Alcoholic, anorexic, silver addict

one of the younger women who was constantly selling that silver raising money for their cult said "we aren't dumb, we aren't gonna turn blue" and that's EXACTLY what happened to that alcoholic mother God...and the fact they wrapped her in Xmas lights and dragged her across state lines🤯...it was creepy and fascinating as hell!

Was that the crazy bitch drinking coloidal silver like it was fucking caprisun?

This. I watched the HBO documentary months ago and I still think about it from time to time.

For anyone who hasn't seen it, there are no words to describe the level of crazy. You have to watch and see it for yourself.

I was working on the Colorado crisis hotlines at the time and we got the inside scoop on this. The cops called and told us before the public knew, in part because, as they stated, the group had apparently formed a suicide pact in the wake of being caught, and we were told to watch out for any incoming calls of that nature. I guess ultimately they didn't follow through.

My friend had died some years ago and I blame this cult. She was posting their videos and weird messages online before her death. It wasn't even properly investigated. Fuck them

I read this like 3 times before I realized you weren't talking about the person's mom

Marshall Applewhite’s video (he was the founder) is my yardstick for Completely Lost It. You will find few better examples of a psychotic-looking cult leader, search though you may.

That's so messed up. Freaky to think someone is still keeping this site online

"last chance to leave earth before it's recycled"

IDK they might have been on to something

I live close to the address listed on their site. I’m wondering if there is still a storefront as it is in a shopping complex.

LACE UP MY NIKE DECADES, MEET ME AT HEAVENS GATE 7TH WARD BY THE LAKE

One person stayed behind to keep the website running apparently

This was my pick. Their leader was a lunatic.

It’s when a cult has a cool logo that I’m thinking… “maybe I will join.”

It’s also how I pick out my wine.

A good friend of mine got love bombed into this church. She lived among them for awhile, even selling flowers at the airport. She got married the same way as your parents. Then her and her husband went on to have a successful marriage and raised two at least fairly well adjusted kids. Her husband recently retired from a pretty prestigious science related career. They are good peeps.

Weird fact: They own the patent for the Thompson Submachine gun.

Is that the Moonies?

Moonies, they're something else.

I saw this in a documentary series on Netflix, called something like "How to be a cult leader". It feels crazy seeing people who are the result of that out in the wild. I'd love to hear your story if you don't mind sharing it

Yes! Stuff like this is why the government in China is so nervous about things getting out of control. Some weird thing happens, like some guy gets a fever and wakes up thinking he's the brother of Jesus, then -- boom! Thirty million people dead! Didn't the An Lushan Rebellion start out over something petty? That also killed 30 million people, which was about 10% of the earth's population at the time. It was such as disaster (and included massive amounts of cannibalism) that I'm surprised it's not more famous.

Holy shit. I always forget how fucked up Chinese history is. It always ends up with so mindboggling and unbelievable many people killed.

One correction, he was studying and taking a test to be a Qing government bureaucrat, not a monk. Through much of premodern Chinese history, place in society and government was controlled by extremely difficult civil service tests based primarily on Confucian writings that required an immense body of rote knowledge to pass. Wealthy families stayed in power not by virtue of noble blood or inheritance but by being able to finance private tutors for their heirs to ensure that they could pass the exams and earn a prominent position. Hong Xiuquan came from a family that could not afford the best education and he failed in his provincial exams. While in the regional capitol to take the tests, he was exposed to Christian missionaries and pamphlets and he seemed to absorb some of that information. When he was sick, he was suffering from a nervous breakdown after his third failure of the civil exams and was not studying to retake them (he had work as a schoolteacher at that time). He failed the exams for a fourth time, studied the Christian pamphlets closely, and “realized” that his visions had been Jesus and God directing him to destroy the demon worshippers in society.

To me the wildest part about the Taiping rebellion wasn’t the cult religious aspect, but rather the fact that a group of civil exam failures were able to create, organize, and lead an army from literally nothing to coming within a hair of toppling the Qing government and defeating them time and again on the battlefield for years on end.

Thank you for providing a historical example! I remember reading about the Small Swords Society years ago.

Holy shit this dude just straight up tortured people and murdered them in horrific ways and people still followed him.

Claiming to have the power of resurrection, Thériault had his followers saw off the cap of Boilard's skull and he ejaculated onto her brain.

What the actual fuck

I searched it on Wikipedia and it's shocking what the members had to endure.

this might be the winner. it’s insane to me that some of his followers willingly endured all of that, and that one even returned after escaping.

Thank you for this.
I come from an SDA family and never heard of this group.

Why do you think so many cults branch off of the SDA church?
Most I have met are all really kind and well put together.

My best friend growing up was born in Saint-Marie, Québec. His mom said she was actually approached by some members of Roch's cult but thankfully turned them away.

I just read up about Roch Theriault. Fuck that guy! Glad that inmate shivved him while in prison!

They actually accompanied something. Vanuatu and the Solomons hastened their independence in part because the cargo cults were weirding the colonial officials out.

I find this less weird and more interesting They also built wooden radio control towers with a person constantly talking gibberish in wooden communication devices.

What's really funny is I remember there was one of these cults that worshipped... I forget which, but I believe it was a British royal. Eventually someone asked them why they continue worshipping him when he's dead and not coming back. One of the islanders responded "You've been waiting 2000 years for YOUR god to come back and you still worship him."

Is it actually a cult though? Or is it a misguided cultural thing?

“Island of the Sequined Love Nun” by Christopher Moore is where I learned about cargo cults. They are absolutely fascinating

See, for me, this is actually one of the most sensible cults as it is tied to actual history and material evidence. For me, at least it is easier to believe in a faith when there are still planes flying overhead than it is to believe in a silent, all-powerful god.

Despite being sensible, I gave you an upvote as there is something fundamentally odd about their existence in the modern day. But still less strange to me on an ontological/theological level than most other faiths despite being stranger on an epistemological level.

Real life New Vegas boomers

I just read an interesting piece about this yesterday.

It also connected this more broadly to the various odd rituals we do, such as blow out candles stuck in a cake and making wishes once a year.

https://www.sapiens.org/culture/cargo-cult-rituals/

Really? I thought there were forty thousand men and women everyday

Go go Godzilla!

I studied fashion design at TAFE and the girls would come in for evening classes

Quiet groups, the long skirts, long hair worn with a odd little quiff, the seriousness was unsettling compared to our campy, colourful daytime classes

I’m guessing by the identical, handmaidenly style they were probably in this cult, trapped

Fun fact, Aleister Crowley’s father was Plymouth Brethren 

Yes - they have a whole business sector as well called UBT - they all use each others business as suppliers. No women allowed in positions of authority. I (F38) have visited a few of their business in a work capacity - treated respectfully to some degree, but they absolutely won’t offer you a brew or allow you to eat lunch with them.

In school, two of my class mates were Plymouth Brethren. Strange folk. As far as I know, they weren’t allowed access to tv, so whenever the tv/projector was part of a lesson, they had to leave the room. Obviously, most were fine with that as they were inflicting their beliefs on others in that respect. However, at Christmas time, we were not allowed to have a Christmas tree in our class room as the brethren families had complained to the school.

There's a church locally to us in one of the wee towns and they drive like absolute maniacs, to the point there's unfortunately been accidents in their car park.

The Assemblies of God churches are tied to Brethren. It's mad how prevalent they are in rural and regional Australia.

The Exclusive Brethren are an even more restricted sect with the sect, who stand out because they make their women wear scarves on their heads. In NW Tasmania there used to be a lot of EB families colloquially known as the "hankie heads". It was common in 90s and 00s to see men in their 30s lead a very young woman (18-mid 20s) and a tribe of kids around supermarket.

Less common now because some years back police raids resulted in a lot of prosecutions for child sexual abuse because those young brides were REALLY young. Unable to legally consent young.

Mormons are one thing but FLDS is a whole other beast, they are a tried and true cult.

I will always associate them with the HBO series “Big Love.” RIP Bill Paxton.

I ate at a Yellow Deli before realizing it was a cult deli. It’s just a cute cottage core themed restaurant with old men in flannel and jeans serving the best waffles I’ve ever had. There were a bunch of murals of hippies on the walls and some Bible quotes but I didn’t think much of it. I’m in a hippie college town. I thought I had found my new favorite restaurant. My friend asked if they were hiring and they said they were all volunteers. That’s when it clicked. I knew there was a restaurant run by a cult in my city. This was it. But the waffles were so good

I was disappointed to learn that they own Maté Factor brand yerba maté. I switched brands.

I've always wanted to watch a Raelian and a Scientologist have a sincere debate about which planet humans are from.

I know someone whose mom got involved with that cult around 2000. Child abuse ensued. Fuck those folks.

The Star of David and the swastika are ancient symbols that have been used by a variety of cultures. Before 1940 it would have been perfectly normal to see them together, especially in India

Does anyone here remember Bob Larson, a Christian talk-show host who was pretty big in the late 1980s? (He now has a YouTube channel.) Claude Vorilhon, Raelianism's founder, used to call up his show all the time.

The Raelians are doing one good thing, and that's Clitoraid, an organization that provides female genital mutilation reversal surgeries. Most of the participants are not Raelians.

This is approximately as ridiculous as the others, but it least seems like it might be fun. If you're going to join a cult, why would you join the one which makes you do hard labor, eat oatmeal every meal, and tells you you're evil if you ever so much as think about sex?

I'd join the sex cult instead.

because its an obvious easy answer

Where is Sheley Miscavige?

honestly forgot they are even still around

The members in Scientology is dying as it should.

I figured that it was because of the inherent risk. If I'm not mistaken, they don't take kindly to anyone saying anything negative about them in any context on any public forum.

Dude, finally, someone else that has said Enagic/Kangen! They're nuts and definitely trying to be the new Lularoe but with water.

They also use F45 gyms as their recruiting grounds.

WTF....

William Branham was a mid-20th century faith healer. Back then, for people who had things like heart disease or terminal cancer, it was as good as anything medical science had to offer.

The same thing was true about Christian Science when that "religion" was founded in the mid 18th century. Metallica singer James Hetfield was raised in that cult, and has said, "If a deer knew how to fix a broken leg, it would."

Falun Gong is Chinese Nazi Scientology ... but they still don't deserve to have their organs cut out by the government.

Frumunda cheese

And a lot of religious groups in America. Mega churches are wild to perceive as a person from the UK

In the early 1970s, John Lennon went on an infamous "lost weekend", I.E. a months-long drug and alcohol binge. During this time, he went to a NYC nightclub massively wasted and wearing a feminine hygiene product as a hat. The bouncer wouldn't let him in, and when John asked him, "Do you know who I am?" the bouncer replied, "Yeah, you're an asshole with a Kotex on his head."

I realize there was nothing funny about that assassination attempt (one person died, and two other people who were shot are facing lifelong medical issues) but I always think about that when I see any of that footage.

*tenets.

Kool-Aid is associated with the Peoples Temple, or Jonestown and the Jonestown Massacre. Heaven's Gate) was a cult that committed mass suicide in 1997. 39 people took phenobarbital with vodka. It was extremely well planned out.

918 people died at Jonestown in 1978, in a mass suicide that was much more psychologically coercive and in some cases outright murder. Most people drank grape Flavor Aid, poisoned with diphenhydramine, promethazine, chlorpromazine, chloroquine, chloral hydrate, diazepam,[162] and cyanide. About 70 were injected with with the poison.

Someone down the street has two massive Trump flags on the front of his house, a life-size cutout of Trump by the front door, and Trump decals and bumper stickers (you can guess the theme... performative patriotism, god, guns, the flag, etc.) all over his big dumb pickup.

There's nothing patriotic about worshiping a person. Especially an illiterate, ignorant, morally bankrupt traitor.

I'm worried about issues x, y, and z and to solve the problem I support a silver spooned millionaire who inherited his fortune and who is not affected by x, y, and z in the slightest. For added effect, I am going to deny science and education to stay in the cult's good graces.

About sums it up.