Dating back to 1000 BCE., Cults have been active throughout history. Although the word cold has only been used since the early 17th century, many cultic groups have come and gone since the time of king David of Israel. The word cult itself derives from the Latin verbs “colere” meaning inhabited, and “cultus” meaning worship. And earlier years, the word cold with used for describing religious ceremonies or even just where ship. Later, the word was used to refer to a new religion created in modern times, whilst some use the word to delineate a way of “faith healing”.
The cult of Saint Olaf, created after King Olaf II of Norway died in the battle of Stiklestad, was one of the earliest cold and history. The founder of the church, crossword, was inspired to create the cold by the king’s ubiquitous encouragement of adopting Christianity.
Other than the cult of Saint Olaf, there are not as many aboriginal cults and history that we know of. However, the cult of Khirbet Qeiyafa is a newly discovered by going to domination. there is not much information of this group other than some artifacts discovered by Yosef Garfunkel and the university of Jerusalem in 2012. they found three shrines that they believe were a part of a larger complex, along with two basalt altars, two pottery liberation vessels, two portable box shaped shrines, and five standing stone that they believe dated back to 3000 years ago. They have found cult-like images carved on the pottery and altars. The town of Khirbet Qeiyafa is just 19 miles southwest of the city Jerusalem.
Before the early 1900s cults rarely made an appearance in American history. Until Reverend Major Jealous started the Peace Movement in 1912. Little is known about him other than his self-given name, Father Divine. Father Divine refused to talk about any information relating to personal life before the cult, including his real name. Newspapers in the early 1900s believe his name was George Baker, although in 1936 Eliza Mayfield claimed to be his mother but had no proof. The Peace Movement has very little historic information due to their secretive style. Father Divine led the Peace Movement until his death in 1965. Mother Divine, his wife, took over as leader until her death in 2017.
Sun Myung Moon, the founder of the Unification Church, generated his group in 1954 after escaping a North Korean prison camp when the U.S. Army overran the camp. He was sent to prison for allegedly spying on the North Korean government for South Korea. In 1952 Moon joined the Presbyterian church but just two years later, he was excommunicated. Moon started his cult after his experience when he was 16 years old and claimed that he had a vision the Jesus told him he had not finished his work on earth, and Moon should carry on. Moon’s teaching is called Divine Principle. Basically, Divine Principle teaches the followers how to pray, inspiration, study of scripture from the bible, and life. Divine Principle’s main point is “Creation in order to understand the Creator”. Moon believed everything in nature comes in pairs developing the world known mass marriage ceremony. Moon would hold a collective wedding with hundreds of couples waiting to get married by him. After moving to New York, he grew incredibly popular gaining around 900,000 to one million followers. There, her started getting an unbelievable amount of attention from parents of members. Parents began suing the church for brainwashing and corruption of their children. In the early 80s the
Church was filed with tax evasion. You could say Sun Myung Moon created a trend leading many others to create similar movements in the 20th century just like his own. Many others saw the amount of respect and praise Moon received and then gained inspiration leading to similar cults in the future.
Numerous cults are religious. For instance, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, also known as the FLDS. The FLDS is a popular 20th century cult lead by Warren Jeffs. The 7 to 10,000 followers believe Jeffs is the Prophet and questioning his knowledge or teachings will end in a great act of punishment like torture. This religious clique is based off of the LDS, a Mormon church founded by Lorin C. Woodley in 1912. The FLDS is known nationwide because of its Mormon roots and polygamist beliefs. In the FLDS polygamy is required, meaning if a male over a certain age doesn’t have at least three wives he lose respect and salvation. Rules in the FLDS are now considered sexist and out dated to non-members. For example, children’s games and television are considered sins, men cannot have intercourse with their wife if she is pregnant, school textbooks must be approved by Warren Jeffs, the color red is forbidden, and some sins like require atonement in order to gain personal forgiveness. Human sacrifice is one of the main points of early Mormonism as well. After Jeffs was imprisoned, it was later discovered that he often taught his followers that killing a sinner would get you into heaven. In spite of the fact that these harsh rules are incredibly strict, some acts that are considered wrong and illegal to us are considered the opposite to them. Intercourse with a minor, incest, marriage to more than one women, and even sexual harassment are all relevant in the FLDS. These particular undertakings are considered acceptable in the FLDS and sometimes mandatory. The members are considered so brainwashed that mothers and fathers let Jeffs reassign their children and wives to other families. Additionally, they truly believe Jeffs is the President of the United States and with that comes the rule of not being able to vote. Jeffs is now in prison for life plus 20 years for sexually assaulting two young girls from the ages 12 to 15 on tape claiming they were his “spiritual wives” and many others. By that time Jeffs had around 79 wives from the ages to 12 to 50 years old. For a while he was on the FBI’s ten most wanted list, in between Osama Bin Laden and James J. Bulger. Afterwards, many victims gained the courage to go to court and tell the truth about his repulsive manner, including his 28-year-old nephew who claims he had raped him when he was just five years old. Jeffs had around 26 rape reports by that time. A woman in the FLDS not only has more rules to follow but has to obey the males command or they will be considered “dishonorable”, “unladylike”, and “not polite”. Being a woman in polygamy seems awkward and unbearable to the majority of society, members of the FLDS think the opposite. Most sister-wives describe polygamy as comforting and love-filled but at times can be envious because jealousy will occur between new younger wives in order to gain attention from the man. Women are not allowed to show their ankles or cut their hair. Their wardrobe consists of prairie dresses made by women in the local community.
Without a doubt, the fact that there are multiple varieties of cults who might seem similar among themselves, does not necessarily always mean they all have the same goal. Generally speaking, a cult is a group of people who look up to one person and his or her beliefs, looking at them as a leader and they are the followers. A goal, for a widespread movement, is usually something the group of followers can come together and agree on, resulting in the fact of admiration towards the leader since they fabricated the group themselves. For example, when L. Ron Hubbard, an American author, founded the Church of Scientology in 1952, on account of so many respecting his self-help book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. He was so motivated by his large fan population to create the therapeutic cult-like church. The church of Scientology primarily targets the wealthy, emotionally hurt individuals by claiming they have the answers to love, family, money, life, and all of mankind. They believe man is an immortal being and joining the church will extend your lifeline well beyond the common person. The story that Scientology is based off a story 75 million years ago. The story is about an evil alien dictator, Xenu, that brought billions of his people to earth and when it became over-populated he dealt with the issue by surrounding them with volcanoes and dropping atomic bombs on them. Seeing that Scientology has traces of therapeutic and religious elements, they have factors of brainwashing and physiological persuasion. By physiological persuasion, I mean taking a vulnerable person and compelling them into believing that you have the answer to their emotional difficulties. Naturally, at the state they are in, they believe them and will do anything for a solution. Essentially trapping them and feeding them more lies causing a sort of brainwashing effect.
The majority of people joining cults are looking for family and security. In view of the fact that those people looking for the following have had a lack of emotional support and love. Having a substandard childhood becomes a significant element for joining cult. Especially, if a parental figure was abusive or absent triggering a form of Security Attachment Disorder. Trauma from a flawed childhood can also spark Obsessive Compulsive Disorder causing the adult to strive for perfection. Perpetual Inadequacy, a demand for purity and perfection, is a common recurring element in a lot of popular cults. Most cults advertise about how they are inferior to everyone else constructing an “us vs you” effect. Initially, someone with a substantial form of OCD, works conscientiously towards the goal of perfection, as a result when it is offered it’s taken without consideration. Although a great amount of people joining believe they are better and essentially smarter than the common person, the others have low self-esteem. Still looking at the childhood aspect, most people growing up in an environment where you are constantly around hurtful and judgmental behavior you grow up to have little to no confidence. Being raised in a home where parents are constantly making decisions for children can create a fear for making decisions themselves. When you have a lack of confidence and composure you tend to latch on to anyone showing the slightest bit of interest, ergo the members part of manipulation. Most members, who joined later, tend to be introduced by a co-worker, friend, neighbor, and even family members, who exhort them to join. Silent manipulation plays a big part in new members joining because the vast majority of members who do silent manipulation are typically close to you. Keeping that in mind, some people who join cults are not at all in a destructive mental state just fed up with society. People who are tired of the general public will see a cult and believe it’s a chance to get away and leave civilization before it gets any worse.
Despite the background prospect, cults can leave you with physiological and mental damage. Joining a cult as an adult can decrease your activity in your frontal and parietal lobes. Of course, when you show this to a still active member of a self-damaging sect they believe it’s another entity speaking through them. The brain damage will leave them with a Viral Memetic infection causing many lifelong problems such as paranoia, slow speech, memory impairment, depression, and even physical appearance. Most of this comes from manipulation and mind control performed by the leaders. The leaders will tell them what they want to hear and then creating a new form of punishment from that. By gaining their trust and respect they have made the person more venerable and showing that they have the power to take, any and all confidence away. The goal for the leader is to practically have so much command over the individual, that they believe the leader can decide who has the right to live. Numerous cultic leaders are compared to narcissists because of their desire for more attention and praise.
Women are more likely to join a cult than men because growing up in a “old fashioned” household teaches them that their purpose is to serve a man. Joining a cult can give them a sense of accomplishment because they are essentially living a powerless life. For instance, Charles Manson, the leader of the 1960s-murderous commune the Manson Family. Advertising economic and emotional care for members. Women in search of a man to give them the life they believe they must live are drawn to this. Especially, if they had a lack of love and support in childhood.
Fortunately, there are many organizations precisely towards helping escape cults. Before these were around, most of the people trying to escape had to do it on their own. Weather it’s a religious, therapeutic, political, or a commercial cult, escaping is almost impossible to do, due to the emotional blackmail they have over you. The majority of escape routes used by teens and young adults that have born into a group lie about breaking a major rule resulting in them getting kicked out. Countless stories have been shared during interviews to warn people considering joining. For example, Brielle Decker’s, a former FLDS member and ex-wife to Warren Jeffs, chilling story on how she fled the church’s control. Decker was Jeffs’ 65th wife out of 75, at the age of 18. Once she turned 18 she was turned in to Jeffs by her own father. She was told all her life, by him and her parents, that she was going to marry him. After a while of living with his other wives she began to notice suspicious behavior and started second guessing Jeffs. Once she had told one of her sister-wives about her desire to escape, a sequence of tyrannizing activity came following. She received a number of hate speech, threats, and physical abuse from her formal companions. At one point, some of the wives told her to drown herself in the reservoir outside and they would make it seem like an accident, if she didn’t then they would kill her and make it look like suicide. They went as far as to put a noose in her laundry basket and room as well as other incriminating objects suggesting to commit suicide. Finally getting the courage to escape, she managed to run, bare foot, across the community with the help of a friend. Even though she escaped it was hard for her to adjust to the town in the outside world. She continued to talk about how breaking the little rules after escaping gives you a sense of freedom. For instance, cutting you hair was restricted so for an ex-member it’s like taking a step closer to independence.
The topic of cults can raise many questions, alterations, and a verity of complex arguments. Generally, when someone brings up the topic people manly talk about well-known cults in the 20th century, forgetting the fact that many current terrorist groups have every component of a cult just like the popular ones. Today we see more bombings and shootings rather than murders and suicides committed by past cults. Even if the crimes committed today by cults and terrorist groups are different and driven by other reasons they still have the same effect. Although both use mind-control and guilt.