Cults: Sinister, fringe religious groups led by charismatic, bearded prophets that prey on young,
susceptible people. They’re the subject of countless Vice articles, HBO documentaries,
and debatably-exploitative podcasts. With our generation’s obsession with true crime,
it makes sense that these often bizarre, affecting stories have
become a staple of the genre. But therein lies the problem:
we often think of cults as a piece of a genre, just stories to be consumed. So,
we forget that they have a real history, with real people. Today on Misconceptions, I, your host,
Justin Dodd, will break down some common myths and misconceptions about cults. Let’s get started.
I don’t know about you, but when I picture
a cult leader, I picture a tall, bearded man with long blonde hair and a white robe made of silk.
Just me? Well, I bet you, too, are, at the very least, picturing a dude. Why is that?
High-profile cult leaders like Charles Manson and Jim Jones certainly play a role,
but other factors contribute to this perception. Cults are often linked to illegal activity in the
public eye, and some crimes—particularly violent ones—are disproportionately committed by men.
That said, a number of cults have been led by women, including Valentina de Andrade,
who headed the terrifying Superior Universal Alignment UFO cult. The Rajneeshees—whom you might
be familiar with from the Netflix doc Wild Wild Country—committed a mass but luckily non-lethal
poisoning in Oregon. They were purportedly led by their guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, but actually
for years had had most of their operations run by a woman named Ma Anand Sheela. But instead
of going through a list of women-led cults in an attempt to prove that there are, in fact,
women-led cults, I think the point will be proven by focusing on one woman-led cult in particular:
Anne Hamilton Byrne and the Family. Hamilton-Byrne started her cult-career
as a yoga instructor in Australia, catering mostly to middle-aged women in Melbourne.
In the 1960s, she helped start a group called The Family which was based at Santiniketan,
a property which also hosted religious and philosophical discussions. One of
the members at Santiniketan managed a nearby psychiatric hospital, where
many Family members worked. Several patients there were eventually recruited into the cult.
It’s also where Hamilton-Byrne acquired a fair amount of LSD,
which was administered to members. The theological teachings of Hamilton-Byrne’s group involved a
varied combo of Eastern and Western religions, including Hinduism and Christianity. The kicker,
though, was the claim that Hamilton-Byrne was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ.
If this already sounds like a super disconcerting cult, you should strap in for this next part.
Starting in the 1960s, Hamilton-Byrne accumulated around 28 infants and young
children. Some were children of members of the Family who had been coerced into giving them up.
These members were most likely under the influence of hallucinogens. Some of the children were
“adopted” using less-than-legal methods under the supervision of lawyers within the group.
The children were kept secret for years. They also, creepily I might add, had their hair dyed
blonde to match their “mother’s”. The children were administered sedatives, and later LSD,
and purportedly abused, all while under the watch of dedicated disciples known as the Aunties.
Hamilton-Byrne was eventually arrested but was only convicted of falsely registering the birth of
three of the children, which resulted in a fine. All in all, this
yoga-teacher-turned-second-coming-of-Christ-turned-child-kidnapper
definitely shows that women can be cult leaders. But on a final note, if your preconceived notion
of a cult member was a woman, there’s actually some truth to that. According to various research,
around 70 percent of cult followers are women.
Cults, by many definitions, involve some type of religion or spirituality. For many years,
that’s just what the word cult meant: a group dedicated to a religious belief.
Medium’s Egor Kotkin broke down some of Cicero’s writing on the subject by defining ‘religion’
and ‘cult’ like this: Cult = mythology + rites
Church = lore + priests Religion = cult + church
So religion is just… a cult with some priests and some lore, according to that word-math.
But where does the word cult come from? According to Merriam Webster,
“Cult, which shares an origin with culture and cultivate, comes from the Latin cultus,
a noun with meanings ranging from ‘tilling, cultivation’ to ‘training or education’ to
‘adoration.’ … The earliest known uses of the word, recorded in the 17th century,
broadly denoted ‘worship.’ … By the early 18th century, cult could refer to a non-religious
admiration or devotion, such as to a person, idea, or fad (‘the cult of success’). Finally,
by the 19th century, the word came to be used of ‘a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious.’”
But, in recent times, the word cult has expanded to have a broader meaning.
Pretty much any group (usually still unorthodox or spurious) that has a very specific focus or
lifestyle could be classified as a cult. We can even refer to a “cult of personality” without
implying that adherents have a spiritual devotion to the person at the center. The themes of these
cultish groups span far and wide, but let’s focus on some specific types of non-religious cults.
Doomsday cults. These are … pretty self-explanatory: any group whose central
ideology focuses on the coming end of the world. This belief is sometimes called apocalypticism,
and it can take many forms. Obviously these cults can be religious in nature,
but sometimes the doom that’s supposedly coming is a catastrophic natural disaster. Other times,
a plague. Sometimes, it’s aliens. Sometimes it’s based on conspiracy theories, such as the belief
that society or the government is attempting to destroy the world, and only a select few can stop
it (or protect themselves, at the very least). The peculiar thing about Doomsday cults is that,
while 100 percent of their predicted apocalypses have failed to materialize, the cults still
persist. One might think that if your leader was predicting the end of the world on July 12, 2018,
and that day came and went without incident, your resolve as a follower might start to falter. But
the opposite seems to be true. A study conducted by Leon Festinger of the group The Seekers showed
that not only did followers of doomsday cults maintain their beliefs after they were disproven,
in many cases, they were strengthened. While there have been criticisms of the study, Festinger
attributed these oddly persistent beliefs to the concept of cognitive dissonance, which is
essentially the unpleasant feeling of tension when one’s actions and beliefs are inconsistent. The
individuals are then motivated to change their behavior or beliefs to return to some kind of
harmonious state. In this case, it appears that resulted in doubling-down on their convictions.
Some other types of cults: Political cults, who are focused on very specific
political beliefs, and usually try to influence elections and local government.
Sometimes political cults are results of cults of personality. Commercial cults, meanwhile,
are based around the idea of... making money. Think, a multi-marketing pyramid scheme of sorts.
Racist and terrorist cults are a real thing—the Ku Klux Klan is often described as a cult.
And then we have… whatever the heck this next one is. The Unarians are a group of people who believe
in the teachings of Unarius, an institution founded by Ernest and Ruth Norman in 1954,
who would come to be known as Raphael and Uriel. Unarius is founded on the writings
of Raphael, a.k.a. Ernest, who was said to be channeling alien beings from Mars and Venus.
Eventually, the mail-order books of Unarius grew into an actual academy, known as the
Unarius Academy of Science. Unarius, of course, stands for “Universal Articulate Interdimensional
Understanding of Science.” Which I guess would make their institution
the Universal Articulate Interdimensional Understanding of Science Academy… of Science.
Essentially, the Unarians believe there are aliens who have vast knowledge of both the sciences and
spirituality, and they’re trying to educate us here on Earth. There’s even some talk that
“space brothers” will come to Earth in 33 space ships that will stack atop each other,
like some kind of giant alien game of Tetris.
The most fantastic part about this small, alien cult is Uriel. She quickly became the face of
the group, speaking publicly about their beliefs, all the while dressed to the nines in fantastic
dresses and wigs. It’s a bit of a tradition now for Unarians to be dressed flamboyantly
and extravagantly in meetings. Let me tell ya, of all the cults I researched for this video,
this is the one I would be HAPPY to join.
The ideal place for a cult is on a remote farm somewhere in the mountains,
away from the influences of society. Everyone lives together, works together,
sings songs together, and wears matching white clothes. Or… so the media would have us believe.
It’s true that cults thrive by using isolation. Integrating an “us vs them”
mentality is crucial for retaining membership. If members feel separated from their peers, family,
or society at large, they are more likely to stay in the group. So, it would make a lot of sense to
literally cut people off from society by having them live in a commune of sorts. If you’re
all living together and only exposed to fellow believers, you’d be more likely to stick with it,
right? Well, the truth is, most cults don’t live together in some big, utopian/dystopian commune.
Most cult members live in regular neighborhoods and work normal jobs. They are, however,
emotionally and mentally cut off from the world, even while living in it with everyone
else. High-profile cult communes like Jonestown in Guyana are actually the exception, not the rule.
Which brings up a bonus misconception: that cults all have a single leader. While cults are often
portrayed as being led by one chosen, charismatic figure, it’s usually not so simple. As I discussed
in the cases of the Rajneeshees and Unarians, the public face of a cult is not always the person
running things behind the scenes. Other cults like the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten
Commandments have a group of leaders. The idea of one big puppet master pulling the strings
is often blown out of proportion by tv and film.
By now you’re thinking to yourself, “I would never be dumb enough to join a cult. Only an
absolute FOOL would be duped into joining a cult.” Well, we can nip this one in the bud right now,
because the idea that “smart” people are immune to cults is definitely false.
Let’s just start this off with some hard data—you know, SMART people stuff. A study published in the
journal Psychiatry Research in 2017 looked at the demographics of former cult members,
trying to identify common traits, tendencies, and lifestyles. It was found that more than 61 percent
of former cult members had more than 12 years of education, which sits about even with the general
population, if not slightly higher, according to 2015 U.S. census data. These are college-educated
folks we’re talking about. Other researchers have commented that a common denominator
of people joining cults is idealism, not the downtrodden pessimists you might be picturing.
People join cults for any number of reasons. Many former members (67 percent) expressed feelings
of dissatisfaction with their lives previous to joining. Some (32 percent) expressed depressive
symptoms, or family conflicts (22 percent). Most former members described being welcomed into the
group and experiencing feelings of acceptance and friendship. Who wouldn’t want that to be a
part of that? Cults often become much more sinister in their tactics to keep people
in the cult, using various forms of peer pressure and intimidation. Most former members expressed
fears of humiliation, exclusion, and even violence if they had decided to leave.
Psychologist Steve Eichel describes it like this: ​​"A very important aspect of [a] cult
is the idea that if you leave the cult, horrible things will happen to you. This is important,
and it's important to realize. That people outside of a cult are potential members,
so they're not looked upon as negatively as people inside the cult who then leave the cult."
Joining a cult doesn’t mean you’re uneducated, and stigmatizing people who have fallen prey to cults
is counterproductive to reintegrating them into society. Your predisposition to be manipulated
seems far less based on your education than it does your immediate psychological circumstances.
So, don’t write anyone off just yet. Thanks for watching Misconceptions. I hope
we all got a little clarity into the mysterious world of cults.
Or at the very least, were inspired by Uriel’s incredible fashion sense.
If you have an idea for a future episode, let us know in the comments. I’ll see ya next time.