For the foreseeable future this site is suspended. Surviving functions have been transferred to Eye on the World. Simply click ‘cults’ on the posts list of Eye on the World and you will access the correct page. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.
Anthony North
Cult watching is a minority sport. This is a mistake, for a cult is a mirror of society. The beauty of a cult is that it is an extreme microcosm of what goes on in our culture and our lives. Indeed, throughout life we all express cultish behaviour.
The most obvious example of this cult behaviour is the veneration of a pop star. He is put on a pedestal as if a god, and fans by the million behave and dress like him. Yes, it is watered down, certainly, but it is sociologically identical to the guru/disciple relationship.
At every stage of our life we get involved in cult behaviour. In a normal family home, children will learn automatic loyalty and authority in a parent. This programs the future cult member for such obedience.
Eventually the child will rebel, but goes straight into another cult through fashion, gang membership, or the pop star veneration above. As he grows up, he will hopefully get a partner and children of his own, where he puts himself on a pedestal as the arbiter of all knowledge and standards to his children.
In work, modern corporate enterprise encourages loyalty to the ‘company.’ I’ve spoken to many such minions, and they truly believe everything their company stands for. This is cult behaviour par excellence – and usually just as delusional.
Occasionally we get an example of cult behaviour so over-whelming that it is hard to deny. Consider the simmering hysteria in the UK in the week following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. If that wasn’t cult berhaviour, I don’t know what was.
Cult watching should increase – it tells us more about ourselves than normal life. Perhaps this is because the abnormal is simply the extreme of the normal.
© Anthony North, March 2007
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Norman Mailer has written a novel asking when Hitler became evil. To me the question is pointless. Evil is a supernatural invention allowing people to be not responsible for their actions. To be evil is to be taken over by the Devil, and there is nothing you can do about it.
This said, I believe Hitler, and the German process of Nazification, can be answered through the same psychology and sociology as the cult. In my post, The Guru, I point out that the classic guru is a loner with an abnormal upbringing who descends into a form of mental illness.
The ‘cure’ to the illness is to believe in something, and the transition at the end of this process can lead to a charismatic who can ‘hypnotise’ all who come across him. This process applies to cult gurus and Hitler alike.
As for the cult/nation itself, in the post, Who Joins a Cult, I make it clear that cult disciples are invariably intelligent, young and middleclass. They are searching for something and will eventually believe anything.
If we really want to understand what happened in Germany leading to World War Two, we must understand cult mentality and sociology, and realize it can so easily transfer to society in general.
© Anthony North, Feb 2007
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No cult can exist without the guru who first has the idea. As the cult grows, it will be very much a statement of his particular mind. But whilst this ‘culture’ can vary from cult to cult, the deeper psychology of the guru is usually exact in most cases.
A guru tends to begin life in a dysfunctional family or outer environment. As he grows up, he becomes a loner, often putting all his energies into a previous spiritual system such as the Bible.
He will have aspirations, thinking he has an inner greatness, but will be unable to achieve in this chosen sphere. A point will come when he faces a major crisis, often in the form of a psychological illness.
Up to this point, his life has been very much like many other people, but it is his way of coming out of this crisis that will mark him out as different. He will merge the ideosyncracies of his illness with his ambition.
The result is a system of thought that will birth into the cult, having within it all the excesses and eccentricities of his mind. This is why the cult is often seen as ‘nutty.’ Only later, if it survives, will it formulate into something close to a religion.
The most striking change, however, comes in the future guru himself. When his ambition meets the result of his crisis, he becomes single-minded and heroic. And his absolute belief in himself turns him into a charismatic.
He now has all the psychological tools he needs to go out into the world and built his cult. Insecurity is turned into absolute confidence, and when he meets an otherwise intelligent person who is searching for meaning, his cult begins to grow.
© Anthony North, Jan 2007
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The popular conception of the typical cult disciple is of a person of low intelligence – after all, they must be to be taken in by a cult guru. In addition, they are often thought to be down-and-outs, accepting the weirdness and discipline of the cult because it is better than the streets.
A study in the 1990s by Eileen Barker shattered this perception, and confirmed what cult watchers had long known to be true. She showed that the vast majority of cult members were intelligent and middleclass. So how could they be ‘brainwashed- – if that is the term – so easily?
If an intelligent person looks at the world around him and doesn’t feel like he belongs, he will inevitably search for meaning in his life. To such a person, non-meaning deflates the personality. And as the search proves futile, the point comes when any meaning will do.
If a guru comes along and offers the meaning he craves, the person is open to influence, and in no time at all, his life has been turned upside down and put back together again in the cult. And once inside, the life he used to lead becomes an alien country.
(c) Anthony North, Jan 2007
Hell came to Mount Carmel, near Waco, Texas, in 1993. Following a 51 day siege, the FBI used tanks to flood the Branch Davidian compound with gas. The resulting fire saw nearly 80 cult members die, including their leader, David Koresh.
The details of the event are legendary – you can see a brief analysis on The Cults page of this site – but what REALLY went on? The Channel 4 (UK) docu-drama Inside Waco, screened 1 Feb 2007, offered a balanced view, and is well worth a watch. But as with all attempts to explain so far, questions are left unanswered.
The docu-drama correctly identified the over-enthusiasm and incompetence of the ATF and FBI, but failed to tackle the essential problems concerning understanding. And it begins with a question.
The Branch Davidian compound was teeming with guns, yet the cult members appeared otherwise peaceful and law-abiding. Neither did the cult have survivalist tendencies, requiring weaponry to survive a coming apocalypse. If anything, they expected to die in such an event. So why did they have guns in the first place?
Koresh went to great trouble to build a firing range and train his followers in firearms. Indeed, it was the constant sound of gunfire that first attracted the authorities to the cult. The reason why he did this has never been adequately answered. But perhaps an answer can be found.
Koresh believed he would die in an apocalypse, and it is possible to argue that he purposely engineered the event himself. He had an understanding of the views on other cults that had brought about their own apocalypse, and I suggest he didn’t want this view to be placed on his memory.
Bearing these points in mind, I suggest the possibility that the entire reason for the firing range and constant training was to purposely attract the attention of the authorities and set an inevitable train of events in motion – events that he cleverly engineered to bring about the mass suicide of his cult by stealth.
The disaster of Waco was due to the inevitability of a man of destiny meeting ignorance and incompetence, and I feel Koresh used this ignorance and incompetence to his own advantage, knowing that the FBI would inadvertently bring the disaster on. In other words, he used the FBI as patsies in his own Armageddon.
© Anthony North, Feb 2007
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Cults. To many people they send a shiver down the spine. They have vague memories of cults approaching armageddon, going out to kill others, or committing mass suicide. Yes, this can happen, but only to a tiny minority.
Another fear is of a cult swallowing up your son or daughter, brainwashing them and turning them into different people who no longer want to have anything to do with you. Yes, this happens, too. But only if the son or daughter is searching.
There is a great deal wrong with a world that requires so many cults. And this is the central problem – not the cults, per se, but the world that breeds them. But there is one major point that we should all remember.
A cult tends to be called a cult only when it is small. As it grows bigger, it suddenly becomes an alternative religion, and as time passes it ends up a major religion in its own right. Let me just mention one such religion that started off as a subversive, apocalyptic cult.
Christianity.
(c) Anthony North, Jan 2007
