Cultism Page 1
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Cults prey on the very attributes that make us human: our desire to belong, to find a deeper meaning in life, to live everyday with divine purpose. Their existence creates a sense that any one of us, at any time, could step off the cliff’s edge and fall into that daunting abyss of manipulation and unhinged dedication to a misplaced cause.
Montell, Amanda. Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism (p. 4). Harper Wave. Kindle Edition.
Introduction
It started with a prayer. Tasha Samar was thirteen years old the first time she heard the bewitching buzz of their voices. It was their turban-to-toe white ensembles and meditation malas that first caught her eye, but it was how they spoke that beckoned her through the front door. She heard them through the open window of a Kundalini yoga studio in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “The prayers were so strange, all in another language,” Tasha, now twenty-nine, tells me over macadamia milk lattes at an outdoor café in West Hollywood. We’re less than a few miles away from the epicenter of the sinister life she led until only three years ago. Judging by her crisp cream button-down and satiny blowout, you’d never guess she could once tie a turban as naturally as any other young woman in this courtyard could toss her hair into a topknot. “Yeah, I could still do it now, if I had to,” Tasha assures me, her meticulous acrylics clack-clack-clacking on her porcelain mug. Tasha, a first-generation Russian American Jew who experienced an agonizing lack of belonging her entire childhood, was struck by this yoga group’s sense of closeness, so she peeked her head into the lobby and asked the receptionist who they were. “The front-desk girl started telling me the basics; the phrase ‘the science of the mind’ was used a lot,” Tasha reflects. “I didn’t know what it meant, I just remember thinking, ‘Wow, I really want to try that.’” Tasha found out when the next yoga class would be, and her parents let her attend. You didn’t need to be a permanent member of the group to take a class—the only requirement was an “open heart.”
Borden, Jane Cults Like Us: Why Doomsday Thinking Drives America . Atria/One Signal Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Introduction
Once upon a time, there was a man hell-bent on ending the world. He had specific instructions from God outlining the steps to take. He came to America to do it. His name was Christopher Columbus. By now, most know Columbus wasn’t who history books said he was. Americans willing to pay attention have discovered Columbus wasn’t all that motivated by adventure and progress, after all. Mostly, he wanted gold—and spices, mastic, anything to enrich his and Spain’s coffers. The search consumed him. As it turns out, though, Columbus wasn’t even who we rethought he was. It was natural to assume he sought wealth out of basic avarice. But no. In truth, he needed all that gold because it’s expensive to bring back Jesus. Columbus even had an itemized, second coming to-do list. First, expel all Muslims from the Holy Land. That’s a big war—how would it be funded? Next, ensure the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem, an expensive architectural undertaking. Plus, convert everyone on earth to Christianity and rediscover the Garden of Eden, both of which would require multiple expeditions across the seas. The list had been worked out by this guy Joachim de Fiore, a twelfth-century Italian abbot who interpreted the New Testament book of Revelation—that freaky, ultraviolent hallucination that prophesies the end of the world—to determine that certain boxes needed to be checked before Jesus would return. His work influenced the Franciscan order, which in turn influenced Columbus.
Cutler, Max Cults: Inside the World's Most Notorious Groups and Understanding the People Who Joined Them . Gallery Books. Kindle Edition.
Introduction
Everyone wants to believe in something or someone: a higher ideal, a god on Earth, a voice from heaven, an intelligence beyond our own. When this appetite for belief combines with the need to belong, great things can happen: nations are born, temples and cathedrals rise, astronauts land on the moon. The need to belong is a powerful instinct. It’s part of our DNA as social creatures who depend on each other to survive, and the organizing principle that keeps religion and politics going. Belief and belonging can be intoxicating when acting in unison, along with the feelings they inspire when amplified by community. But what about those rare moments when the dark side of human nature takes hold? At Parcast, our focus from inception has been on the small subset of these close societies of dedicated believers known as cults and the frighteningly charismatic figures who lead them. We released our first Cults podcast in September 2017, and from that premiere episode—which debuted at number one on Apple’s podcast charts—and every week since, we’ve been surprised by the intense response to these histories, with more than 55 million downloads over the past four years, with no sign of letting up. That outpouring of interest has kept us searching in the annals of extreme beliefs for the cults that will satisfy this fascination, week after week. It’s not unusual, at the conclusion of one report, to think that we’ve finally discovered the worst that cults can offer, only to be rocked to our core by something far worse.