How Not to Start a Cult
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| How Not to Start a Cult | |
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| Date: | October 24, 2005 |
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I am not sure when the idea of starting a cult occurred to me. It may have been when I was watching the movie Conan the Barbarian. The evil wizard Thulsa Doom had set up a snake cult with thousands of chanting minions willing to fulfill their master's every whim. Seemed like a good gig, except that part about Conan cutting off the wizard's head at the end of the movie. That I could do without.
But the citadel of the cult was impressive. And the scenes of the master addressing his multitudes of adoring drones from the ramparts with James Earl Jones' commanding voice was pretty swanky.
I was sold.
The more I thought about the idea, the more advantages I saw. A cult leader has a lot of free time. He can assign any paper work or administrative drudgery to a minion; that's what minions are for. Cult leaders also get a lot of presents year round. Sometimes the gift is just a crappy bunch of flowers, but the occasional Rolls Royce or villa makes wading through mounds of marigolds worth it. Few cults target the poor.
Then there were the orgies, a definite plus.
The pros seemed to outweigh the cons. Of course there was the danger a cult leader might start buying his own shtick about his supposed divinity. But then it didn't seem such a big deal when I imagined driving my divine rolls up to the front door of my divine villa and having my minion Jeeves open the divine door for his divine master. After all, what is a little self-imposed brainwashing? We do it everyday.
Then there was the slight chance that agents of the government might raid our compound and burn it to the ground. But the few instances of this occurring all seemed to have involved the cult hording firearms and I had no desire to get mixed up with that bad mojo. A survivalist's camp up in the mountains was not my thing. All they eat are army rations and road kill.
So the decision made, I began to think about what sort of cult this should be, and read up on them. There are scads of them: Christian cults, right wing/neo-nazi/survivalist groups that are very cult like, Eastern religion cults (lots of flowers there), New Age cults. Of course there are the Scientologists with their fancy gizmos and their hit lists, and the Moonies with their mass marriages and spacey smiles. All old news.
Then there are the UFO cults, a lot of UFO cults. The Heaven's Gate cult interested me in particular. The members of that cult were highly educated people (which might explain a lot) and had amassed a huge fortune through computers. You had to be pretty convinced of the truth of something to have yourself castrated. Never mind the whole let's-commit-mass suicide-and-hitch-a-ride-on-a-UFO-tailgating-a-comet thing. For them this was not a passing fad.
I thought a big selling point of my cult would be the complete lack of self-mutilation. But people are suspicious of things bought too cheaply and institutions that inflict no pain. Self-castration is the whole "no pain, no gain" philosophy taken to an extreme. People need a certain flavor of pain in their lives, and will make great effort to seek it out. So I thought I would include an intense ass paddling session before every opening ritual. This would purify the soul and purge the guilt feelings.
I was then stuck for a theme for the cult. I had no interest in Christian or neo-nazi cults; a cult leader shouldn't be afraid of his minions. Finally I settled on an Eastern/New Age/UFO combo with a Conan twist. We would call ourselves "The temple of the Latter Day Disciples of Set". I would channel an ancient avatar from Kashmir who was part of an intergalactic network of enlightened masters who communed with snakes, invoked the kundalini, and were busy preparing for the rising of Atlantis.
I contacted a friend of mine who owned space in a strip mall and he said I could use the place once a week. I set a date for the grand opening and pinned up posters on supermarket bulletin boards. This is how they read:
Have you ever wondered about the meaning of life? Do you feel different from everyone else? Do you like snakes?
Find your place in the cosmic plan! Liberate your inhibited sacred libido!
Come to the inauguration of the The Temple of the Latter Day Disciples of Set 7:00 Pm, Sept 8th 341 Wisconsin St. (In the mini-mall between Burger King and Dunkin' Donuts.) Coffee and donuts will be served.
In retrospect I probably shouldn't have chosen a mini mall as my first Temple of Set. But when you are just starting up a cult and the donations haven't started coming in, you take what you can get.
I got there at 4 o'clock and blacked out the large picture widows with black garbage bags I stuck up with duct tape. Then I hung up Indian batik bedspreads I got at Pier One Imports, and turned a small table into an altar with incense, candles, flowers, and a stuffed rattle snake my Uncle Roy brought me back from Carlsbad, New Mexico when I was a kid. I had painted it white and sprinkled a little glitter on it. I dimmed the lights, lit the candles and incense, and turned on the coffee pot. As I put out the donuts, I wondered if it would be tacky to pass the collection plate at the introductory meeting. I decided against it, same with the paddling. These guys were shopping; the idea was to tease them, give them a taste of mystery and then reel them in. The paddling and the donations woul! d come later, along with the isolation, brainwashing, and, of course, the orgies. Finally, I put on a flowing robe I had borrowed from my cousin who sings in the Dellwood Baptist Church choir, and sat down behind the altar.
The turn out was a little less than I expected.
Four people showed up: a wiry teenage boy with pimples and a Slayer tee shirt, a fat guy with a thin mustache who couldn't stop wheezing, a small mousy woman with glasses and a thread-bare coat, and a nervous bald man in a suit and tie who kept clearing his throat.
The orgies would definitely have to wait.
When it was clear no one else was coming, I stood up and began my spiel, "Welcome, seekers of Truth! You are on the threshold of the Inner Sanctum of the Mysteries of Set," I intoned. "Who has the courage and inner fortitude to enter and discover for themselves the source of all truth?" I then produced a snake from inside my rob and held it up, "Behold the symbol of the kundalini, your sacred connection to the Divine!"
The fat guy wheezed, "Is that a rubber snake?"
Ignoring him I pressed on, "I am a channel for the Divine Master Baba Kama Yama from Kashmir, one of a vast intergalactic network of enlightened beings who travel the cosmos in ships composed of astral energy. His only desire is to awaken the sleeping serpent at the base of your spine, and prepare you for the rising of Atlantis!"
"Yeah it is rubber!" shouted the Slayer teen, "Where are the real snakes? I thought you'd have pythons and shit like that; you can buy that rubber thing at Wal-Mart for a buck."
Mouse woman raised her hand timidly, "Are we expected to buy our own snakes, or will we be using yours?"
"I assure you this is only an outward symbol of an inner reality," I carried on, putting the snake on the altar beside a candle. "It is only meant to act as a spiritual catalyst, to remind you of the power of renewal and deep wisdom within us all. As the serene Master Baba Kama Yama says...."
"Hey dude," snarfed Slayer teen, "She wants to use your snake!"
Mouse woman turned bright red and looked uncomfortable.
"The snake is only a symbol!" I said, my voice rising, "Baba Kama Yama himself has a white cobra he keeps as a pet and emissary to his followers. Please do not mock the..." I stammered.
"Hey, are you supposed to be Thulsa Doom?" laughed the fat guy, "Where's Conan? Oooh, is he ever pissed at you!" He laughed until a coughing fit seized him and his enormous body started convulsing in his folding chair.¡± You better get out of town before he gets here!" He spluttered.
Sensing I was rapidly losing my hold on the situation, I mustered my most commanding voice and bellowed, "Silence infidels!"
Everyone shut up, and mouse woman looked scared.
"You do not know what you are dealing with! The mysteries of Set, and his messenger Baba Kama Yama are not to be treated lightly!" I again picked up the rubber snake and brandished it at the group, "Do not mock the symbol of Set's awesome power! Would you throw away this chance to awaken the serpent within? Do not arouse Set's wrath!"
"Man, I think are you already way too aroused." said the teen, "Chill."
The bald man looked around nervously and then said, "Look, I don't want to arouse anybody's wrath. I just thought maybe there was going to be an orgy...like in the Conan movie." He smiled sweetly and straightened his tie.
I adjourned the meeting, disbanded the temple and sent everyone home with the curse of Set on their heads (nobody got any donuts either, except mouse woman, who seemed nice). Then I went out and got drunk. I also got my ass kicked. This may have been because I was still wearing the choir robe and kept brandishing my serpent at everyone in the bar.
Weeks later I ran into the mousy woman again at a garage sale. We both had our eyes on a red lava lamp and a box of old Omni magazines. I let her have the lamp and she gave me the magazines. Then we went out for coffee. Her name was Claire, and she really didn't look that mousy in the light of day.
We had a pleasant talk, and she said she was sorry the cult had gone bust. She thought it had had promise, but that I really should have invested in a live snake. She was smart, and funny in a quirky way. We exchanged numbers and promised to get together again soon.
The next day was Sunday and she called to invite me to her house for lunch. She had inherited a large, rambling Victorion house from her mother. It had definitely seen better days. The place was crammed with books and religious curios she had brought back from her vacations. Wooden masks from Mexico leered above the fireplace, Tibetan demons gnashed their teeth from tapestries, and a large brass Shiva danced his eternal dance of creation and destruction on the wooden coffee table. A small, stuffed alligator hung over the dining room table.
It turned out that she was originally from Des Moines, and had an uncle named Cosgrove who was a pharmacist and a practicing alchemist in his spare time (He had given her the stuffed alligator for Christmas one year). Claire also had two ducks she kept in the backyard, and a big, black, bully of a cat named Mr. Green Jeans, who seemed to rule the house and surrounding environs. She said that in his past life Mr. Green Jeans had been The Roman Emperor Nero. He still sometimes had nightmares in his basket, yowling and spitting at the air, apparently dreaming of lions dining on Christians in the Coliseum. But he still liked playing with mice before he ate them. "Some souls never learn", Claire would say pensively, watching him in the yard with his most recent tiny martyr.
We had a lot in common, not the least of which was an interest in starting a cult. She had actually shown up at my meeting just to take notes. She had already made the rounds to the major groups in the area. At first she wouldn't say much about it. But after a couple of weeks of hanging out and sharing our thoughts, she finally showed me the Notebooks.
These were enormous marbled folios that looked as if they had been made in the 19th century. She had filled them with her delicate, elfin handwriting, outlining the basic principles of her embryonic cult. Claire had even illuminated the borders with vines, fantastic geometric doodles, and mythical creatures of astounding intricacy, all painted with bright, crepuscular watercolors. There were even a few snakes here and there.
I joined her cult immediately.
I came to find that being a minion to the right Master is much more satisfying than actually being a Master. Claire knew this as well. This is why, against all my protestations, she insisted we take turns being master and minion.
She had been working on the Notebooks for many years now and had created an imaginary metaphysical geography of such delicate and absurd beauty it would have made the puny theosophists blush with shame. What intrigued me most was that at the heart of her sect there was only one true secret, and Claire had made a point of making this the most blatant feature.
She told me more than once that this ensured it was forever safe from the eyes of the profane. We often sat in her living room, teasing Mr. Green Jeans with a feather on a string, laughing our asses off about this.
She had decided early on not to seek converts to her cult. This was just too much effort and, as I had learned to my chagrin, too prone to disappointment. Claire had a far more insidious plan in mind: we would simply draft people.
We would begin by inducting famous and not-so-famous people whom we admired for their beauty, their outlandishness, or their general swankiness. We would publish long lists of names of those who had been drafted, along with a weekly manifesto. Then we would circulate these lists far and wide, extolling their virtues and praising their wisdom in allowing us to draft them into our cult.
The hierarchy of the cult would thus be established:
I. Anyone who spoke against us or denied membership would be considered a Neophyte. II. Anyone who took us to court or initiated any direct legal action to remove his or her name from our roster would be dubbed an Adeptus Minor. III. Anyone who simply ignored us entirely would be thought of as an Adeptus Major, AKA as a Serenely Enlightened One. IV. But a person who responded with a poem, a smile, or a wink, such a person would be revealed to be one of the Masters of the Inner Circle.
I was at first a bit concerned about the whole donation issue with a cult of inductees. They tend not to be regular with their tithing. I asked Claire if we couldn't pull in a few wealthy minions willing to donate some big bucks. I was finding it a little difficult letting go of the whole Rolls Royce, villa thing. I mean, they could still be used by whoever happened to be cult leader that day, couldn't they?
She looked at me as if I had lost my mind.
"Look," she said, "We are on the Titanic, and we are going down. We are all going down together, get it? Now you can be one of those dumbasses running into the staterooms, stuffing their pockets with valuables, or you can be like that guy who just got into one of the boats reserved for women and children and refused to get out.."
She paused and took my hands in hers, fixing me with her hazel eyes, "Or you can be like the members of that glorious band. The ones who kept playing music through the mayhem....kept pumping out beauty even when they knew all was lost. Now who do you want to be?"
I took a deep breath, kissed her hands, and said, "Couldn't I just be one of those Swedish guys in the movie? They lost their tickets in the pocker game, and never made it on the boat." She punched me in the arm, hard.
Claire did have a scheme for raising some funds for the cult. We had to cover printing costs, cat food, and donuts, afterall. She had recently returned from a trip to Bangkok, and had brought back a big bag of enormous, brightly colored hats made by mountain tribes in the north. They had little beads around the crown, a large star pattern on the top, and in the center a tiny tassle that stood straight up at attention. They were beautiful.
Claire's idea was to sell them on the internet as anti-depressant devices. She had printed up an instruction pamphlet that read as follows:
When one is feeling glum, blue or downcast, or if the situation seems particularly desperate, bleak or hopeless, do the following:
1) Enter a room with a large mirror and a straight backed chair facing it. (Nota bene: standing in front of the bathroom mirror may be used if this is the only option.) 2) Dim the lights, or light candles. 3) Sit in front of the large mirror with the Hat on your lap. 4) With back straight, eyes focused on the mirror, slowly place the Hat on your head. (Here Claire had drawn a diagram with arrows showing precisely how this move was to be executed. 5) Then say the following: I am a very serious and important person, and the situation is dire indeed. 6) Keep the Hat on for as long as required. 7) One may repeat this treatment as often as needed with no side effects, other than a drastic deflation of ego and a radical realignment of priorities.
We sold out in a week.
Claire was always putting together collage posters revealing our cult's one true secret. I helped out as best I could, though I lacked her eye for juxtaposition. My job was usually running to the printer's, and standing guard as she plastered them up on alley walls with a paint brush and a can of condesenced milk. Other nights we were writing manifestos, drawing up new lists of beautiful people we were inducting into the cult, or sending off press releases either denouncing ourselves or defending ourselves. We both decided we had better keep our day jobs, since we were unlikely to turn the Cult into a paying concern. But we had fun, and in this world that is no small thing.
These late night sessions became steadily more frequent, and with nothing being discussed between us, I woke up one morning and found I had moved in sometime between April the 11th and June 23rd. Mr. Green Jeans didn't seem to mind, after peeing in my shoes to let me know who the Emperor was around here.
I may not have acquired a citadel, or masses of adoring minions, or a Rolls Royce, but things are good. I am a cult leader every other day, get to tease the Emperor Nero with a feather on a string, and most importantly, Claire has entrusted me with the one true secret of our cult. It is the greatest secret in the universe; the truth only two tongues can tell.
Every Saturday night, in the small hours of the morning, we don our brightly colored Anti-Depressant Hats, and hit the town, plastering up huge beautiful posters in every back alley. Each poster is unique, with startling images and hieroglyphs which hint; but they all have the same phrase, "Lovers Live Forever."
Let Thulsa Doom beat that.
