#religious trauma and cult/

[dxnyarya]

kelly beasley is just cheryl blossom if she didn’t serve cunt

[mourndecay]

i’ll rot with you, my dear.

[seraphimfall]

i’ve read so much tradcath bullshit the last two years. i can confidently say tradcath men fit into one of two categories:

“protestant-raised and converted to catholicism because of his crippling porn addiction and racist tendencies. reposts crusader and conquistador memes. is hated in his local parish.” tradcath

“catholic-raised band kid who ate his lunches with the religion teacher. smells like mildew. cut off all his friends that came out as gay after high school. now larps as an aquinian scholar and cries after jerking off.” tradcath

[deservedgrace]

one of the cult scholars i listen to said "most children are not being raised to die" months ago and i still think "being raised to die" sums up growing up in fundamentalist christianity so well.

my friends and i didn't know if we would grow up to be adults. we would have conversations about wanting the chance to be an adult and knew we were """selfish""" for wanting to live if it wasn't in god's plan. we were raised to believe that we would either be killed for being a christian (in the us no less) or that jesus was coming soon (rapture/end times theology). we knew it was "sinful" to want something outside of god's plan but we couldn't help ourselves.

we were members of the lord's army. we were to obey orders and lay down our life if necessary. "this life is just a test" they'd say. "our real life is our eternal life with the lord." none of this is real, it's just a test. if you pass, you get into heaven. if you fail, you're sent to eternal damnation and hellfire. this is an open book test, we've been given all the answers already. if you fail, it's your own fault.

being raised to die means that your future doesn't matter. jesus is coming soon. jesus is what matters. "set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. for you died, and your life is hidden with christ in god."

i've been out for years. i'm in my late 20's. i still don't know how to set my mind on earthly things. i still struggle to believe i have a future.

[pwurrz]

truthless recluse really disassociated so hard he basically became a completely different person. he fought so hard to convince shadow milk cookie that all the torture and torment he was putting him through wasn’t effecting him, that he was finally broken down and apathetic to all that was happening around him.. but on the inside he was terrified.

the trauma of everything he’d experienced, of learning his entire life, everything he worked for, what he had decided was his entire worth and purpose in the world was destined for a path of corruption before the moment he was even born shook him to his very core, but he couldn’t let that show. he couldn’t even hint at how lonely and full of pure despair he was because that’s a sign of weakness, and he knows very well how shadow milk cookie responds to that.

i can’t imagine how utterly miserable pure vanilla must have felt at that moment in time. the light inside his eyes died, nothing left but a lifeless husk of the person he used to be. when he offered to become a cookie of deceit, to share his soul jam with shadow milk so they could rule the world together through chaos and lies… i almost believed him.

and then he pulled the rug out from underneath everyone’s feet by taking control of the soul jam, once he had gotten shadow milk to trust him and put his power into it, shattering it and creating a new one using nothing but sheer willpower. do you understand how insane that is?? the soul jam was given to the ancient heroes as gifts from their ‘gods’, granting them immortality as well as unprecedented power. it’s divine power, a power that took a team of the world’s greatest scientists with the most advanced technology to figure out how to borrow and wield even a fraction of its power.

and pure vanilla not only broke that, but then proceeded to forge an entirely new one.

i lost the plot somewhere along the way, but the point was originally supposed to be: don’t let anyone tell you cookie run kingdom is a childish game for children. it absolutely is not. the fact that they’re all cute cookies is a way to lower your guard before ambushing you with the most fucked up and traumatizing establishing lore ever seen in a mobile game about fucking baked goods.

[psiirockin]

tw : sensitive implications // Pristine oc trend!

[cultsurvivorsafe]

Cult survivors, you don't lack intelligence. You don't lack morality. Your abuse was and never will be your fault.

[byebyassociation]

Analysis explaining why Daan can be inferred as a survivor of sexual violence, particularly in childhood through the Bunnymasks.

Text version below cut

“But it’s never stated Daan is a csa survivor”

Daan’s parents raised him in the Bunnymask sect of Sylvian’s cult. This sect is one of the few religious communions we’ve seen ingame.

It’s a massive orgy.

His parents traveled around to attend these orgies and neglected Daan

“Since you were a toddler, you had been travelling around the Europa with your parents. Your parents were devout followers of the older god of fertility and creation, Sylvian. Because of the nature of Sylvian's cult, in each new town you'd witness your parents putting on their rabbit masks and heading to the meadows naked with all the other cult members. You hated this life. Your parents would be more concerned on the matters of religion than you.” 

Which would be the end of it if not for this line

“To make it worse, they even tried to pass on the healing gift of Sylvian to you.”

Daan does not learn healing whispers at this point in time. He does not learn loving whispers either. Both are spells which restore the body’s health. He doesn’t learn anything from this, in fact. This is not something that can be used in a playthrough nor even further elaborated on in flavor dialogue.

In the original Fear and Hunger when you encounter the Bunnymask cult you are able to join in their activities. This gives your party a full mind and body heal. Unfortunately this is likely what Daan learned in his youth.

Daan was sexually trafficked through his faith while under the age of 13.

“You were 13 years of age and alone in the Kingdom of Rondon. You had to do something for living...”

Pickpocket Route

“You weren't cut out to be a street thug, so you had to rely on the only skills you had for the money... The healing gift of Sylvian. You ended up starting a street praction of medical care where you'd heal people of all social classes. You soon became surprisingly adept with the healing gift of Sylvian.”

And sadly escaped this sex cult by further being exploited through underage sex work, here is where he learned formal Sylvian spells

“You learned Healing Whispers and your affinity with Sylvian grew!”

Honest Work Route

“A butler of a local aristocrat took you under his wing as an apprentice. You started working for the Baron Eihner Von Dutch.”

Or offering sexual knowledge to an older man in exchange for an education, a deal called a ‘proposition’ by an older Daan.

“He taught you about the modern medical practices in exchange for your knowledge on the older god Sylvian.”

Note: Eihner being a predator of some kind is a heavily contentious theory as it hinges on his behavior as a sulfer cultist. However it is pretty fucking weird tm to be having a kid talk about sylvian, goddess of fertility, sex and lust in exchange for some sort of education

This is not all, just the instances and implications that immediately come to mind.

[jesusinstilettos]

Abusive religions will tell you that positive feelings in your body are signs from god or a movement of the holy ghost and then do whatever they can to monopolize those positive feelings by demonizing any other source they could come from. Sex, masturbation, “worldly” media, “worldly” music, connecting with friends outside the church, etc. That way you don’t figure out that those feelings aren’t god, they’re a biological response you can get from anything else. It’s just dopamine. And then you’ll become dependent on the church for dopamine because it’s your only source. It’s literally hacking your biology to keep you dependent on the church.

[originalzin]

So I got a new therapist.

[cconfusedkat]

Shamura redesign done first!! Made them more desaturated and more like a vampire ':-) Their character background is the most fulfilled out of the other four bishops 💦,,

They have always had some type of religion to involve themself with ever since they were 16 --- when the purple crown snuck into their bag as a child in their way home from churchand they burnt down their home clergy with that same power. Truthfully it was deserved for that clergy because of the corrupt power, but they still feel extremely guilty after nine millenia ,,, Unfortunately as corrupt as that clergy was they themself eventually became of that same corrupt power both as bishop and returning to mortality as a follower

You would most likely see them interacting with other morticians rather than the rest of the cult who does other jobs. They aren't too easy to get along with nor talk to regularly since they often make people uncomfortable with their fixation of death and the lamb 'saving us all in our next life'

Just your typical dose of possible religious psychosis and losing your mind even more despite your brain damage being healed ever so slightly ❤️

They consider themself a zombie more than a vampire, always feeling like a walking corpse. It definitely worsened after the millennia of the betrayal events and being beheaded for trial ,, once a small child who was afraid of lambs to 10 millenia later of them preaching lambs everyday of their life for prosperity

[seraphimfall]

you were taught to hate yourself when you needed love the most.

[deservedgrace]

something that's really been bothering me lately is how the church i was a part of would like... repackage doctrine to make it sound nicer and more acceptable. like, the belief that all humans are evil by nature and deserve eternal torture for the crime of existing is inherently violent and cruel. but my church didn't frame it like that. they framed it as "yes we're ALL evil and wicked and we ALL deserve hell to atone for our sin (being human) BUT god loves you despite you not deserving love or happiness or anything good at all and all you have to do to avoid the pits of hell is accept jesus as your savior isn't that so amazing????" and they framed the crucifixion as this beautiful, selfless act of god by taking our place on the cross instead of "this all-powerful being who created all the rules decided that he required torture, death, and human sacrifice to be able to tolerate us". and it's not "women will be viewed as lesser than men" it's "women must submit to their husbands the same way we all must submit to god it's not dehumanizing it's holy and yes women have different roles but that doesn't make them lesser than and sure we don't have any women in leadership positions in the church and we would never even consider it, come on now that's ridiculous, but that's just because men are supposed to lead because men and women are different and created for different purposes it's just biology". and there are plenty others! i know that the reframing of everything is part of how they can even get people to accept the doctrine in the first place, but being on the outside of it is kind of horrifying. when you get down to the actual beliefs that are held without the distortions and manipulation, so many are violent, cruel, dehumanizing, abusive. but they distort and manipulate these beliefs to make them seem acceptable, morally correct, and redefine what love is and should look like.

[creature-wizard]

PSA: If you're searching out resources to help cult survivors, check their citations and look out for these names - and if you see them, leave immediately - because these people are all far right conspiracy theorists:

Svali

Cisco Wheeler

Fritz Springmeier

Cathy O'Brien

Mark Philips

Lawrence Pazder

Michelle Smith/Pazder

Lauren Stratford

Texe Marrs

Bill Schnoebelen

Rebecca Brown

Mike Warnke

Literally all of these people were (or in some cases, still are) pushing far right conspiracy theories derived from early modern witch panic, blood libel, and The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Literally do not trust anyone or anything that cites them.

[aphidclan-clangen]

part 2 out of 3

[cultsurvivorsafe]

Survivors of sensationalized and stigmatized abuse deserve healing, too. Those with trauma considered scary, taboo, or even interesting are your fellow survivors.