This piece is the third in a three-part series on the esoteric sources of Zviad Gamsakhurdia’s worldview. The first piece introduces the series and provides theoretical and historical context for its material and claims. The second piece focuses on anthroposophy. This piece focuses on Georgian Christian mysticism.
Georgian Christian Mysticism
To make sense of how Gamsakhurdia engaged with Georgian Christian mysticism, I organize his sources into two analytical categories—what I term the “Gelati current” and the “prophetic current.” These are, crucially, not divisions that Gamsakhurdia himself articulated, but rather, groupings that help illuminate the different functions these sources served in his thinking.
The Gelati Current
The first current, the “Gelati current,” was centered on Georgia’s medieval Golden Age under King David the Builder, and the thinkers at the Gelati Academy, which he had founded—like the philosopher Ioane Petritsi (11th–12th c.) and the epic poet Shota Rustaveli (1160–after 1220). Such thinkers, Gamsakhurdia claimed, sought to “revive” the wisdom of the ancient world—from Chaldea, Egypt, and Greece—and “integrate” it “organically” into Christianity (Gamsakhurdia 1990a). This meant treating pre-Christian sources not as pagan errors to be corrected, but as legitimate expressions of divine truths that could enrich Christian understanding. The focus was ultimately on centering human spiritual development in theological-philosophical inquiry. This approach was what Gamsakhurdia, following the Russian philosopher Aleksei Losev, characterized as “anthropocentric Neoplatonism” (Gamsakhurdia 1990a). This, in Gamsakhurdia’s view, made Gelati a second “Athens,” “Jerusalem,” and “Athos” all in one—proof that Georgia had served as a preserver and synthesizer of sacred knowledge from East and West (Gamsakhurdia 1990a).
Gamsakhurdia’s claims for this synthesizing role extended beyond the academy itself. Drawing on Steiner’s account—that the Knights Templar had traveled to the Orient during the Crusades to acquire mystery wisdom and bring it back West—Gamsakhurdia turned to medieval sources to identify where that wisdom had resided. Perhaps unsurprisingly, according to his reading of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival and medieval Crusader chronicles, Georgia was that Oriental source—the repository of the mystery-wisdom the Grail represented (Gamsakhurdia 1990a, 1990b). Eschenbach’s poem describes how the Grail resides in the realm of King-Priest John, located in “Tauronit” or “Tabronit,” which Gamsakhurdia identified as the Caucasian highlands (Gamsakhurdia 1990b). The Chronicles of the Crusades, Gamsakhurdia argued, supported this reading, identifying King-Priest John with David the Builder (Gamsakhurdia 1990b).
The Templar movement itself, Gamsakhurdia emphasized, also represented a fusion of Western Christian and Eastern mystery-wisdom—something he claimed that Eschenbach symbolized through the “black-and-white” Feirefiz, Parzival’s half-brother, who embodied the synthesis of Western and Oriental initiatory paths (Gamsakhurdia 1990b). Georgian chivalry under David the Builder and Queen Tamar was, in turn, connected to this Templar synthesis, but not as recipients of Western instruction. Rather, Georgian knights participated as fellow initiates in a movement that had discovered in Georgia the very source of the mystery-wisdom it had originally sought out (Gamsakhurdia 1990b). Indeed, in Gamsakhurdia’s framework, Georgia had already accomplished the synthesis the Templars sought (Gamsakhurdia 1990a). While Western Christianity separated esoteric and exoteric Christianity—with the Catholic Church persecuting movements like the Cathars and Templars—Georgian Orthodoxy, he claimed, had maintained their unity from its origins (Gamsakhurdia 1990a, 1990b). At Gelati, mystical theology coexisted with orthodox doctrine; contemplative practice with intellectual inquiry; ancient wisdom with Christian revelation. This is why, Gamsakhurdia concluded, Eschenbach pointed to the Caucasian mountains—to Tauronit, Georgia’s apparent allegorical name in the poem—as the seat of spiritual wisdom from which King-Priest John ruled (Gamsakhurdia 1990b).
The Prophetic Current
The second current, the “prophetic current,” was anchored in Ioane-Zosime’s tenth-century hymn “Praise and Exaltation of the Georgian Language.” This text fleshed out the eschatological dimension of Gamsakhurdia’s worldview—articulating a vision of Georgia’s role to play at the end of time.
Gamsakhurdia’s essay on this hymn (typically referred to in Georgian scholarship simply as “the Kebai,” the Georgian word for praise) began with a philological argument that transformed its meaning entirely. The word “ena” used in the Kebai, he argued through extensive biblical[1] and historical[2] examples, meant not just language, but “people,” “nation,” or “ethnos”—just as the Greek word “glossa” in the Book of Revelation refers to peoples and nations (Gamsakhurdia 1987). This change in definitions provided the foundation upon which Gamsakhurdia justified reading the hymn’s opening declaration—“buried is the language of [Georgia], to be tortured until the Second Coming of the Lord, as God opens all tongues through this language”—as prophecy about the Georgian people (Gamsakhurdia 1987). This understanding, he contended, was essential because otherwise, the text’s assertion that the Georgian language will “believe” or “bear witness” for Christ would become “incoherent” (Gamsakhurdia 1987). Indeed, as Gamsakhurdia wrote, “the tongue by itself cannot believe for anyone, since it is not a living being, a person” (Gamsakhurdia 1987). Conversely, he asked, “how can [a] language […] act in such a way that it sins or does not sin” (Gamsakhurdia 1987). The notion became coherent, he concluded, only when understood as referring to peoples, where “one nation may be more sinful, another less so, one nation may be closer to God, another less so” (Gamsakhurdia 1987).
Gamsakhurdia then examined the Kebai’s central identificatory claim: “And this tongue is asleep until this day, and in the Gospel this tongue is called Lazarus” (Gamsakhurdia 1987). Gamsakhurdia claimed that, with this, Ioane-Zosime established a mystical connection between the Georgian people and Lazarus. And, like Steiner, Gamsakhurdia identified Lazarus with John the Evangelist—making Georgia, by extension, connected to the beloved disciple who revealed Christ’s deepest mysteries in his Gospel and Apocalypse (Gamsakhurdia 1987).
This identification illuminated the hymn’s subsequent assertion that the Georgian language was “buried with him (Christ) in his baptism of death” (Gamsakhurdia 1987). Gamsakhurdia interpreted this through Paul’s description of Christian baptism: “Or do you not know that we have been baptized in Christ Jesus, that we were baptized into his death? We were buried with him in his death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”[3] Just as Lazarus had literally died and been raised by Christ—experiencing death and resurrection as an initiatory transformation—so too would the Georgian nation (Gamsakhurdia 1987). The Georgian nation, by receiving this “Christ-like baptism,” was thus designated “to fulfill the mission of Christ in the future” (Gamsakhurdia 1987).
This coming mission, according to Gamsakhurdia’s reading, would be both revelatory and juridical. First, he connected Christ’s declaration before Pilate—“for this I was born, and for this I came into the world, that I might bear witness to the truth”[4]—with the Kebai’s assertion that “the Georgian language is buried until the day of his Second Coming, to be a martyr” (Gamsakhurdia 1987). In Christian tradition, a martyr is literally a “witness”—one who testifies to truth through suffering and steadfastness. The Georgian people, Gamsakhurdia concluded, were therefore designated to “bear witness” by “believing in the truth, just like Jesus Christ. They must glorify Christ, just like John-Lazarus” (Gamsakhurdia 1987). Georgia would also be tasked with exposing and judging “sinful humanity” (Gamsakhurdia 1987). Indeed, Gamsakhurdia argued that Ioane-Zosime “[saw] the face of Georgia in the heavenly rider” described in Revelation 19:11-15, who comes to “judge and make war” and to “strike down the nations” and “rule them with a rod of iron” (Gamsakhurdia 1987). This heavenly warrior, Gamsakhurdia argued, represented the Archangel Michael—the divine judge and dragon-slayer—who found earthly manifestation in Saint George, Georgia’s patron saint (Gamsakhurdia 1987).
Gamsakhurdia reinforced this eschatological vision by highlighting Georgia’s unique status as the “inheritance [sometimes rendered ‘lot’] of the Mother of God” (Gamsakhurdia 1987; 1990b). According to Orthodox tradition, when the Apostles cast lots to determine which lands each would evangelize, Georgia fell to Mary, the Mother of God. In Gamsakhurdia’s reading, this was no coincidence. Drawing on the writings of Gregory of Nyssa, Gamsakhurdia argued that the Mother of God was the earthly manifestation of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit was revealed through Sophia—divine wisdom in her feminine aspect (Gamsakhurdia 1987). As the Mother of God’s inheritance, Georgia was uniquely connected to the Holy Spirit, to Sophia, and thus to the feminine divine principle. And, according to both Ioane-Zosime and the Gospel of John, the Holy Spirit’s mission was to “reveal all mysteries” to humanity and to “convict the world of sin”—precisely the revelatory and juridical function Georgia would perform at the eschaton (Gamsakhurdia 1987).
Synthesis
Ultimately, these two currents—Gelati and prophetic—performed different but complementary primary functions within Gamsakhurdia’s worldview. The Gelati current established Georgia’s historical credentials as a synthesizer of wisdom, while the prophetic current articulated its eschatological mandate.
Of course, to identify primary functions is not to deny secondary ones. Indeed, the currents interpenetrated, their sources often serving both ends at once. In the Kebai, for example, Ioane-Zosime compared Mary and Martha (sisters of Lazarus[5] who responded differently to Christ’s teaching) to Saint Nino and Queen Helen—Nino symbolizing Georgian Christianity and Helen symbolizing Greek Christianity (Gamsakhurdia 1990b). Mary, sitting at Christ’s feet in contemplation, represented the receptive, mystical path—focused on inner spiritual experience, intuitive wisdom, and direct revelation (Gamsakhurdia 1990b). Martha, occupied with practical service, represented the intellectual, dogmatic path—concerned with correct doctrine, rational theology, and external organization. Georgian Christianity, in this typology, followed Mary; Greek Christianity followed Martha. Georgia was thus not only connected to Lazarus—the one raised from the dead, the revealer of mysteries—but to the contemplative sister who, in Christ’s words, “chose the better part” (Gamsakhurdia 1990b).[6]
Stepping back, a clear picture emerges. The characteristics that both of these currents emphasized—prophetic consciousness, the Lazarus-John identification, the synthesis of Eastern and Western wisdom, the unity of esoteric and exoteric Christianity—matched Steiner’s description of the sixth cultural epoch and the people destined to lead it, suggesting that anthroposophy and Georgian tradition pointed to the same conclusion (even if Steiner himself never explicitly stated as such).
Conclusion
Through anthroposophy and Georgian Christian mysticism, Gamsakhurdia constructed a worldview in which Georgia was not just a small nation on the post-Soviet periphery, but a people chosen to lead humanity’s next spiritual awakening. Steiner provided the cosmic framework—the epochs, the coming transformation, the characteristics required of those who would inaugurate it—while Georgian tradition supplied the evidence that Georgia fit the description. The Gelati current demonstrated that Georgia had long been the seat of synthesized wisdom; the prophetic current revealed that this role was ordained from the beginning and would culminate at the end of time. That Steiner himself never named Georgia was, for Gamsakhurdia, beside the point: the convergence of symbols—Lazarus-John, the Grail, the unity of esoteric and exoteric Christianity, the synthesis of East and West—spoke for itself. What emerged was a vision of national identity inseparable from spiritual destiny, and of political independence as a step toward cosmic fulfillment—a vision that would shape how Gamsakhurdia understood himself, his people, and indeed, the task before him as he assumed the presidency in 1991.
ENDNOTES
[1] He specifically notes Rev. 7:9, “I looked, and behold, a great multitude, which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the Lamb,” and Rev 14:7, “And the angel had the gospel to preach to them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, tribe, and tongue.” He later goes on to cite Gen. 10:31; 3,4-7, 5:19, and 29-31.
[2] From Gamsakhurdia: “We find a similar use of ‘language’ in the ‘Life of Kartli.’ ‘Scythians, Khazars, Abas, Arabs, Medes, Elamites and Mesopotamians and all languages and relatives’ (K.C.T. II, 1959, p. 562). In the dictionary compiled for this tribe by S. Kaukhchishvili, there are also two definitions of ‘language.’ 1) language – (‘language’) ‘language cannot move me.’ 2) language – (tribe, relative) – ‘all languages and relatives.’ ‘Every language has made you worship God alone,’ etc.”
[3] Rom. 6:3-5.
[4] John 18:37.
[5] At least, commonly interpreted as such.
[6] Luke 10:38.
REFERENCES
Gamsakhurdia, Zviad. “Gelatis ak’ademiis sulieri idealebi” [The Spiritual Ideals of the Gelati Academy]. Lecture delivered at the L. Meskhishvili Drama Theater in Kutaisi, May 20, 1990.
Gamsakhurdia, Zviad. “K’ebai da didebai k’art’ulisa enisai” [Praise and Exaltation of the Georgian Language]. Ts’isk’ari [The Dawn], no. 3 (1987).
Gamsakhurdia, Zviad. “Sakartvelos sulieri missia” [The Spiritual Mission of Georgia]. Lecture delivered at the Idriart Festival, Tbilisi Philharmonic House, May 2, 1990.
Ioane-Zosime. “K’ebai da didebai k’art’ulisa enisai” [Praise and Exaltation of the Georgian Language]. 10th century.
Author
Alexander John Paul Lutz is (as of early 2026) a Max Kampelman Policy Fellow at the U.S. Helsinki Commission, a Junior Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council (working mostly within the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute), and the Caucasus Editor at Lossi 36. His research explores religion and spirituality as spaces for the creation, legitimization, and contestation of visions of belonging, meaning, and purpose in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
