The Opposite of a Cult

I have been obsessed with cult and extreme religions,and in the last seventy years they have grown. In fact they have grown up right alongside neopaganism and the Craft. We have seen this before. In the 1800s, a romantic impulse spurred both the magical and mystic strains of Golden Dawn, Freemasonry and other ceremonial traditions while also giving and impetus to more cultic traditions like Mormonism and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. In our day the rise of the Craft has paralleled the rise of the cults and the cultic, from Hare Krishnas to Moonies, to the followers of Jim Jones, David Koresch and L. Ron Hubbard.

            But why is it that Satanism, for all that it might be, is not a cult, or why is it that no varation of witchcraft has even been counted as a cult, though some versions certainly have cultish aspects. I think it is for the very reason that 1734 is so difficult to explain or deconstruct, because the Craft is the opposite of a cult.

            Cults rely on several things, several needs that human beings have and to some extent large swathes of the human population are ripe for one type of cult or another. Indeed it could be argued that every religion and every group is some mild form of cult. Even in mainstream religion, especially those which require deep devotion, there can be pockets where some practitioners establish cults forms of that faith. What is the difference between an Hasidic sect focusing its life around a rebbe they suppose to be the Messiah and a cult? What is the difference between Catholic lay orders who center themselves around certain saints and teachings and a cult? The desire for cult even infiltrates witchcraft, but the actual pursuit of the Craft, or of any truth, cannot be performed in a cult and this is the reason I am so firm on Craftwork being solitary.

            The term cult arose as a slur, and cults are a superheated subset of religion in general, so it can be hard to define them, but not as hard as one might think. There are certain aspects to a cult.

The cult: has a teacher or teachers who are teaching the One Right Way toward salvation and or happiness. To not follow him or them is to face destruction. There is no true life, no true goodness, no true wisdom and no true happiness outside of the cult..

            The cult has the one understanding of how things are. It has dogmas and doctrines. It is not experience first. Your experience must fit inside of these dogma and doctrines.

            A cult finds being part of the group and the group mind more important than the individual mind. The cult says the individual mind is not necessary. The thinking has already been done. Free thought is a danger. Doubt is the enemy.

            The cult is generally patriarchal. Even if it may occasionally be run by a woman or women,  it centers around the teachings and doings and rules of a man and its schisms and divisions often boil down to a struggle between rival men..

The cult has a certain way of doing this and of doing that, and if that way varies, then one is no longer in the cult.

Anyone who grew up in a religion can peruse this list and think of the Catholics, the Mormons, the Evangelicals, the Muslims, the Orthodox Jewish whatever cousins you have who look at the world in this way, but the point is that all participants in the cult must look at the world in this way. To be in the cult, one must look at things this way. A Catholic can have private or very public disagreements with the Church. An Orthodox Jew can and will, eat as many cheeseburgers as she wishes and still be a Jew. In cults, there is real and dangerous punishment for veering.

But much of what we do is cultic, cultish, not an outright cult. The cult in its mild form is simply easier than being alone and doing your own spiritual work. Subscribing to cult mind and the busy activities of cultish life is easier than dealing with your own doubts. The cultish mind is safer than having one’s own spiritual experiences and this is why so many witches are not true witches, but members of little cults, little churches with no experience of Craft. The cult is where someone else gives you your gods and their names and you live off of another’s gas and experience. To some extent, Satanist, Wiccans, Alexandrians and most established Craft systems are cultic. When you are pretending as your own knowledge someone else’s story, and copying out someone else’s Book of Shadows, you are in a cultic experience.