How a Siberian Recluse Changed My Name and My Life
Some books inform us. Others quietly rearrange the furniture of the soul.
For me, that was the Ringing Cedars of Russia series by Vladimir Megre – and I'd like to share a little about why these books matter, who Anastasia actually is, and why I officially changed my name to Cedar.
A Book Born in the Moscow Metro
The first volume, simply titled Anastasia, was self-published by Megre in 1996. He had no publisher, no marketing budget, and no industry backing. He printed the first run on credit at Moscow Print Press Number 11 and sold the first copies himself, by hand, in the Moscow metro.
From that humble beginning, the series has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide and been translated into over twenty languages. Not bad for a book a Siberian entrepreneur wrote because a woman in the forest asked him to.
The English translation of Book 1 didn't arrive until 2005, which is part of why the series took so long to reach readers like me in the English-speaking world. The books have been out of print for a long time now, but you can access them from some libraries, and Jessica Schab reads them on YouTube.
Who is Anastasia?
According to Megre's account, Anastasia was born in 1969 in the Western Siberian taiga – the vast boreal forest stretching across northern Russia – not far from the city of Surgut on the river Ob.
She lost her parents as an infant and was raised by her grandfather and great-grandfather, with the animals of the forest watching over her. She still lives there today, in the same glade where her parents and ancestors once lived. In 2026, she would be about 57 years old.
Megre describes her: 'Even now, I only sometimes see Anastasia as someone close to me, as a loved one. More often, I see her as unattainable and mysterious, as someone who possesses an inexplicable strength of spirit that she can use to create the future.'
Unattainable and mysterious. A strength of spirit that can create the future.
That is the woman who has quietly rearranged the inner lives of millions of readers – and certainly mine.
Is She a Shaman?
People often ask me this, and I have come to believe the answer is no – not really, not in the proper sense of the word. A shaman, traditionally, moves between the human and spirit worlds within a specific tribal lineage, often through trance, drumming, or spirit journeys. That is not what Anastasia is.
The books place her within a lineage the movement calls Vedruss – an alleged pre-Christian Russian Vedic tradition – and present her less as a spirit-walker and more as someone who has simply never left the original human state. She embodies the natural qualities of humankind without technocratic influence.
Her role, as she describes it, is to help humanity remember a way of living that was always ours.
Scholars tend to classify the movement she has inspired as part of the Russian New Age, sometimes grouped under Rodnovery or Slavic Neopaganism. But labels feel inadequate when speaking of her. Hermit of the taiga is closer. Recluse. Seer. Wise woman of the forest. A being of inexplicable strength of spirit.
Where to Begin If You're New
If you feel drawn to all this but are unsure where to start, one of the clearest introductions I have found recently is a 20-minute overview of Book 1 on the INSPIRED YouTube channel, hosted by Jean Nolan. Jean and his wife Kristin founded INSPIRED in 2019, and their coverage of the series offers a gentle, grounded entry point.
As you watch, do pay attention to the artwork. The luminous images of Anastasia, the cedars, the glade, and the children are mostly the work of Kumar Alzhanov, widely regarded as the most prominent Ringing Cedars-inspired artist in the world. His paintings now grace the covers of the Russian editions of the books.
His art, for me, is the closest anyone has come to capturing the feeling of these books in a single still image.
Why I Became Cedar
I was two or three books in when I began to notice something was shifting. By the time I had finished most of the series, I could no longer wear my old name comfortably. It felt like a coat from a life I had already quietly left behind.
The cedars – the ringing cedars, those trees that accumulate cosmic energy for centuries and release it at precisely the right moment – had somehow become a personal symbol of what I wanted to be and how I wanted to live.
So I officially changed my name. Permanently. Cedar.
Some people change their name because they want to stand out. I changed mine because I finally felt I was becoming more of my true self. That is what these books did for me. That is what Anastasia – unattainable, mysterious, fiercely loving of the living world – has done for so many of us.
The cedar trees have waited a long time.
Cedar
https://www.clarityforlife.training/blog
Some books inform us. Others quietly rearrange the furniture of the soul.
For me, that was the Ringing Cedars of Russia series by Vladimir Megre – and I'd like to share a little about why these books matter, who Anastasia actually is, and why I officially changed my name to Cedar.
A Book Born in the Moscow Metro
The first volume, simply titled Anastasia, was self-published by Megre in 1996. He had no publisher, no marketing budget, and no industry backing. He printed the first run on credit at Moscow Print Press Number 11 and sold the first copies himself, by hand, in the Moscow metro.
From that humble beginning, the series has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide and been translated into over twenty languages. Not bad for a book a Siberian entrepreneur wrote because a woman in the forest asked him to.
The English translation of Book 1 didn't arrive until 2005, which is part of why the series took so long to reach readers like me in the English-speaking world. The books have been out of print for a long time now, but you can access them from some libraries, and Jessica Schab reads them on YouTube.
Who is Anastasia?
According to Megre's account, Anastasia was born in 1969 in the Western Siberian taiga – the vast boreal forest stretching across northern Russia – not far from the city of Surgut on the river Ob.
She lost her parents as an infant and was raised by her grandfather and great-grandfather, with the animals of the forest watching over her. She still lives there today, in the same glade where her parents and ancestors once lived. In 2026, she would be about 57 years old.
Megre describes her: 'Even now, I only sometimes see Anastasia as someone close to me, as a loved one. More often, I see her as unattainable and mysterious, as someone who possesses an inexplicable strength of spirit that she can use to create the future.'
Unattainable and mysterious. A strength of spirit that can create the future.
That is the woman who has quietly rearranged the inner lives of millions of readers – and certainly mine.
Is She a Shaman?
People often ask me this, and I have come to believe the answer is no – not really, not in the proper sense of the word. A shaman, traditionally, moves between the human and spirit worlds within a specific tribal lineage, often through trance, drumming, or spirit journeys. That is not what Anastasia is.
The books place her within a lineage the movement calls Vedruss – an alleged pre-Christian Russian Vedic tradition – and present her less as a spirit-walker and more as someone who has simply never left the original human state. She embodies the natural qualities of humankind without technocratic influence.
Her role, as she describes it, is to help humanity remember a way of living that was always ours.
Scholars tend to classify the movement she has inspired as part of the Russian New Age, sometimes grouped under Rodnovery or Slavic Neopaganism. But labels feel inadequate when speaking of her. Hermit of the taiga is closer. Recluse. Seer. Wise woman of the forest. A being of inexplicable strength of spirit.
Where to Begin If You're New
If you feel drawn to all this but are unsure where to start, one of the clearest introductions I have found recently is a 20-minute overview of Book 1 on the INSPIRED YouTube channel, hosted by Jean Nolan. Jean and his wife Kristin founded INSPIRED in 2019, and their coverage of the series offers a gentle, grounded entry point.
As you watch, do pay attention to the artwork. The luminous images of Anastasia, the cedars, the glade, and the children are mostly the work of Kumar Alzhanov, widely regarded as the most prominent Ringing Cedars-inspired artist in the world. His paintings now grace the covers of the Russian editions of the books.
His art, for me, is the closest anyone has come to capturing the feeling of these books in a single still image.
Why I Became Cedar
I was two or three books in when I began to notice something was shifting. By the time I had finished most of the series, I could no longer wear my old name comfortably. It felt like a coat from a life I had already quietly left behind.
The cedars – the ringing cedars, those trees that accumulate cosmic energy for centuries and release it at precisely the right moment – had somehow become a personal symbol of what I wanted to be and how I wanted to live.
So I officially changed my name. Permanently. Cedar.
Some people change their name because they want to stand out. I changed mine because I finally felt I was becoming more of my true self. That is what these books did for me. That is what Anastasia – unattainable, mysterious, fiercely loving of the living world – has done for so many of us.
The cedar trees have waited a long time.
Cedar
https://www.clarityforlife.training/blog
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