#cults

[oxytocinatrocities]

"The House," a parable I drew about leaving the Mormon church.

I've come to think this metaphor also applies pretty well to constitutional originalism and the absurd idolization by both U.S. political parties of a document written hundreds of years ago by men who didn't know about the carbon cycle and owned human slaves.

I want to include some altered version of this in the graphic novel I'm working on, as well :)

[creature-wizard]

"The Law of Assumption isn't a cult!" Mmm, are you sure about that?

Let's take a look at some red flags it checks off...

☑ The founder's ideas are considered infallible, despite the founder's incredibly dubious behavior.

☑ Claims that its beliefs can be traced back through the ages and cites known holy texts, but examination of these texts reveals that they really have nothing to do with the ideas promoted by the founder.

☑ Claims that modern science supports its claims, but examination of actual current scientific knowledge shows that it does not actually back them up.

☑ The beliefs and practices can supposedly never fail the followers; followers can only fail the beliefs and practices.

☑ Followers are told to suppress their doubt and their critical thinking skills. People who ask critical questions are shamed and invalidated.

☑ Fabulous results are promised, such as curing serious illness or becoming wealthy in a short time. But there is no reliable evidence of these fabulous results, and people who ask for it are shamed.

☑ Alleged "evidence" that this is all absolutely true in exactly the way its founder/follows claim includes unverifiable anecdotes and events easily explained through psychology or random chance, and the kind of photos that are very easy to stage, fake, or steal.

☑ Dehumanization. Everyone Is You Pushed Out effectively claims that other people lack true agency and interiority, and are essentially mere puppets you can control however you please.

☑ Followers are "free to leave," but there is still a powerful sense of shame, failure, and general wrongness attached to actually leaving.

☑ Ex-followers report being disrespected, abused, and suffering lasting harm from the way they were treated and from the beliefs they internalized.

☑ Ex-followers who talk about their negative experiences get invalidated and demonized, and are accused of harboring bitterness, anger, or jealousy.

☑ Questioning followers are told to completely ignore critics and ex-members.

It's not accurate to say that the Law of Assumption and its community isn't a cult because it doesn't line up 1:1 with something like Jonestown or NXIVM. Cults come in all forms, and the Law of Assumption and its community have more than enough to qualify. Don't believe me? Then don't take my word for it; start researching modern cults for yourself. The information's out there.

For anyone reading this: If you are leaving or questioning the Law of Assumption and need help, please see this post.

[70sscifiart]

Bruce Pennington's 1974 cover to Cults of Unreason, by Christopher Evans

[thingsaday]

i can be your angle...or yuor devil...

[balkanradfem]

So I've found Alyssa Grenfell on youtube. She shares her experience of leaving mormonism, and the inner workings of the religion. I had very little ideas about what mormonism is, only that it's a high-control religion, very difficult to leave, and has people knocking on doors trying to get converts. I've been interested to find out more, and I ended up watching almost all of her content, and some of the information I've got from it opened my eyes on other feminist topics, and I believe is relevant to the current discourse!

So if you, like me, don't know how mormonism works, it started when a guy decided that he too could be a part of the bible; he wrote a bible part two: mormon, and proclaimed himself a prophet. Then he started a religion based on his writings, decided it was more important than the bible itself because he 'translated it from gold tablets god gave him', and started gaining followers by convincing people he's the prophet. Once he had managed to get a following, he soon started to sexually exploit the wives and daughters of these followers, to the point where he had 20-40 wives and had married 14yo children. Families allowed it to happen because he would promise them to be royalty in the afterlife. He eventually got into a lot of trouble for stealing and raping children so he was killed by an angry mob, but the religion continued.

The religion is same as christianity except more rules (no coffee, no alcohol, no smoking), eternal worship of the predator who wrote it, followers are pressured to follow the rules exactly, and, the vital part, the followers have to give 10% of their income to the church. They developed a culture where once every young mormon kid comes of age, they have to go on a 'mission', which means they're removed from their home, and have to spend 2 years (1,5 for women) living in a foreign area, knocking on doors, sharing the gospel, trying to convert people. The conversion rate is extremely low, but at that point kids have invested so much time, effort, energy and passion for the religion, they become devoted to it and start to feel alienated in the world that rejects their religion. And even with the low conversion rate, every new convert means another continuous source of income for the church. So it's very profitable to send out young adults to make these sales. The kids are told that if they don't complete their missions, they will not be able to marry, and marriage is presented as their only life purpose.

So how rich is the church at this point? 230 billion dollars. I've been shocked to hear this because I had no idea. Alyssa explained that the mormon church is as rich as Pepsi, they have more money than Disney and McDonalds. So you might be wondering, like I did, well what are they doing with all that money? I've been left to wonder this for a while, until I watched the video called 'Why are so many influencers mormon?', which explained it. I didn't even realize a lot of influencers were mormon. But, this video showed me something both disturbing, and eye opening.

Before I go into that, I have to point out how patriarchal and misogynistic this religion is. Women are not given any options except marriage, and it's presented as the only righteous way to live. They're groomed for marriage from a very young age, encouraged to start writing letters to their future husbands at the age of 9. They're taught cooking, sewing and childcare, and to coddle any males in the family. It's taken for granted that m*n won't respect women, to the point where male children are allowed to harass grown women and their families will not intervene or consider it a problem. Chastity and purity are promoted to the level where members of the religion are expected to wear special underwear at all times, which hides their entire torso, shoulders, and legs down to their knees, and their clothing is expected to cover this up completely. They're rejected by the religion if they dare to have sex before marriage, or drink alcohol or coffee, or in some cases, tea. The church has a history of allowing and promoting polygamy, in the sense that a male was allowed to have as many wives as he wanted; they've since stopped this, but refused to break up the existing marriages. They're also promoting anti gay and racist propaganda, which Alyssa observed in school where she'd been teaching; a gay kid almost ended his life due to extreme homophobia.

I know all of this is somewhat common in all areas of society, all religions, and all cultures, but in mormonism it seems to be written into the core of it.

So now, why are so many influencers mormon? I didn't even know they were. The influencers themselves are not promoting the fact that they're mormon, nor does it come up in viral discussions. Ballerina farm is mormon. Tradwives are mormon. Whataboutaub, Rachel Parcel, brooklynandbailey, tanner_mann, thebucketlistfamily, Taylor Frankie Paul, Sarah Beeston, Ruby Franke, these are all mormon. Most of the Utah-based influencers are mormon, and there's a bigger amount of successful and popular influencers from Utah, than from LA or NY.

For me it immediately explained why this viral content is like that. Why we're having such influx of highly patriarchal, anti-feminist, very dangerous and sexist content, put in front of the eyes of young women. Why it's being promoted as an ideal way of life. How are these women able to share this life as if they truly believed it was good and ideal. How could they think it's harmless? If they're using the internet to the extent that they're creating content, how would they not be exposed to any feminism at all? And they wouldn't because it's against their religion to engage with content like that, or with people talking about it. Because being raised in a high-control religion, they would truly believe their lives are the ideal. They would be presented with it as their only option, the only way of life possible for a woman.

It's heartbreaking because I can now understand why it was so easy to push Ballerina Farm to give up her entire life ambition to get married and carry children for a male she didn't even want to go out with, the pressure from the religion to do so would be immense, she would have been raised to see this as the only option, everything else in her life would be considered pointless. She wouldn't have an actual choice, she'd be groomed for this from the moment she was born. Mormons don't advertise 'looking for your soulmate', they only instruct women to marry a mormon male who completed his mission and make it work.

So how does the immensely rich mormon church play into this? I couldn't see it until Alyssa explained in a very detailed way how youtube content advertising works. I didn't know about this either, but here's the overview:

How much you get paid on youtube, instagram, tik-tok, or other online content platform, depends on what type of content it is, based on how much advertisers are willing to pay to put adverts on it. For instance, you get paid much more for finance content, because banks will pay premium prices to be advertised in a finance-related video. If you're making content on cooking, you get paid way less, because it's not such a lucrative field. If you're making content on christianity, you get similarly low price as for cooking, christian church is not that rich. But, if you're making content as a mormon, that's showcasing some aspect of a mormon life, even if you don't specifically say you're mormon, the price goes way up, to the point where it's as lucrative as finance. The mormon church is making sure that the mormon influencers are being paid premium prices for their content, because people who get massively interested in the influencers, eventually find out that it's the mormon life being advertised, and some of them consider taking on mormonism. Which gives church more converts, which means the church will earn more money. The content we're watching is one huge advert sponspored by mormon church, and we don't even know it.

Alyssa figured this out because her content falls under the keyword 'mormon', and her comments warned her that the church is advertising on her videos, even when she's making mormon-critical content. She then realized that she too was being paid a premium price for her views, just because they're mormon themed. She went on to discover that even just being an influencer in Utah will fetch a premium price, because most of mormons are based in Utah. For more detailed and comprehensive explanation on this, watch her video!

Advertising is not the only way the mormon church is spending their money, they've also built a shopping mall, and are basically spending their money by investing and gambling and everything any corporation does with their profits. It's making me mad, and also makes the members of the church mad when they discover where 10% of their income goes, because they're told it's being used for charity and community service, and not advertisments and building malls.

For me this solves a mystery of how is it possible, in this day and age to have such influx of tradwives and influencers of 'traditional life', they're being sponsored by an organization making a profit off of it, making sure that anyone making this content is so well paid, they're able to live off of it, and keep creating more of it, and in the process of doing that, groom young women into their lifestyle.

Learning more about religions, specifically high-control religions, makes me realize just how much of it is happening all around us, but invisible, not naming what it is. It's similar to MLM's, the people inside are constantly trying to lure more people in, to make profit for those on the top, while the organization keeps changing names and hides their business structure in order to save their reputation. People can get influenced by it, and sucked in, without even knowing about it. Somehow most MLM's are also in Utah.

Mormon church also asked to no longer be called that, in order to stop being associated with the words like 'cult', which people have identified it as. Now they're working under more secretive names, and hidden business practices, so we wouldn't even know what we're being influenced by, and why is the content in front of us what it is.    

[femrodeeeeo]

women are dismissing the whole ballerina farm thing as white feminism because they want us to talk about another woman while not realising they too only care about women from their own country and region 💀

pissing me off real bad cause there's so many women saying everything is her choice and she can leave anytime she wants as if woc don't go through the same thing when they live life controlled by their parents and the men around them, ending up as miserable housewives(servants) even though they were the smartest in their STEM course. If you can't see that similarity of control through 'family values' and religion you need head back to school and learn some common sense.

[coulsonlives]

Okay. Real talk for a second.

I think what bothers me the most about this post is how this person is spreading puritan rhetoric, making people paranoid, uncertain, and fearful about the media they consume and create... And then selling the cure to those fears back to them, through the same community that created all those fears in the first place.

"You think you're a freak because of things we instilled in you. You will always be welcome in the community that instilled it in you."

It's freakishly cult like. I really hope people don't fall for this.

[basicallyanotherwitchesthing]

Duke McCoy - How To Organize and Manage Your Own Religious Cult - Loompanics Unlimited - 1980

[whore4gwen]

Re8 Women dating HCs

Contains: Lady Dimitrescu, Donna Benevento, & Mother Miranda

WLW

———————————————————————

Tags: Light talks of manipulation, narcissism, and sadism, mental health issues, fluff, angst if you squint hard enough, possessiveness, slightly unhinged behavior, MY personal head cannons, very slight suggestiveness, Mirandas fucking God complex, isolation, religious elements, cuddling, poor perception of love, & tax evasion.

A/N: Im working on sm things rn it’s not even funny. Despite that, I desperately wanted to post something, so here’s some of my hc. No these are not all my hcs, these are just some of the REALISTIC ones I have. These are based on my own personal perception of these fictional characters. You are welcome to disagree with anything I write, but you’re not welcome to harass me about it. Please keep negativity to yourselfs. Anyways, please enjoy!

———————————————————————

Alcina:

-It’s not that Lady Dimitrescu is incapable of loving another, I just think it’s the way she would love.

-Carnal, possessive, dangerous, a little crazed even. Nothing about the lady’s love is sensual or soft. She’s powerful, domineering, and boy does she relish in it. Of course she’s aware of all the things she could do, all the things you’d let her do. So willing, so compliant, so easy to control.

-Alcina is a narcissist through and through. You will bend to her will, to her every need. You’re hers, after all. (We still love you thou)

-I feel like her love is very incessant, very smothering for lack of better words. She’s not exactly clingy, but she needs you around, she needs to feel your presence.

-Always, and I mean always watching you. Nothing you do will go past her. She needs to know exactly where you are and what you’re doing at all times.

-A bit emotionally manipulative. Of course she doesn’t see it that way, she just wants everything to go her way. What’s so wrong with that?

-I think for the most part she’s a little self aware about her flaws and what not, but I wouldn’t say this with 100% certainty. A big part of her doesn’t really see a problem with the way she is. It’s absolutely normal.

-But to be fair, it’s not like anyone would call her out.. so🤷🏻‍♀️

-Pet names pet names pet names. Alcina absolutely adores them. She only really uses your names unless she’s really pissed. In that case, run.

Donna:

-Shy. So incredibly so that you don’t hear her voice till weeks after working for her. And the way your jaw fell to the ground when you heard it had Angie belly laughing on the ground. If it wasn’t for her, you thought maybe you were hearing things.

-Forgets to eat often. She gets so preoccupied with her dolls, she doesn’t always take the best care of herself. So make sure you remind her to eat:(

-It’ll take AGES to get Donna there, but when you do, she is nothing short of the wait. Very passionate, and a little unhinged.

-Like Alcina, she’s a bit possessive.

-She finally found someone she was comfortable with showing her scare, you’re not going anywhere. You belong to her and that’s final. You’re literally stuck, so get comfortable.

-Values your opinion over everything. Her cooking, her sewing skills, her Garden. Donna swoons at praise. A light pink dusting her cheeks any time you compliment her, no matter how minor.

-Poor Donna has been alone for quite some time now. Touch starved as well as touch repulsed. Have fun with that :)

- Canonically, Donna has really bad mental health issues, which causes her to lash out and make rash decisions. She’s not abusive by any means, just a lot to handle.

-She gets into her own head a lot. Constantly convincing herself none of this is real. That one day she’ll wake up and you’ll be gone.

-I know she has manic episodes. Cannot convince me otherwise. Before you, they were almost unmanageable. Your first experience dealing with Donna during one terrified you. You were so worried about Donna, you had no idea what was happening.

-You tried desperately to comfort her. Unfortunately the voices were stronger than your weak attempts.

-After a while, she finally calmed down and explained that catastrophe as best as she could without scaring you off.

-At first Donna didn’t really understand the purpose of cuddling. It’s not that she didn’t want to, she was just truly confused. After having the significance of cuddling explained to her, she fell in love with it.

-Unironically, she’s the big spoon. She loves holding you, making sure you’re safe in her arms. Now, it’s the only way she can fall asleep.

Miranda:

-This bitch is so crazy.

-All shits and giggles aside, this woman is absolutely sadistic.

-Mind games are inevitable. Especially if she’s truly in love with you, in her dark and twisted way.

-Possessive asf.

-Did I already say possessive?

-Miranda is definitely stingy and will isolate you from your friends/family. Why do you need them when you have her? She’s your Goddess, she’s all you need. Never mind everyone else.

-Definitely the type to tell you to take a nap if you ever say you’re tired of her shit.

-You’re not going anywhere. Nice try, but no.

-I know this is obvious, but her God complex is really top tier. I mean seriously.

-Absolutely loves being worshipped, and not just in the bedroom, if you know what I mean. She wants to be put first, she wants to be your number one priority, your Goddess, your everything.

-She will find a way to incorporate her status & power in everything she does.

-She loves you, but you must always remember your place, under her. Figuratively and literally.

-Despite her cut off personality, she’s definitely a cuddlier. Especially after a long day of failed experiments and aggravating meetings.

-Like Donna, Miranda has been alone for almost a century. She’s so damn touch starved yet also incredibly touch repulsed at the same time. Have fun coping.

-Of course she threatened you if you ever told anyone thou. I mean can you imagine THE Mother Miranda being spooned? Imagine what the public would say.

-Fucking tax evader.

-After she gets Eva back, successfully, she lessens up, but only a bit. Like Alcina, she is the way she is and she doesn’t really see the problem with it.

I want all three of them so badly.

[whereserpentswalk]

You cannot opt out of capitalism to destroy it. At best you can save yourself from capitalism that way. If someone's plan to fight capitalism is to create a new community somewhere in the woods, they don't want to fight capitalism, they want to start a high control group nine times out of ten, the other one time out of ten they just want a few middle-class people to escape it.

Our mutual aid networks, our community organizations, our unions, must exist within the towns and cities of our nation, and must be things every worker has access to. That is what threatens capitalism. It's what scares them. They aren't scared by a commune in the woods, because that commune can never serve as an alternative to their system for most people, it will never be bigger than the capitalist world, at least without being forced to join it, if anything they'd be happy that socialists built their own gulag. What they're scared of is a network that any worker can draw support from, unions that their workers use to collectively bargain, within the towns and cities that their workers live, that's what an actual threat to their power looks like.

A commune that's separate from capitalist society isn't resistance it's surrender.

[madcat-world]

The World of AA (11 of 34) - Ching Yeh

[taxkha]

I drew this comic in 2022 as my final before graduating. This comic is a result of me watching video essays, documentaries and TED talks on cults on and off for like half a year. Cults are an insanely gruesome and fascinating topic and I really wanted to capture that feel of isolation, manipulation and a false sense of family in this horror comic. I would love to hear what you think of this comic. I put a lot of love and work into it and it's a very important project for me!

[sher-ee]

[deconstructingchabad]

Hey just for the record, this blog believes in the right of Jewish self-determination in our ancestral homeland and believes that antisemitism, wherever it happens, is a bad thing. Don't know why you'd follow me if you didn't believe that.

[d4rkpluto]

𝔞𝔰𝔱𝔯𝔬 𝔬𝔰𝔟𝔢𝔯𝔳𝔞𝔱𝔦𝔬𝔫𝔰 𝔱𝔴𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔶-𝔬𝔫𝔢

chart readings are open!

intuitive readings are open!

WARNING 18+ POST.

♇ i've noticed a lot of libra risings have over bites or there's something up with their teeth, or they could have big gums.

♇ people with asteroid hazard [9305] in their ninth house are capable of running cults.

♇ virgo moons cannot handle fame. or critique that comes their fame, example doja cat, nicki minaj and vinnie hacker.

♇ i've noticed pisces placements will try to make themselves fit into customs or ideas that have nothing to do with them.

♇ leo moons are very clingy to their mothers when they are young.

♇ i had realised that people who have Venus aspecting Mars had issues with people of same sex/gender and heavily attracted those of the opposite.

♇ 7h placements love drama especially if they have mercury, lilith and pluto there, they like to start shit.

♇ virgo placements can talk about themselves a looot.

♇ aquarius moon's normally have a weird head shape im sorry, or its very prominent, example natalie nunn and jaidyn alexis. [natalie nunn left and jaidyn alexis right]. aquarius moon is the epitome of the moon emojis 🌚🌝🌛🌜

♇ martian venuses tend to like each other, even if they're different elements. [aries and scorpio venuses].

♇ people with uranus in 3h tend to multi-task really well.

♇ pluto-jupiter aspects especially square, conj or opposition are very hypersexual.

♇ we know that scorpio moon can bring not the best relationship with mothers, but women with a scorpio moon might've had a mother that's weirdly obsessive with them?

♇ you could always tell when someone has a leo moon, it's definitely the hair, in my opinion when it comes to appearance the moon is stronger than the ascendant, especially when it comes to this sun ruled sign. [they like to dye their hair too].

♇ my nephew a leo moon and his hair is amazing, aside from that leo moons love to style their hair too, example, kylie jenner. [plus, my nephew's hair is styled all the time too]. another example is megan thee stallion.

♇ and me and my friends could tell the actor of orson hodge from desperate housewives was a leo moon, his hair showed it all. kyle maclachlan.

♇ i remember when someone said rahu replaces, like how in time camera pictures replaced paintings [even though painting is still used] another example could be that facebook was replaced by instagram. with how twitter and netflix are going, another website/app will replace them soon.

♇ some virgo moon men could have a weird relationship with their mother, or for another example, virgo moon mother's can be a great example of how weird "boy mother's" are.

♇ i can always tell when someone is krittika or an aries ascendant/aries in big 3 [tropical and sidereal, that JAW will show], example bree van de kamp the actress being marcia cross who has sun and venus in aries, next to her is simone ashley who has an sun and moon in aries.

♇ aquarius in big six are amazing at playing bimbo [when actually they're very smart], example marilyn monroe, isabel clancy [who is known for her 2000's bimbo tiktok skits].

marilyn monroe an aquarius moon.

isabel clancy an aquarius venus and mars.

paris hilton an aquarius sun, mercury and venus.

chart readings are open!

intuitive readings are open!

astro observations masterlist

masterlist

♇

[creature-wizard]

Scams, Hoaxes, Conspiracy Theories, & Cults Everyone Should Know About

Jilly Juice: Jillian Mai Thi Epperly claimed drinking sixteen cups of her super salty cabbage concoction each day could regrow missing limbs and cure everything from cancer to homosexuality. In reality, overdosing on so much salt caused followers a host of health issues that Epperley dismissed as "healing symptoms."

Nonhuman Body Hoax: Jaime Maussan attempted to pass off mummified human remains as nonhuman beings to the Mexican government. (This isn't even Maussan's first hoax, by the way. He has a history.)

Love Has Won: Amy Carlson, a woman who'd walked out on her own children, started a New Age cult in which she presented herself as "Mother God," the creator of the universe. She claimed to be in contact with dead celebrities and alien beings, and taught a conspiratorial worldview. As her health declined, she attempted to treat herself with colloidal silver and alcohol, and her behavior became increasingly abusive. When she finally died, her followers sincerely believed she would return to life and kept her body in a sleeping bag. (She did not return to life.)

Seed Faith Offerings: Reverend Gene Ewing came up with the perfect get-rich-quick scheme to prey on desperate Christian believers: tell believers that if they "sowed seed" by giving money to him, God would bless them with even more money in the future. He made millions of dollars from these donations, while most of his followers never saw the miraculous returns they were promised.

William Walker Atkinson: In the early 20th century, William Walker Atkinson wrote around one hundred books, many of which he wrote under various pseudonyms. Some of these pseudonyms included alleged Hindu mystics. That's right - this guy was practicing literary brownface to sell his mystical ideas.

The LDS Church: In the 19th century, a man named Joseph Smith claimed that an angel had told him where to dig up a set of golden plates that were supposedly written by ancient Hebrews who'd come to North America. Smith even had eleven close associates who vouched for the plates' existence. Yet the script they were allegedly written in bore no relation to actual ancient scripts of the Near East, and the the names the locations in the books he "translated" were very obviously derived from placenames he would have been familiar with. (For example, Oneida/Onidah.) Oh, and actual archaeology and DNA studies have discredited pretty much everything from this guy's weird racist narrative.

Fake Cancer, Fake Cure: Wellness entrepreneur Belle Gibson claimed that she'd cured her brain cancer with natural remedies. Gibson never actually had cancer in the first place.

Medbeds: Back in 2020, QAnons and QAnon-adjacent people started circulating claims that a new form of healing technology was about to become available to the public within the next several months or so. Depending on who you asked, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and even the Galactic Federation of Light were involved. The time of their supposed unveiling came and went, and what do you know, there are still no functioning medbeds used in actual medicine.

COVID Vaccine Zombies: Conspiracy theorists have been claiming the government practices high-tech mind control for ages now. One recent iteration of this is a conspiracy theory claiming that people who'd received COVID vaccinations would have malicious DNA code activated by 5G on October 4, 2023, turn into zombies, and riot. The time came and went, and no zombie outbreak happened.

Ms.Scribe: In the early 2000s, a Harry Potter fan known as "msscribe" or "Ms.Scribe" faked her own harassment through a number of sockpuppets, with the apparent goal of becoming friends with some Harry Potter fandom bigwigs. She manipulated the fandom for a few years until the deception was finally uncovered.