CULT WATCH

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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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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