Cults/New Religious Movements

I'm interested in this as well. For me I'm more interested in the psych behind it, the various indoctrination steps, and what makes people follow them so blindly. I made a dumb post once about, with the internet, how people could get sucked in, because it didn't make any sense to me. And lo and behold I learned about the troon/sjw cult (or group with cult-like tendencies if you want to be technical about it) as well as a cult in Ohio that came out because of a boy whose mother wanted to put a cage-like thing on his junk and he asked r/legaladvice about it.

My favorites are of course the beloved Xenu, Family International because in their advertising for "Flirty Fishing" they had a mermaid (which I found hilarious once I got over being an idiot and getting angry), and destructive/doomsday cults in particular.
 
I always thought it was interesting that cult leaders are almost exclusively male and their most ardent followers (and the most likely to end up with Stockholm Syndrome) are almost exclusively female. That's some weird, preternatural, evolutionary biology happening there.

There are female cult leaders (not supporters, leaders) who fly under the radar due to the fact a lot of them aren't driven towards sex nor do they use it as a control point. They usually do "can't date outside the circle" and stop there. For most people, this is a red flag, but it's hardly ever worded like that straightforwardly. It's usually more like "Wouldn't it make sense or be good if your loved one was a part of this?" or "They're not going to understand or will turn against you, so you need to work on them and show them how nice it can be." The women tend to be much more coaxing about this than male cult leaders, essentially guilt tripping followers into evangelizing their families.

They tend to focus on controlling resources as well as entire families as a unit instead of busting them up (not always, but often). Not even joking: they generally manifest more under MLMs, and you will find that a number of "by women, for women" MLMs have a note about God or at least something metaphysical in their manifesto. It seems to be full circle: either female cult leaders will start out as a religion with a side of business, or a business with a touch of religion as the glue.

Sex abuse is much more common from male leaders (basically, leader wanting to fuck you should be seen as an honor); restricting food seems to be the thing with females (there are some notorious diet/weight-loss cults). Violence and murder are universal for both genders. Not that you won't hear about male leaders restricting food, but the women tend to execute it down to a system. I could ramble on and on.

The food thing is pretty big because many religions have fasting and dietary restrictions as a major point. Cults drive it right off a cliff. Combine that with a culture based around weight-loss vanity and you'll see some interesting, disturbing things occur.

In case you can't tell, this is a fascinating topic for me.
 
@Discobiscuits I think that your analysis of food in relation to female cult leaders is spot on. There was a lady on Dr Phil earlier this month (May 22, for anyone wanting to watch it) hawking out "Jilly Juice" which is salt filled cabbage water she said could regenerate limbs.

I'd forgotten all about this lady! We have a thread on her here. I'm disturbed that she's gotten this prominent. Cabbage juice diet and cleanses aren't new, but look where you get when you mix it up with some charisma, spirituality, and them vs. us mentality. :(
 
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@Discobiscuits I think that your analysis of food in relation to female cult leaders is spot on. There was a lady on Dr Phil earlier this month (May 22, for anyone wanting to watch it) hawking out "Jilly Juice" which is salt filled cabbage water she said could regenerate limbs.
I was going to mention Jillian Epperly. She even has a thread here. The whole "Feed a shit ton of salt to your kids because shitting out your brain stem is a GOOD thing " schitk is hilarious. Being able to "cure" the gay and Transgenderism is another wild thing about her.
 
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I've been researching a group in Britain (though they are aggressively expanding in America) called the New Kadampa Tradition. It turns out that they are a highly sectarian Buddhist group who hate the Dalai Lama.

I only found out about them from seeing a bunch of glassy eyed white people screaming at an 80 year old Tibetan refugee (the Dalai Lama!). They push this idea that he is the "worst dictator of modern times". Yep. Not Mao, Hitler or Stalin, but the Dalai Lama.

Here is a video of them looking nuts:
https://youtu.be/i82uz6QxPu0

Also I watched some of their YouTube videos. All the teachers speak in a creepy low and slow voice.

They also have an attack dog (like Scientology style) who anonymously bullies and threatens critics and former members.

People inside the cult, when they voice concerns like seeing one of the teachets act immoral, are told they have an impure mind. Immediately any criticism is quashed and the fault lies with the victim.

There are more intetesting cults, but these are particularly noteworthy because of their aggressive expansion, level of control over members and very obvious influence techniques.
 
Am I the only one with this morbid interest?

Unarians. FTW. The group actually seem fairly benign and their members happy. Who am I to judge? No scandals I can see. Plus a classic Cadillac with a UFO on the roof.

zzz-delete.jpg


Their Wikipedia entry. (But its boring.)

Their website. Their blog.

An article on stuff they don't seem to do much of any more. (Public access TV.)



Why you might be gay or a troon: (Its all cosmic energy!)

Oh, Sweet Mystery of Life

With all the recent news concerning homosexuality, sex change, etc., the following article by Dr. Norman brilliantly addresses these topics and their connection to reincarnation, karma, soulic evolution, and the spiritual body. Published in 1978 in the book Tempus Interludium, Vol. I, the article is timekess in its understanding of human behavior.



Oh, Sweet Mystery of Life
(On Lesbianism, Homosexuality, etc.)




During the past several years, considerable emphasis has been expressed on certain segments of human society which is called homosexual, heterosexual, lesbianism, etc., and apparently, as the emphasis has grown, so has the mystery of the why of these different sexual deviations. The mystery can be very easily solved in the context of our modern electrical physics, and anyone who understands the basic laws which underlie and control electrical energy can understand not only sexual deviations, but also any and all of the other so-called mysteries now currently confronting human society.



Long ago, Einstein proved that all mass is energy—complex electrical units called atoms—and he also proved the existence of adjacent dimensions which be called the fourth, fifth, sixth, etc. Like all other things on this earth, human beings are actually electrical energy. There are countless billions of atoms that comprise the body compounded as molecules, cells, etc. This body is controlled and regenerated by a second body called the psychic anatomy, which has, in the past, been referred to as the soul. This psychic anatomy is more properly a fourth-dimensional body; that is, it is composed of billions of small or larger waveforms of energy which revolve endlessly within themselves and again, according to Einstein, have merged time with space. Their starting and stopping place is within the circumference of their oscillating motions.



This psychic anatomy has been developed in its entire context from a number of lifetimes, a true understanding of reincarnation. Starting as a very primitive savage, any human can and does, through scores or hundreds of lifetimes, develop this psychic anatomy as a conductive process in the concourse of everyday life. The daily life experience of any human is a two-way oscillating process between the psychic anatomy, the conscious mind, the control and reproduction of cells, and other life processes, etc.



During the course of this development of the psychic anatomy from life to life, it may gradually become polarized in either one or the other sexual gender; the degree of polarization varies in every human. Modern psychology says every human male or female is ten to forty percent of the opposite gender, now easily understood as a polarization derived from previous lifetimes.



At the moment of conception a dis-incarnate psychic anatomy, a human spirit (in a spirit world) attaches itself harmonically to the newly-forming fetus. This attachment is made possible by a certain harmonic compatibility that exists with the psychic anatomies of the parents; however, the newly attached psychic anatomy rarely has the determinant qualities necessary to determine the physical sex of the fetus and the future child. This physical sex determination is usually arrived at in the familiar genetical equation—the pairing off of their respective chromosomes and gene structures. That is why the newborn infant may physically be a male, but the psychic anatomy which engenders all life within the body may be female.



Now again, as consciousness in life is a two-way oscillating condition, the child is constantly, in this manner, making basic computer-like derivations in the present from past-lifetime experiences lived in other lives as a female. And although the child is physically male, he (or she) will, of course, be attracted to other males—hence, a homosexual, and conversely, the same is true in lesbianism. The amount of mix-up in sexual attitudes will depend very largely upon the amount of sexual polarity development that was attained in other previous lifetimes. Heterosexuality is also one of the many variations found in this situation.



The proposition of reincarnation from life to life and the embodiment of all human traits and characteristics in the psychic anatomy will also explain many other mysteries of life—mental retardation, genius, aptitudes in various arts and sciences, certain familiarities expressed by certain people to certain other people, countries or places—and there have been thousands of authentically recorded cases which undeniably link a respective person with a past lifetime. Thus, properly established, this reincarnation concept also explains why certain people become murderers, thieves; and other types of deviations, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy and other so-called genetical defects more properly related to other lifetime experiences, psychic shocks, etc.; and a host of other derelictions and incurable diseases. Even cancer can be traced back to previous lifetime experiences which involved psychic shocks and which left their indelible oscillating-impression in the psychic anatomy to be regenerated as an "incurable" disease in the present. This principle will also explain the historical rise and fall of civilizations.



Most properly, then, the entire earth, the solar system, and the physical universe is an extension or plane surface of expression from the fourth, fifth and sixth-dimensional universes. As Jesus said, "In my Father's house are many mansions." And so again, all things must be properly reduced to their expressionary values, oscillating waveforms of energy instigated and propagated in a regenerative process from an adjacent and higher dimension.
 
I like the Universe People cult. It was founded by a Czech guy named Ivo Benda, and is also popular in Slovakia. I'll let this image sum things up.
pozadi_2903_en.jpg

According to these guys, the Saurians are trying to enslave us with RFID chips, and we need some help. Fortunately the great alien (or should that be Aryan?) commander Ashtar Sheran, with his assistants Ptaah and Jesus, want to help us out and will lead their fleet UFOs to help evacuate Earth.

They also like to spam their CDs and pamphlets everywhere, and this got one of the buildings of the Slovak Ministry of Defense evacuated. They're also monitered by the Czech government so they don't go all Heavens Gate to get Ashtar Sheran's fleet to hurry up.

There's an old thread here with lots more information on them.
 
I was driving through South Carolina on I-95 when my Waze app rerouted me through the country to avoid a wreck. It was a really neat detour through small towns with crumbling downtown districts and swampy areas.

As we were driving we passed this compound with a red and yellow/gold sign (I can’t remember what it said) that looked very Buddhist. There was a white guy in a cowboy hat sitting in a golf cart with a rifle in his hands sitting at the entrance to the compound.

I did a google search of the words on the sign and the town we were in and found out we’d just passed Overcomer Ministry.

It’s a Christian cult ruled by an 80-something year old dude who likes to fondle and molest teens and young women. Members are forced to turn over all of their possessions and income if they work off the compound. Those who are not employed are basically slaves.

They enforce strict patriarchal gender rules, dress modestly, and don’t listen to music or watch tv. The preacher has a radio program to broadcast his messages of love and hate while he forces his flock to reside in crumbling trailers that are illegally wired for electricity. Plumbing is scarce on the compound.

He’s been picked up by local authorities for multiple sexual charges and has even been accused of causing the death of a cult follower through medical neglect. So far it seems charges haven’t stuck.

There’s another cult much closer to me than I’d like that was raided in the past year. I used to frequent one of their markets for my annual seafood bbq we throw. Turns out he was forcing children in the cult to work in the fish processing facilities and not allowing them to be properly schooled.

A friend of mine owns a farm just down the road from them and said they were nice, but mostly standoffish. She hadn’t realized it was a cult, she honestly thought it was an intentional community or something.
 
I was driving through South Carolina on I-95 when my Waze app rerouted me through the country to avoid a wreck. It was a really neat detour through small towns with crumbling downtown districts and swampy areas.

As we were driving we passed this compound with a red and yellow/gold sign (I can’t remember what it said) that looked very Buddhist. There was a white guy in a cowboy hat sitting in a golf cart with a rifle in his hands sitting at the entrance to the compound.

I did a google search of the words on the sign and the town we were in and found out we’d just passed Overcomer Ministry.

It’s a Christian cult ruled by an 80-something year old dude who likes to fondle and molest teens and young women. Members are forced to turn over all of their possessions and income if they work off the compound. Those who are not employed are basically slaves.

They enforce strict patriarchal gender rules, dress modestly, and don’t listen to music or watch tv. The preacher has a radio program to broadcast his messages of love and hate while he forces his flock to reside in crumbling trailers that are illegally wired for electricity. Plumbing is scarce on the compound.

He’s been picked up by local authorities for multiple sexual charges and has even been accused of causing the death of a cult follower through medical neglect. So far it seems charges haven’t stuck.

There’s another cult much closer to me than I’d like that was raided in the past year. I used to frequent one of their markets for my annual seafood bbq we throw. Turns out he was forcing children in the cult to work in the fish processing facilities and not allowing them to be properly schooled.

A friend of mine owns a farm just down the road from them and said they were nice, but mostly standoffish. She hadn’t realized it was a cult, she honestly thought it was an intentional community or something.

Reminds me of the cult compound south of Dallas on I-45 in the town of Ferris. Here's a Google street view.
 
Also google "Ant Hill Kids." Or don't. Please don't.
I’m bad at taking advice, so I did just Google that. Jesus. At least the guy in charge got what was coming to him in the end. I’d love to know how a person that deranged, sadistic and yet charismatic can exist. How does a mind like that happen?
 
So the cult I mentioned, the New Kadampa Tradition (probably has a presence in your town) are pushing a fake story that the Dalai Lama has terminal cancer. To add, these are Buddhists who hate the Dalai Lama lol

nonsense.png



If you look at IndyHack's Twitter you will see he is deranged but also extremely well hidden.

This is Cult101.
 
Has anyone dealt with the International House of Prayer yet? Typical Midwestern cult that I dealt with while growing up. Still exists as far as I know.

They're well known for their literal 24/7 prayer room that they even broadcast. Can watch it on God TV. It's been taking place since 1999, according to Wikipedia.
 
Has anyone dealt with the International House of Prayer yet? Typical Midwestern cult that I dealt with while growing up. Still exists as far as I know.

They're well known for their literal 24/7 prayer room that they even broadcast. Can watch it on God TV. It's been taking place since 1999, according to Wikipedia.
They got sued by International House of Pancakes over their acronym. I think they had to stop using the abbreviation, but I can't recall.

There's a UFO cult in my town, but calling it a cult is not really fair. No one is being forced to do anything they don't want to, and people come and go all the time. They're more like a commune with really good parties. I'm in a cult right now, but I'm running it, so it's not too bad. Would anyone like a sports car? I seem to have several I'm not using.
 
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What do we think about the sex cult that apparently had an actress from Smallville (Not Kristin Kreuk, unfortunately) recruiting for them?

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/f...son-mack-went-actress-sex-cult-slaver-1112107

https://www.thedailybeast.com/horri...x-cult-recruiter-allison-mack-at-bail-hearing

OK, get ready for a bit of a :powerlevel:.

I was involved with this group years ago. In a very dark time in my life, my sister (she gets sucked into everything) talked me into attending a seminar for a group called "ESP" which stood for "Executive Success Program". This was a five day intensive seminar, essentially running from like 9:00 am to 5:00 PM, although the group would often go out together for dinner after the seminars.

It was, at the time, basically an amalgamation of self help stuff, little tricks for helping concentration, with a big dose of unlicensed psychiatry. The big thing (at least at the time) that set it apart was a therapy technique they used, essentially structured as a flow chart, intended to get to the root of a psychological issue. The underlying theory basically being that these issues are mainly caused by cognitive dissonance, and that once you dig down and get to the contradiction causing you the dissonance, the issue basically goes away. It seemed like they approached problems logically, and there wasn't some sort of silly magic tricks involved.

I will say this seemed to work pretty well, I came out of it a better adjusted, happier person than when I entered, and I really do feel I cleared up some of my issues. However people with bad PTSD could get triggered hard by this approach, so there was a bit of irresponsibility there, in my opinion. I still contend that this technique (I forget what they called it) was and is a valuable tool, and hope that somehow it can be separated from the rest of this mess, although I doubt it will happen.

At the time, my opinion of the group was that they were charging an awfully high price for what they did, but that it seemed legitimate, if perhaps a bit dangerous for those with severe issues.

A couple of years later, I started having some issues with anxiety. My sister was still involved with this group, and she talked me into signing up for a weekly meeting.

Well I did, and by that point it had changed quite a bit. It had become much less interactive, and more about watching videos and sort of going along with the group think. While they were still talking about logic and ethics, there really wasn't much in the way of intelligent discussion. Basically I feel the people running the meetings just weren't that bright overall. So at this point my opinion of them was lower, but still, I felt that they were legitimate, although the warning signs that it was getting culty were beginning to show.

They had become pretty obsessed with structure and hierarchy, and would refer to people in the group by their "rank" rather than their name. Keith Reneire, the leader, was the "Vangaurd". The lady who was initially his partner was the "Proctor". There was a correct way to shake hands depending on the rank of the people doing the hand shaking, with the higher ranking person's hand on top. They had also changed their name from ESP (What an awful name....) to Nxivm (Pronounced nexium, you know, the antacid? I don't know which name was worse)

I stuck around for a little while, but I was fairly disillusioned with them. Whatever bottled lightning they had the first time seemed to be gone. Plus they had a multi-level marketing approach to recruiting people (a huge red flag). My sister was heavily involved in this, she used some duplicity to get my brother and father to sign up (My father signed up just to debunk it), where she initially claimed it was a free trial, but then they were on the hook for the entire price, and of course she got some % of that.

During this, I went with my sister to the group's headquarters in Albany NY. It was rather like a college campus, very professional atmosphere, people hanging out together watching videos about brain plasticity and discussing it afterwards, basically it seemed like a group of intellectuals interested in digging into logic and ethics. But the push toward groupthink was strong. While people were friendly, you were obviously supposed to go along with the group opinion. This was also when I found out lots of members of this group were buying big houses and basically creating dormitories for people in the group. So... getting cultier....

During this trip I met Keith himself, the mighty "Vanguard". He seemed like a fairly regular dude, for the most part, playing volleyball with the group. He struck me as a bit of a narcissist, but he didn't seem to act like he was above everyone else. He didn't seem like much of a cult of personality to me. However people would talk about him like he was the savior...

So: the man, the legend, the vanguard, Keith Reneire. Like I said, from what I saw he presented himself as a pretty normal guy. However, within the group, he was talked about like he was some kind of savior. According to the people in the group, because he had eliminated so much of his cognitive dissonance, his brain was not tied in knots over anxiety, had less stress, therefore he didn't have to sleep much. Other people in the group would emulate this behavior, sleeping 3-4 hours, so now you've got people who are sleep deprived, but kind of by their own choice. I'd hear about how he had such a high IQ they had to come up with special tests to test for it. I'd hear about how he "proved" the solution to happiness mathematically (I honestly just laughed at the person who told me that).

So what I was seeing, from my own point of view, was that while this guy wasn't explicitly trying to, a cult was forming around him. Now I don't know what went on with the higher ups, it's quite possible (probable even) that he was driving this narrative himself, purposely, but I never felt pressured to sleep less, to join the wierd dormitory housing, etc. So to me, while it was really getting culty, I still didn't consider it a cult.

So after my second experience with the group, I had a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. I appreciated the good that had come out of it for me, but was beginning to think that maybe I had just absorbed the good parts of it and ignored the bad parts (I've never been one to just go along with things). At this point I certainly wasn't going to recommend anyone join them, but I'd defend them against being called a cult. To me they were still way better than scientology.

Jump to the present. Now I see this dude has somehow got a harem of sex slaves, who are being branded with his name, malnourished, and he's taken over their finances. He's got people recruiting more sex slaves for him, trafficking people, etc... All I can say is "WOW, I did NOT see this coming!". Luckily my sister didn't seem to have been pulled into this dude's harem, even though she seemed to be the type he collected...

Sorry, huge powerlevel, but hopefully someone finds it interesting.
 
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