerich will interest you. He believed that Beauty was a divine principle that could be used to transform the world.

Though the central section did not hold my attention, the first chapters about a Tibet long gone were fascinating. This was partly due to Roerich's idiosyncratic spelling which cast a new light on the meaning of certain Sanskrit words.