I wrote this guide to serve as a reference for anyone actively attempting to form a cult. I assume some of you are reading this with no intention of actually finding the time in your life to create a religious organization. This guide is not for you. You are allowed to read it, but keep in mind that you are not the intended audience.
Now you may be wondering aren’t cults bad things, Aren’t cult leaders child rapists and mean ones at that? Well any religion has bad apples. The christian church has a long history of child molestation and a no one breaks down the doors of the Vatican with a tank outfitted with a delivery system for flammable tear gas suspended in even more flammable solvent. The reason for this is they are a large, recognized and generally accepted cult in modern day society. The whole goal of forming a cult is generally to become recognized by your respective government in order to be eligible for tax breaks among other reasons. Remember without cults, there could be no culture. Cults form around almost anything television shows, bands, politicians and movies that rock out loud. You might be asking why? Well its simple and its what this guide is all about.
This is the most crucial part of any established cult. Several different methodologies can be applied to this step. I would like this guide to bear positive results so I will not tell you to immediately drug your victims and blast them with nonsensical propaganda. Those kinds of cults create followers. I want you to create free thinking equals. People you can stand to be around and have legitimate open conversations with. This will make it easier to live among your cult and the atmosphere will feel more open, less like your hiding things from them. Finding the right people to be in you cult initially will affect, how large your cult eventually becomes, what kind of community actions your cult will participate in, the type of initiatory acts future members will suffer through, and how much cash your fundraisers will bring in. Take care in selecting your close friends to join your cult. Many will join willingly without second thought if you require nothing from them initially and plan to expand in the future making them immediately a higher ranking member than others involved in your organization. Bear in mind that expansion is generally slow so try not to be over zealous about it, bring it up jokingly or in a relaxed tone then shift into a completely serious conversation if them seem receptive. Not everyone is cult material (especially your cult, so be picky) and it can be tricky to recruit members of the opposite sex. I would recommend that you stay away from inducting children under the age of 15 into your cult, doing so puts your entire operation at risk. Even if they beg you to let them join; parents are not your friend and will not understand that your cult is a nice cult. To get cult members your cult needs appeal. What are you going to be doing in this cult? What would you like your cult to accomplish? If your cult is based off an existing religion how will it differ from said religion? How are you going to make the experience a pleasurable one? Make sure you can answer all these and more questions as how your cult operates as a unit will depend on it.
Once you have some members you can choose to go in several different directions and like anything worth having a cult requires maintenance. I’ve heard of pooling financial assets to buy a plot of land and building a communal residence. You could make your cult entirely digital via video chat, forums and internet chat relay. Alternatively you could have musical events as the main focus of your cult’s gathering. Make sure the medium you choose is consistent with the message you want to send to outsiders and the way you want to be viewed by authority and family members. Some people epic fail right around this stage. Don’t worry maintaining a cult is easy. If you have to control the diet, sleep schedule and media viewed by your cult members just to keep them around, you have failed. You most likely come off as desperate manipulative and lonely, better luck next time. A good cult is a low maintenance cult because that means your members like what they do when they participate with the cult and they enjoy being in the presence of their benevolent leader. It means they wont have to spend a big chunk of every paycheck they get on cult activities and it means you can still have a life outside of the cult you are organizing. In other words everyone wins and you don’t have any legal troubles to deal with.
One great part about cults is that you can play it off however you want when speaking with other people. Say you know a few devout Protestants. You might enjoy telling them you are an active cult member and that the one true god has told you in commune he laughs his ass off when their church claims drugs are morally wrong and hell is where all the non-Christians go. Group activities are a great part of the cult bonding experience. These can range from physically strenuous, legally questionable, euphorically relaxing to monotonously dull and generally boring. What you and your cult don’t want to end up doing is listening to biweekly readings from your favorite book. If everyone in the cult would like to hear passages from this book read aloud maybe consider it, but distinguishing from what you want to do and what the majority of your cult would like to do is important. On the other had as acting dictator of this hive mind you have the power to do as you see fit. If you think humiliating a member in front of their peers is the right thing to do then do it. They might not like it but if it’s what’s best for the cult as a whole then you really have no choice. If you have progressed to a point where you feel increasing the size of your cult can wait try pumping out literature with your peers. Write some letters to the editor or call in on your local radio/television talk shows. Get in the news using creative and nondestructive means so you can claim it publicly and make your cult the most popular (talked about) religion in town. This will give you imaginary rep points, which translates to blow jobs or sweet sweet cult member poon for you, the cult leader! This will also, indirectly, rev up membership seekers. As acting cult leader you cannot allow everyone to join but you want to let enough people join to raise funds in the future. Money can be useful for many things that your cult will eventually need like a building to meet in regularly. Maybe think about your own personal broadcasting tower, for music everyone can get down to along with talk shows about current events, political action and existentialist discussions. This is how you get the ball rolling. Watch out, you will have picked up momentum if you’ve progress far enough to start making large financial decisions for your group so don’t back out and don’t let it get to your head.
When choosing people for your cult please take into account the following things. How skeptical are they? Asking questions is important but some people can take it to new and annoying levels. Bothersome people have no place in the environment you are creating. You want people who will take what you say as more or less true but people who do not believe everything they hear on television. Be careful when allowing unstable people to join. Get vocal psychological histories from anyone who is willing to provide them. Take into account their various disorders and syndromes when speaking to them around them or about them to others. Depression is a common enough diagnosis, if you are considering letting someone on anti-depressants join you need to make sure your group is strong enough, mentally, to act as a support net for this person. They will need special attention as they will need to stop taking their medication. It will separate them from the rest of the group making them feel more socially awkward and in effect, most likely, more depressed. You need to habituate this person on the atmosphere of your cult and then take the pills away because they will likely resist if you attempt to contradict their doctor too soon. This can get messy so don’t try it. Seriously, don’t.
Here are some risks you take when forming a cult. First and foremost, gaining a steep degree of control over the people around you. This presents many issues primarily the annoyance factor. First you alter a persons belief system, then you tell them what to believe about god and the after life then they want you to wipe the shit from their asses all the time and tuck them in at night, what no story? This can lead to arrest warrants because unless you isolate the person from any contact with friends, family or relationship partners, completely, you can bet the previously mentioned will think of contacting LEOs as ‘saving’ your member from a fate worse than death. The aforementioned will then likely be brainwashed repeatedly into thinking you are some kind of demonic priest who forced himself on them with little to no regard for human life. Another pitfall to watch out for would be threatening illegal acts publicly or claiming destructive acts as doings of your cult. If you are trying to run a legitimate religious organization you should be willing to immediately separate your cult from any member (including yourself) willing to commit a dangerous or destructive act (and then be caught for it). You should also have this person know how to ask for a lawyer and keep their mouth shut ergo not make any mention of your cult or you in any way. There is a fine line between a Cult and a Separatist movement. An even finer one lies between Separatist and Revolutionary. If you simply must commit illegal acts through your cult members do so knowing you are ultimately at fault for anything that goes right or goes wrong during such an act and depending on the severity of the crime you might have to answer for it (snitching). Be prepared to bail out and pay off anyone willing to not only commit an illegal act for you but to then go to jail without one mention of your cult’s involvement. If you’re not prepared to do so realize you are asking for a federal investigation. I would avoid stockpiling automatic weapons if at all possible because of what happened at Waco. If your cult has a political theme (side) I would advise you to keep the rhetoric to a polite minimum when dealing with people who are obviously less stable than others in light of the recent Arizona shootings. Alongside bloody massacres another risk you run is suicides. Maybe it’s one person, maybe you caused it indirectly, maybe it was coming for a long time, it doesn’t matter. What matters is studies have shown if one person in a tightly knit group kills him/herself more suicides are potentially in the works. This is bad, like News channel 5 bad. Suicidal tendencies long buried might resurface or perhaps spiraling depression will over take other members of the group, suicides are bad for press and bad for karma so watch the fuck out. Look for the signs and if someone wants to leave, let them go; remember you can always get more members. They might even come back if they get over themselves. If you are planning a mass suicide all I can say is please don’t, it makes cults everywhere look bad thus decreasing the amount of people globally interested in joining cults. Making my guide effectively, useless and a waste of time.
Protip: Don’t drink the Kool-Aid
