In the Polish town of Janow, during the 1930s, an occult commune was formed around Teofil Ociepka, an electrician at the local coal mine and a painter, who became a Master of Esoteric Science. Ociepka and his disciples, simple uneducated miners, searched for the Philosophers Stone and pursued spiritual perfection, which would permit them to penetrate the Principle and the Sense of the World and of God, to reach the mystery of Existence. Their activities combined elements of occultism, alchemy and theosophy with archaic and magical Silesian beliefs. During the bleak desert of the Stalinist era, the "Circle of Janow" marked a colorful metaphysical oasis, and its existence was consequently falsified by the authorities of the People's Republic of Poland.