G. O. Mebes

Mёbes graduated in 1891 from the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of Saint Petersburg University and from 1904 to 1917 he taught physics, mathematics and French at the Czarskoye Selo Real school and the Nicolaevsky Gymnasium, at the women's school of the Ministry of Public Education and in the Page Corps and the Nicolaevsky Cadet Corps.

From 1911 to 1912 Mёbes was writing under the pen name GOM, was giving lectures in Petersburg entitled A Concise Encyclopedia of Occultism, which was following the theories of Papus.

After the Bolshevik coup in late 1917, when the new Soviet regime began persecuting religion and spiritualism, the School continued operating clandestinely.

In the middle of 1928 the Leningradskaya Pravda and the Krasnaya Zvezda newspapers reported that "an investigation int the Great Lodge Astraea, led by the 70-year old Black Occultist Mebes, was opened by KGB agents.".

Years later, in Brazil, Sreznewska-Zelenzeff met Nadia, widow of Gabriel Iellatchitch, another disciple and friend of Mёbes, and they began living together.

Nadia's brother, Alexandre Nikitin-Nevelskoy, another follower of Mёbes's School who had a profound knowledge of esotericism, subsequently moved from Chile to live with them.

Some copies of the Encyclopedia reached Brazil and were read by Marta Pécher,[7] who was impressed by the book and attempted to contact former disciples of Mёbes.

She translated the book into Portuguese and published it under the title Os arcanos Maiores do Tarô (The Major Arcana of Tarot), edited by Editora Pensamento.