#Cult Danger

[queersatanic]

How to spot when you're in a cult

How to recognize that you’re in a cult seems so obvious and therefore unnecessary to ask that most people never even bother to do so.

Consequently, it should not be a surprise so many people continue to find themselves in cults and not realize it till years later, if at all.

Let’s get a quick, short definition out of the way, borrowed from the French Interministerial Mission for the Fight against Drugs and Addictive Behaviors:

"A cult is an organized group or a solitary person whose purpose is to dominate cult members by using psychological manipulation and pressure strategies."

A couple of misconceptions: we are not talking about New Religious Movements (NREs)—at least not exclusively. To begin with, those are not necessarily cults, and more importantly, cults are not exclusively "religious" movements.

From Heaven's Gate to Scientology to for-profit face-to-face canvassing, you cannot rely on the self-description of an organization to accurately describe what it does, and like with NXIVM, it usually isn't the supernatural or religious aspects that are actually problematic.

A cult may never have explicitly supernatural or spiritual aspects; they may define themselves by their strict adherence to materialism, even. Thus, if those are the red flags you're looking for, you're not going to notice when no one is talking about god, reincarnation, or quantum pseudoscience.

Cults are a normal part of modern society, not something only at the fringe.

Considering the likely audience of this, it may be tempting to say, “No gods, no masters,” or “obviously capitalism is a cult.”

But this is a feature that appears within the radical, anticapitalist left as well.

The abusiveness of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) or Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), of Bob Avakian's Revolutionary Communist Party USA, or Gazi Kodzo's Black Hammer organization and its rapid turn toward failed Colorado commune and predation of unhoused people in Atlanta — it is not just “those people” who can fall into this. A Maoist transbian polycule with a central node who controls the sex lives of her partners while leading the “self-crit” sessions — this is only tangentially the faults of capitalism.

No one is immune from this, no one is safe. Because while cults can express themselves in all of these various ways, they are not only taking advantage of the weakest or worst of us; they don’t even always take us in our weakest or worst moments.

Cults also will, like a cordyceps fungus, repurpose your strengths and talent to their own ends. Your incredible intelligence and reasoning abilities will be turned to explaining why you should continue to support this particular cult despite all evidence to the contrary. Your empathy will make you care about others still in the cult that leaving it would mean leaving behind. You will convince yourself that reform is possible and you just need to go through the proper channels that the abusers just happen also to control.

To review: a cult can like anything and anyone can find themselves in one.

But most cults by their nature do not lead with the weirdest shit first. Some go as far as to have front companies recruiting people to one thing, then slowly introduce this other thing when a target is thought suitable and their defenses are down.

For most people, there won’t be a clear, sudden indicator because they will be surrounded by others who treat these power dynamics as normal and good. Peer pressure is not just something middle schoolers fall victim to but something all of us experience.

Even if you leave, all that does is reinforce the survivor bias and culture of those who remain, feeding the narratives of exclusivity, elitism, and persecution to keep members cleaved from the outside.

Back to the question: how do you spot that you’re in a cult?

It’s crucial that you actually bother to ask. It’s crucial that you have the humility to assess your surroundings, your choices, and be willing to walk away from stuff you’ve invested in when you realize your mistake, sunk costs be damned.

There are various guides you can use, but a pretty robust if still subjective one is Isaac Bonewits’ Advanced Bonewits Cult Danger Evaluation Frame (ABCDEF), rating 18 categories to score from one-to-10.

There are others. ABCDEF works best for new religious movements; Gwen Snyder taking business cults to task highlighted some issues Bonewits did not.

Certainly, neither person is themself infallible. Consider both nothing more than starting points.

So far, we haven’t talked much about anarchist groups or dynamics, and you may assume that’s because we are not power worshipers, fascists, Marxist-Leninists, so our praxis inoculates us.

That is bunk.

It is true that anarchist critiques of hierarchy apply to cults as well. An anarchist may not always be able to recognize a hierarchy, but we ought to have a good idea of our response when we do.

Yet anarchists are not immune from becoming cult leaders. Those who exploit others this way are not uniquely evil or a different species from us. A cult leader may be wholly sincere and actually believe they are just that special, that irreplaceable.

If you are an anarchist, you should always be thinking about and planning for your replacement. You will die one day. You may be disabled before that, or jailed before that, or "canceled"; don't think you are not capable of being an abuser, including in ways that meant almost nothing to you but everything to who you hurt.

Anything you're doing should not rely solely on you to not fail. The group you are part of should not require one person, you or anyone else, who is so essential that others are tempted to give them a pass because the work is so important and they are so valuable to the work.

Having said all this, is the vaccination against hierarchical cult abuses a panacea against all abuses? Clearly not.

A cult is one kind of hierarchy.

It is often starkly hierarchical and dangerous but not the only way for an organization or group dynamics to be abusive. We have to work very hard to guard ourselves against these, too; that is anarchism.

We need collective action from non-blood relations willing to work together and help one another. We need to radically re-imagine and embody different ways of living, different possibilities of seeing the world. The taboos of the status quo are not extant always because they serve most of us or benefit any but a few.

And still, attempts to create alternatives to what we have inherited are not guaranteed to be improvements, and in our desperation at the state of the world or just our own lives, we can pursue groups—usually new groups—that lack the protective guardrails erected by necessity to keep a collective functioning since, without them, the group implodes.

How do you spot you're in a cult?

Think about what power is and who has it, and never stop looking or talking to other people about what you see.

Interrogate yourself, don't make excuses for your friends, and kill your heroes so you can meet real people worth knowing.

[creators-island]

Freedom...

[maybmila]

A while later...

Prev / Next

[bet-on-me-13]

Technically a Cult

So! Danny has been hearing through the Grapevine that a large Cult has been Summoning all the biggest Magical Creature's for some reason. Demon Lord's, Fae Kings, even a few Gods. Clockwork was summoned a little while ago, and so was Fright Knight and Pandora

And he has been patiently waiting his turn for a while. Apparently everyone they summon has gotten a really good deal from them, all in return for a few favors, sometimes a promise to not go to a specific place.

Danny really wants to strike a deal with them. He wants to ask them for a favor so he can get out of work for a few weeks, he's been planning on taking a vacation with Sam and Tuck, but the Eyeballs are being annoyingly resistant.

He feels the familiar pull of Summoning, and realizes that it's time. Awesome, time to meet this mysterious Cult!

...

Why is the JLA standing in from of him?

[luxaofhesperides]

Soulmate AU: First Words + End of the World ; requested by @justwannabecat!

Duke has long since accepted that he doesn’t have great luck. Most things in his life tend to go wrong very quickly, or complicate situations he was already struggling in (see: being a meta and getting his powers in the middle of a fight). Having an incomprehensible soulmark is an unpleasant discovery on the morning of his nineteenth birthday, but not entirely unexpected.

He had been hoping for something simple, a common one like hi it’s nice to meet you or sorry, didn’t mean to bump into you.

What Duke gets instead isn’t even words. 

Scrawled across his left hipbone is a string of symbols glowing a faint green. They’re not in a language he recognizes, and the symbols seem to move, shifting ever so slightly so they look different every time he blinks.

“Well,” he says after a solid five minutes of staring into the mirror, unable to rip his eyes off his soulmate’s words, “I hope theirs looks nicer than mine.”

He spends his birthday in a bit of a daze, enjoying time spent with the Waynes and his friends. It’s hard to be fully present when he’s all too aware of the soreness on his hipbone flaring up each time he moves. It’s hard to keep his mind off of it, wanting nothing more than to search for answers, unravel the mystery of his soulmate’s first words.

“Something on your mind?” Jason asks, as the attention shifts off of him for a brief moment as Harper and Cullen get ready to leave and everyone rushes to give their goodbyes,

Duke shrugs, carefully keeping his hands still so they don’t drift to where his soulmark is hidden beneath his clothes. “Yeah. Nothing you need to worry about, though.”

Jason looks him over critically, then nods. 

Duke resigns himself to being investigated by the rest of the Bats. If he’s off enough that Jason had to comment on it, then that means everyone’s noticed and are trying to figure out what’s happened. They’re not going to ask him, because they think he needs space to work through whatever’s got him so distracted, but they’re also not going to just do nothing. 

This won’t be the first time they’ve done this. Duke expects it. Frankly, it would be stranger and much more concerning if they didn’t try to dig up all his secrets the moment they caught wind of him hiding something.

He’ll tell them about getting his soulmark soon. Soulmarks can appear on any birthday between the ages of thirteen to twenty five; they might suspect he got his, but they won’t be able to confirm.

For now, Duke can keep his soulmate’s first words (whatever that gibberish means) to himself.

He makes the decision then and there, as his birthday party winds down, to tell them in a week.

And because his luck is abysmal, a world ending threat hits five days later and suddenly there is no time for soulmarks and first words.

Duke is the last to arrive at the Fortress of Solitude, hitching a ride from Superboy to get there. The biting cold and the harsh winds keep the place far from the reaches of the rest of humanity, surrounded by nothing but deadly white. 

Desolate as the landscape is, it’s still in better shape than the rest of the world.

Things would be better if it was alien invaders. It would be more bearable if some sort of cosmic colossus tried to eat their solar system. At least then there would be something physical that they could fight.

Instead, the world is breaking apart, the sky and earth both fracturing to reveal glowing green faultlines. Timelines are getting mixed up and muddled; just yesterday, Duke had to evacuate a building that had been demolished forty years ago, then stop a gang leader who wouldn’t be born for another eight years from taking over a neighborhood block and holding the residents hostage. Strange creatures are appearing out of nowhere, crawling out of shadows and tide pools and from beneath the roots of trees, all horrible, monstrous things that go after people with teeth and claws. 

The Flashes and the rest of the speedsters are nowhere to be found. The last time anyone get communication from them, it had been Impulse sending Red Robin a glitchy, barely audible video chat saying something along the lines of “trying to fix—unstable—keep us here—never been alive before.” All things that are very concerning to hear, made worse by the fact that no one had been able to contact them at all. 

The quiet loneliness of the Fortress of Solitude is a welcome change from the constant screaming, death, and destruction that’s taken over Gotham as well as the rest of the world. Last he heard, even Justice League China was at the end of their rope. 

“In here,” Superboy instructs, guiding Duke through the halls. There’s no time to look around at Superman’s secret base. All his focus is stuck on staying conscious for another few hours to see if this gathering of heroes is able to find a solution to the world breaking apart.

Batman stands besides Superman. Both nod at Duke when he enters the room. Wonder Woman is watching over John Constantine as he writes something on the floor, muttering under his breath. The rest of the Justice League lean against each other, visibly exhausted as they wait for Constantine to finish up what he’s doing. A few other heroes are here too, and Duke goes to join them where they lean against a wall, fighting to keep their eyes open.

“Hey,” he greets, voice low. “Hanging in there?”

Wonder Girl sighs. “Somehow. I don’t know how much longer we can do this. There’s just too much…”

“We’ll get through this. I mean, even without us out there, plenty of civilians have formed rescue and relief groups to help with keeping things under control,” Speedy says, gently knocking her arm against Wonder Girl’s. “We just gotta keep going. No giving up.”

“What’s this plan, anyways? I just heard that they needed me here to some attempt to fix things.”

“Well, without the speedsters, you’re kind of the only one who can help with time and power related stuff,” Speedy says.

“That’s definitely a stretch. My powers don’t really have anything to do with time. It’s all just light and shadow.”

Speedy shrugs. “Well, you’re here, aren’t you? Too late to complain about it now.”

Duke doesn’t get a chance to say anything else when a loud clap catches his attention. The entire room goes still and silent as Constantine stands up and surveys the circle and symbols he’s written, taking up an entire corner of the large room. 

“Alright,” he says. “Time to get started. Remember, let me do the talking. If you have to speak, it’s only to back me up or when a question is directed to you.”

Batman nods to the other Justice Leaguers, and suddenly everyone is falling into formation behind Constantine. Duke hurries to join them with Wonder Girl and Speedy, taking a place on the edge of the group where he’s a little closer to the circle than the others. 

Constantine begins chanting. His voice is steady though none of the sounds make any sense, refusing to form themselves into recognizable words, and the air the in the room feels heavier. The chalk circle glows a blinding white and Duke can see magic swirling through the air, his power kicking in the let him watch as reality tears and a glowing star in the shape of a boy comes out of it.

Duke blinks, forcing his power down. The hypnotic swirls of magic fade from sight, but the boy still glows, bright and terrible as he floats above the circle and surveys them all. A crown engulfed in blue flame hovers above his head and the fabric of the cosmos is draped over his shoulders as a cape. 

Just from presence alone, Duke can tell that this figure is now the strongest existence in this universe. He hopes this boy king is kind; no one, not even Superman, would be able to beat him in a fight.

The boy king opens his mouth and speaks, but it’s not words than comes out. A strange static like sound emerges, but light and almost melodic. 

His left hipbone burns.

Duke gasps, hand flying down to it, and the boy king’s gaze snaps to meet his.

The world stands still. No one moves. No one dares to breathe.

And then the boy king drops to the floor and walks out of the circle.

“I thought you said that would hold him!” Batman hisses at Constantine, who is looking more and more distressed.

“It was supposed to! I wrote it specifically to hold the King of the Infinite Realms!”

The boy king glances at Constantine. This time, when he speaks, it’s in smooth English. “Did you name the king in your circle?”

“Yeah, I named Pariah Dark… Bloody hell, you ain’t him, are ya?”

“No,” the boy king smiles, “I’m Phantom.”

The cape and crown fade away, and suddenly it’s not an all powerful, terrifying king standing before them, but a young man with white hair and green eyes who looks Duke’s age. Like he could be any other new generation hero in the room. 

“Phantom,” Duke repeats lightly, just under his breath, but it makes Phantom look at him again.

He walks forward, ignoring the other heroes’ aborted attempts to stop him, coupled with Constantine’s frantic back off motion happening behind him. Phantom leaves the circle and the Justice Leaguers behind to stand before Duke, a soft smile on his face.

“Hi,” he says softly, “I dreamed of you.”

“You—what?”

“I dreamed of you. I have for years now. To think that being summoned was what made us meet—” Phantom breaks off into a breathless laugh.

Duke swallows, then drops his had from where it had been pressed against his hip. “So we’re really—? You have my first words too?”

In the corner of his eye, he sees Batman stiffen up. Maybe he should have just told them the day after his birthday, but in Duke’s defense, this is the definition of extenuation circumstances. 

“First words?” Phantom repeats, “Is that… Do we have different soulmate connections?”

“I think so. Here, everyone gets the first words their soulmates say to them appearing somewhere on their body.”

Phantom’s gaze darts down to Duke’s hip, then back up. “Oh. I get dreams. Where I’m from, we dream of our soulmates, and the closer we get to meeting them, the more we remember the dreams.”

“And you dreamed of me.”

“I did.”

“As touching as this is,” Constantine interrupts, and Duke gets to watch as Phantom rolls his eyes, “We summoned you here for a reason. Our world is falling apart at the seams and we need someone powerful, from the Realms, to help us fix it.”

“Okay.”

“...What do you mean ‘okay’?”

“I’ll help,” Phantom says.

“Just like that? No deal to be made, no price to be paid?”

“Just like that. I’m not one for deals anyways. If I can help, then I will. But I do want to see what the problem is with my soulmate by my side, if you don’t mind.”

Batman steps in, fixing Duke with a steady gaze, a barely noticeable tilt of his head. “Signal?”

“Yeah I’ll go with him. Of course I will. The sooner the better, in fact, because everything’s gone to shit.” Duke turns to Phantom, taking hold of one of his hands. “It is really bad out there,” he warns, “If you need help—”

“I’ll ask for help from others in the Realms,” Phantom says. “No offense or anything, but if it’s really that bad, I doubt living mortals will be able to do much to fix things. It’s why I was summoned, right?”

“Right. Let’s get to it, then.”

There’s a flash of mischief in Phantom’s eyes, and cheeky grin stealing across his face for a moment, before he says, “Aye aye, captain!” and picks Duke up like he weighs nothing and flies up through the ceiling.

Duke is able to hear everyone’s surprised, panicked shouts before they’re outside the Fortress of Solitude and Phantom is flying them away. He only needs a few directions from Duke before he finds the first of the large fractures in the sky.

“Yikes,” is all he says, which is not a great thing to hear. “I think I know how to fix it, though. We’ll need to do a little investigating as to who, exactly, started messing around with reality, but once we find the source, it’ll be an easy fix.”

“That’s the best news I’ve heard all week.”

“Even better than meeting your soulmate?”

“I haven’t slept for more than four hours all week. Knowing there’s an end in sight beats everything else.”

Phantom laughs, throwing his head back and Duke can’t help but drink in the sight of him, so ethereal and bright and full of life. “Fair enough! Got any ideas as to where we should start?”

“I’ve got an entire crew of detective vigilantes,” Duke replies. He’s not taking any more chances. No more waiting to talk about important things; he messed up by keeping his soulmark to himself, so he needs to make sure everyone meets his soulmate before shit goes south again. 

“Let’s go find them, then!”

They take off again, soaring through the skies that are barely holding themselves together. 

The world is still ending, and every hero is being stretched thin, but held carefully in Phantom’s arms, racing head first into a solution, Duke can’t help but feel that everything’s going to be alright now. 

He’s had enough bad luck. Now, his soulmate with him, bearing the title of King with grace, things are finally starting to look up.

[jenn-the-mostly-harmless]

Hey, do you like video games?

Then you should be mad at Unity right now! They are threatening the entire gamedev industry by making sudden new rules about how they charge. This threat is serious and literally could cripple the gaming industry. As an example, the devs of Cult of the Lamb have already said they will remove their game from all stores when the new Unity rules go into place, and I doubt they are the only ones. They will HAVE to do that to protect themselves financially, they are not overreacting. There may still be time to stop Unity, either through public outcry, or legal action, but we need to spread the word.

Here is a list of games on Steam that were made with Unity and therefore could be effected by this. I'll put some of them in the tags, but it's honestly overwhelming.

[aychama]

C-can we get smth suggestive of narilamb..? If not I’d take cuddles as well 👉👈

“Good job.”

[culthermag]

Beyoncé on the set of the Me, Myself & I Music Video in 2003 — If I had to choose personally, I would name that song as one of my top ten Beyoncé songs to date and the bob she had in the music video? Chefs kiss in every way. [ xxx ]

[ditzyclown]

That awkward moment when your ex vessel now annoying usurper commits mitosis or smt am I rite?

Mf put those horns away from the thought bubble!

Off topic I like to think Chivo's crown is pretty silly and enjoys the chaos compared to the lamb's crown

[freaky-wasatch-range]

"mormonism is american exceptionalism" has gotta be my least favorite anti-mormon take out there like you could talk about literally anything and THAT'S what you're going with????????? like you can talk about our weird relationship with manifest destiny and colonisation (extremely valid talking points!!!!!!) but to act like some kind of specific allegiance to the united states as an institution is inherent to our doctrine is so..... silence......

[ninjamonkeystudios]

No, they're not the same.

This convicted criminal who has, his ENTIRE LIFE, done everything he could to avoid paying people is saying this shit. This felon who was born rich, floundered through his education, and even bought his way out of a draft would dare to burden others for their EDUCATION (which we have been told for decades is necessary for gainful employment).

This absolute do nothing fail son who somehow couldn't even be trusted to keep a CASINO profitable thinks he should be able to make a call on others' finances.

He is the pinnacle of the mediocre white man. No wonder they love him so.

[creators-island]

Anyway, another comic will come out soon!

[furiousgoldfish]

Abusive parents can sometimes create the 'us versus them' mentality inside of their family, where they convince you that anyone who isn't raising their child the exact way they are, is stupid, ignorant, spoiling their children and making selfish brats out of them.

They also convince you that the world inside of their house, and the world outside, are two different worlds, and only the outside is 'the real world', and it's a place you, according to them, know nothing about, and would never survive in. Outside world is at the same time filled with dangerous individuals, who would hurt you (unlike your parents, who also hurt you, but those outsiders would hurt you worse, apparently), and filled with stupid people who know nothing and are to be insulted and humiliated (abusive parents will often degrade homeless people, minorities, addicts and anyone they deem less worthy, and you'll be stuck in feeling like at least you're not them, but at the same time scared you'll become them, and then you'll be degraded just like that as well.)

In this 'us versus them' situation, your parents are the smartest, the only ones who know what the 'correct way to live is', and the 'correct way to raise children'. They'll tell you how you're supposed to think, behave, speak and act. Their words are the highest truth and not to be questioned or criticized; any criticism will be met with hostility and attacks, and insisting that any other way of thinking would convert them to the 'non desirables' (see above about the minorities and homeless people).

And the thing is, this is a tactic that cults use to make people unable to leave. Convincing people that the thinking and methods inside are vastly superior and better, that anyone outside who doesn't follow their methods is stupid, tainted, incapable of normal life, and that people outside are simultaneously stupid and wrong, but also dangerous, hateful, capable of doing intense harm to you, that's how the cults terrify people into belief that they can never live outside. That it's both dangerous and wrong to even want to.

If you feel scared and incredibly anxious of living outside of your parents home, and your parents have encouraged you to believe those things, you've been exposed to cult-level manipulation to prevent your escape.

[littl3d0ll-art]

Okay, okay, hear me out.

Maybeeee, Some Goat kissies art? Don't really care if its Nari or Leshy or Lamb, just goat kissies.

I had to complete the bishop kissing ring

[ebicthings]

This is how the dangerous devotion au ends

Dangerous devotion au by @creators-island

[artoutforblood]

aftermath of shitten shenanigans