Member-only story
Rasputin: Sex, Superstition, Hypnosis and Religion
The mad monk who kept Czar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra under his spell
Rasputin’s Beginning
Today, we know him as one of the most bizarre characters of the last century. He was a wild-eyed, modern-day Dionysus who seduced women through his religious concept of attaining closeness to God through debauchery. His lack of personal hygiene and disheveled attire did not prevent him from bedding women from all levels of society.
Those who knew him claimed he possessed mysterious powers of hypnosis. His fondness for consuming bottles of wine daily did not restrain his ability to rise to the highest level within the monarchy. He was known as Rasputin, a self-appointed monk who went from horse thief to royal adviser and some blamed for the downfall of Russia’s last czar, Nicholas II. His gruesome demise adds to his mysterious life.
He was born Grigori Yefimovich Novykh to a peasant family on January 22, 1869, near Tyumen, Siberia. As a teenager, Grigori became a self-proclaimed mystic and began calling himself Rasputin, a name which loosely translates in Russian to “where two rivers meet.” Some stories suggest he demonstrated psychic or telepathic abilities as a child, although these tales are apocryphal. Documented…
