What are your opinions on the Ringing Cedars book series?
Q: Can you give your opinions on the Ringing Cedars book series?
A: Sure! For those who might not know, the Anastasia Ringing Cedars books comprise a series written by Vladimir Megre. In the books, Megre details how he meets a young, hot Siberian woman named Anastasia who has a lot of magical abilities and, in general, encourages people to build homesteads to create an earthly utopia.
I won’t lie to you; I did like some elements of the books at first. Thinking about the planet more, building deep relationships with animal wildlife, and creating sacred spaces for families sounds great right? It is, but the problem is that the Anastasia books deliver the message through extremely misogynistic and sexist lenses, just as a start. For example, Anastasia is only 19 years old when Vladimir (many years her senior) becomes romantically and sexually involved with her. That’s inexcusable and predatory. Her prefrontal cortex wasn’t even fully formed at that age, and Vladimir, WHO HAD A WIFE, left said wife for a young, vulnerable Siberian woman he just met. (Our brains develop all throughout our 20s and throughout our lives in general, but 19 is very young in terms of brain maturity.) Anastasia herself is very sexist and arrogant, calling women “fornicators” when they have sex for pleasure, and yet she sleeps with Vladimir two seconds after meeting him? Other than the fact that she’s clearly a bit delusional and vulnerable, it doesn’t make sense. Sex in the books has to be “purposeful” to be valid, yet fails to address the sexual violence perpetrated against the FMC, which did not have the initial intention of baby-making.
In one of the books, Vladimir bites Anastasia hard enough to hurt her, regularly describes how he gets frustrated with her, and straight out SAs her in different ways throughout the series. It is scary that Anastasia thought someone like that would be a good choice as a father and partner in life. A lot of impressionable new-age readers consumed that and internalized violence as a form of evolved love… It was really, really bad.
Another story shares how a girl “keeps house” while the man she desires lives his life on his own terms. When he returns to her many years later, he still finds her keeping house and waiting for him to come back. Somehow, this is romanticized as THE IDEAL for women and men. If men aren’t ready to settle down, women are supposed to “tempt” them with their homemaking skills and stick around waiting for them? I know these books were written in the 90s but come on… Anastasia also explains how a young girl who has her sights set on an older boy she wants changes herself and basically out-competes the other girls their age to get his attention (ew). She trains hard and takes a couple of years to get into really good physical shape and becomes “pretty” for this guy, who then, of course, gives her what she wants later- even though he didn’t give her the time of day before. (Her new skill set includes animal charming for some reason. She charms a stallion and acts like it gives her some sort of virtue.) This is framed as the romance that surpasses all romances. Other problems include rhetoric that demonizes an interest in food, body-shaming, and women going the distance for men who do nothing in return to truly earn their affections.
The gardening and homesteading portions of the books had some good little nuggets in them, but we can find most of the information in other books that aren’t advocating for a loss of women’s agency and a swift return to outdated gender roles. A popular spiritual channel was once recommending these books as “the way humans need to live” on planet earth to achieve utopia. I also had people around me telling me they were an environmentalist’s dream (not really). I skimmed one of the books and saw the gardening stuff and put it on a Tumblr list of books I would recommend to others. I even reblogged a lot of the fanart for the Ringing Cedars series, which is beautiful, and does not at all indicate how problematic the books are. Then, later, I actually READ the books, and was like, “Oh my god, what did I do.” So, I went back and reblogged the original Tumblr post recanting the recommendation. Not everyone who engaged with my original post saw the reblog though, and I have no doubt that I recommended a terrible book series to others that they then consumed thinking it was good. For this reason, I will never ever ever recommend a book again that I haven’t read in its entirety. I am really disappointed with myself for doing that, but you live and learn, and I will do better.
Moving on… There is a ton of pseudoscience in the books, some of which is kind of fluffy, but some of it is harmful. Anastasia’s “cosmic ray” energy was an interesting concept. To me, it just sounded like focusing on someone’s energy and sending them love or support, but Anastasia knowingly continues a relationship with a man whose ex-wife is hurting and having issues, and then she sends her “cosmic ray” of love to the woman to help her feel better? I know Anastasia was very young and we all do stupid things when we’re young before our brains are developed, but she should have encouraged Vladimir to resolve his issues with his wife before starting a new relationship. She was self-righteous enough to put women down when she didn’t feel they were living the way she thought they should, but failed to act with basic moral integrity herself. Still, I do place most of the responsibility onto Vladimir Megre since the matter centered around his wife and the fact that he was middle-aged when he met Anastasia. I don’t feel that either one of them treated his wife respectfully, but that’s just me.
Environmentalism is cool and all, but I was stunned by the idea that Anastasia believes that nature is here to serve humankind? Like what? That doesn’t sound at all like solid ecological knowledge. It’s very Copernican in that the books center humans as the most important beings in all the universe… Even going so far as to cite stories of e.t. species that Anastasia supposedly has her eye on and somewhat condemn them for not “feeling” as much as we do. (Seems mean, but okay.) Humans are a part of nature, but nature does not exist to “serve” us. It gives a book of Genesis/ neo-fundamentalist vibe, and it immediately gave me the ick.
I am extracting random things I remember from the books, and I have no desire to ever re-read them again. There are so many other works that can scratch the gentle parenting/gardening/environmentalism itch without degrading women for the choices they make or normalizing abusive relationships. I am not entirely surprised that Megre felt so comfortable describing the terrible things he did to Anastasia, because he exhibits a high degree of narcissistic traits, and does not have strong self-evaluation tools in place.
I had a similar experience with the Harry Potter books, which I read in my early 20s with my godson. All was well and then suddenly, the author was basically advocating for sl*very when Hermione formed SPEW for the house elves and everyone acted like she just didn’t know how the world should work. I dropped that series like a hot potato and picked up something else. Just because something is popular does not mean it is a good thing to read, and sadly, that was the case with the Ringing Cedars series.
The real rub is that I wanted to love these books, and in very small ways, I did, but they ultimately didn't pass the “Women are actual people who should not be preyed upon and who are not less spiritual because they have sex with people they like," vibe check. I was used to combing through misogynistic spiritual books looking for the archetypal knowledge or kernels of truth at the time that I read these, but this series really took things to another level. In terms of being better to the earth? Yeah, sure, we can take some notes. But set your clocks back 200 years before you read this because women are apparently living incorrectly and not waiting on men enough. If you have good discernment, you can check these out and try to glean some knowledge from the "good parts", but don't recommend them to anyone vulnerable or impressionable in your life. I would say that this is a solid step in the direction of the alt-right neo-fundamentalist pipeline we are seeing in spirituality.
Even if we read this as pure fantasy, it is incredibly focused on toxic masculinity ideals that we should have left behind a long time ago. (And seriously, some of the stuff in here is so far-fetched… There is no way Megre is being truthful about all his supposed experiences.) Anastasia is very one-dimensional, and her claims are just flat-out ridiculous sometimes. These books do not represent how we create utopia on earth, and I promise, there are much better books on spiritual community and homestead creation than what you will find here. The series should not be formally recommended to anyone, let alone spiritual seekers who want the best for all genders. We deserve better.