Controversial networks (considered by some to be "cults") mumsnet readers need to be aware of

rj2020

Thanks for the invitation

I'll check out your website, however I am extremely cautious about contacting people for obvious reasons so please don't take it personally if I don't get in touch

Whatever, I am pleased that someone is taking the time to research these groups and to think about them

Since I posted on the thread I have done a lot more research and am thinking about the best way to proceed.

Things are complex, partly because I am more interested in the nodes and connections these groups have with other groups I research than with Aristasia and associated groups themselves.

Any thinking about the subtexts and meanings of their discourses and philosophies will be in comparison to those of other groups.

I am also primaritly interested in any activities relating to crime and abuses against vulnerable people.

I don't care about people's spiritual beliefs, how they identify in terms of gender, or even what they do sexually. Providing that they are not abusing anyone it's not my business.

"Miss Martindale" is the primary person of interest to me as her chamelion like, shape shifting persona, her use of theatrical props and acting skills, her evident interest in corporal punishment (specifically her criminal conviciton for assault in relation to this interest), her connection to far right political groups, her promotion of bizarre theories re gender, her promotion of "goddess" and "matriarchal" religions that are not very empowering to women and finally her marrying a much older, wealthy, man, a person of influence, all of these things make her a person of interest to me.

I am also interested in the "Screamers" and I still have a lot to discover. One rabbit hole leads to many others.

I'll be posting more about this soon.

Thank you for my gold star research awards!

You are very welcome, thank you for engaging with the stuff I post. I have some Jenny Jones books here (some may be at another location I cannot access due to lockdown). I have found one. I think I have 2 copies of it so, when it is safe to do so and I can find the other copy, there will be an actual book in this for you as a prize, if you want it of course.

I have a huge library of books written by cult leaders and cultic scammers and once I get my scanner working (sometimes very soon) I will be posting some fascinating material from them here. Most of my books are spread over several locations with friends, so I cannot access them all, however I have some fascinating and obscure stuff to upload here.

I am still in good health however am enduring a fairly hellish and challenging situation re my neighbours and my facilities which are still lacking, maing it hard for me to stay as clean as I would like.

To say that my neighbours are putting me at risk is a serious understatement.

I have some tasks that I have to see to to try to move the situation on, but there are lots of difficulties linked to the subject matter in this thread and to gasighting that are making it very tough for me at the moment.

Please accept my aoplogies for not posting more, I suspect I will end up sick and when I am, if I can I will post more.

MoleSmokes

There are so many similar cults big and small where women are exploited by sexual predators, sometimes by pimps.

Thank you so much for your post

People need to understand that it is not difficult to manipulate people in this way. These kind of abuses are widespread and rampant and women act as recruiters all the time.

Also your post raises the important issue that the followers develop a momentum of their own and collectively experience a need to please the guru. In my experience followers are often ruthlessly competitive around recruiting new victims for the guru's bedroom.

This issue is not often discussed

MindTheMinotaur

I didn't know that about Gardner but it does not surprise me at all. I am very unimpressed with Wicca for all kinds of reasons. Having said that I have met some very kind, lovely people involved also. It is just that the nudity rituals tend to attract predators. Unsurprisingly

MouseandCat

Thank you so very much for taking the time to read some of this material. It means a lot to me as, unless someone posts here showing that they are engaging with the material, I have no idea how much of it is useful to post.

I am going to post more about your post later today, and will also provide links to some other cults for comparison.

The particular perspectives on "femininity" are fascinating and disturbing. I think we also need to explore why they appeal to some women. My research into other cults and experiences IRL suggest that many women are attracted to these kinds of lifestlyes and discourses. We cannot pretend that this is not the case. It is I think important to reflect upon why this is, from a place of creative, open minded curiosity.

Sister Angelina appears to feature in most issues of The Coming Age. Is this the same (trans) Sister Angelina from the Donegal community?

It is indeed the same person. I hereby award you a hoodathunkit gold star research award

I also came across a more contemporary website devoted to the Mother God / Lux Madriana / Filianic Scripture /Feminine Spirituality. There were quite recent comments discussing the two 'feminine' genders and a fair bit of 'transwomen and women' commentary as well.

Yes there are many many websites out there. I am not yet clear about who owns what, where one network / website begins and another ends (although this is not uncommon with cults).

This is all a massive piece of research in progress.

The site you linked to was not one I had found yet so you get another gold star :) hope there's room on your lapel

here's a link to the site via the wayback machine if anyone would like to check it out

web.archive.org/web/20141228043738/maisappho.wordpress.com/2013/09/07/women-born-women-dianic-wicca-and-transphobia/

I could be here all day just writing about the content on that page but I'm going to head out to get some exercise

Apologies to the many posters who I have not yet had a chance to respond to properly

I will try later today

Stay safe everyone

and than you so much for not gaslighting me. It has happened so often that I have come to expect it as a default mode but it is wonderful to not have to steel myself and put on the usual armour :)

Women who have sex with a guru who is going to enlighten them or make them a witch through the act are as taken in as woman who have sex on any other flimsy pretext.

Women who have sex with a guru who is going to enlighten them or make them a witch through the act are as taken in as woman who have sex on any other flimsy pretext.

I just wanted to address this point

I understand that there is a continuum of deception and exploitation re this kind of thing.

At one end you may have a man who lies and claims he is rich, a model, “good in bed”, whatever to try to seduce women.

At the other end you have various rapist / trafficker gurus who claim to confer supernatural powers, to cleanse and detox of past sins / bad karma / psychic hooks and parasites via sexual initiations. These so called “initiations” are traumatising and form a central aspect of gaslighting and brainwashing victims.

There is much to be said about this including how a not uncommon feature of sexual trauma, hyper-sexual / manic behaviour can be exploited by predators to create revenue streams.

There are many truly evil cults that are involved in the sex industry. I posted on another thread recently about the sex industry and a posted objected to me using the term “sex industry”, because it isn’t, in her opinion, an industry it is rape and abuse.

It is my understanding that, with all cults, there is a money trail. Cults are businesses. Criminal networks are businesses. They are about making money. Very often organised child sexual exploitation networks are also businesses. While some actors may be motivated by a compulsion to rape women or sexually abuse children, there are usually actors involved who combine these interests with a flair for business or whose interests are solely or primarily business related. The abuse of women and children (and of men also) is big business.

I will post more on this later today.

I have been trying to shop, exercise and manage my anxiety about the virus and have ended up exhausted most evenings when I have been planning to post. Today I am going to try to exercise earlier and post earlier before I get tired. I am also struggling with a lack of some basic facilities here. An engineer called but was unable to fix things. I am waiting to her back, but in quite a stressful situation, especially given the fact that many of the tenants I share a laundry and property with believe that the need for social distancing is ridiculous and some kind of paranoid conspiracy theory.

In fact trying to educate people about cults has many similar challenges to educating people about viruses. In both situations the person raising the alarm is treated as a Cassandra and disbelieved. My neighbours here will only start to realise how serious things are when it is too late, a situation that mirror the situations with cults very well.

Re the issue of cults and the sex industry readers might be interested in this book, authored by a senior Deer Tribe member and a co-author of the notorious Deer Tribe Manual (an odious document that advocates the sexual abuse of minors at puberty).

www.amazon.co.uk/Women-Light-New-Sacred-Prostitute/dp/0939263122/ref=sr_1_10?dchild=1&keywords=kenneth+ray+stubbs&tag=mumsnetforu03-21&qid=1586250399&sr=8-10

Thank you so much for your post MindTheMinotaur

I lived in south west Ireland in the 90s and the screamers were well known, largely as a figure of fun. There were a lot of odd hippy folk in that part of the world, where cheap land allowed people to adopt alternative lifestyles. Some of these people would be considered fairly mentally unwell. Fifth dimensional-Gaian-barefoot-shamans taking Peyote, alien spotters, people with drug and alcohol issues, etc. Charismatic people with a bit of cash could buy land and attract people with less money who wanted to live the simple organic lifestyle etc but didn't have the means. All mingled in with a lot of very hardcore, very straight Dutch and Germans running immaculate small holdings, musicians and artists.

I also knew, although not very well, various women who were in the whole rebirthing and primal scene therapy world and you have described them perfectly in the above quote. The ones of my acquaintance (London not the SW) were big time into recovering memories of incest through Reichian / body psychotherapy which (I did not realise this at the time but do now) involved genital massage. I just wondered whther you had encountered this at all. At least one of the women I knew who was into this "recovered" memories of satanic ritual abuse and became alienated from her family as a result.

Jenny James I first came across from a letter in Permaculture Magazine asking for money to buy land in Columbia to preserve rainforest. I had a male friend who went out there to support them. FARC as paramilitary ran that area in Columbia and I understand members of the group ran across them on an outing and were killed. FARC have imprisoned people, including women for years as slaves and I can't entertain that there was any relationship between the James group and FARC or other far right groups. At that time the James group were doing things like putting on small protests against deforestation. I've met some members when they came back to Ireland and were doing the same thing in small Irish towns: wave a banner telling people to stop harming the planet and congratulate yourself as a game changing activist saving the planet. Basically eco woke scolds with little knowledge, experience or understanding, smugly lecturing people.

This sounds right to me. Especially the last sentence. There is a massive overlapping category of people involved in cults and the permaculture movment. It is very depressing for anyone who cares about ecological issues, but maybe unsuprising given the hippies and new agers involved in both movements and the current tendency for astroturfing or pretty much all and any activist movments.

I did not mean to imply that there was a relationship between Jenny James and the FARC. I am always interested when groups on my radar have any kind of contact with extremist / paramiliatary groups.

Re the far-right connection there are some other issues that need to be explored that are complex and nuanced. As some readers here will be aware there has been a lot of exposure in the mainstream media and via anti-hate groups of the morphing of far-right groups into other, apparently liberal activist groups. More accurately far-right groups using apparently left leaning or liberal, vegan and ecological groups as camouflage for their activities and as an aid to recruitement.

for example, both of these articles are interesting reads

www.vice.com/en_uk/article/jm9xa3/neo-nazi-vegan-cupcakes-946

www.vice.com/en_uk/article/evb4zw/why-so-many-white-supremacists-are-into-veganism

I'll come back to the far-right issue later, however it is important to say that this is one of the issues that resonates with county lines inasmuch as sinister / criminal groups use vulnerable people, often with mental health problems, as human assets. Very often, as happens with county lines and human trafficking, victims may percieve their exploiters as friends and be completely unaware that they are being exploited.

This is relevant to Jenny James and the Screamers because it is extremely common for mentally unwell, vulnerable, hippy types to be exploited cynically and ruthlessly as recruiters and assets by criminals. Just as with county lines and trafficking networks the vulnerable person may believe they are helping people by introducing them to their "friends".

I'm suggesting that many people in cults have no idea what they are involved in. This is central to the nature of cults in fact. Re Jenny James I still have much to learn and would welcome any insights from people more knowledgable than myself.

The rest of your post is very helpful and resonates with my understanding of things. I just want to emphasise again that when I talk about criminality and cults, that most people involved have good intentions and believe they are helping people. Many are involved with sinister / criminal networks without realising it.

I am safe and well thank you :)

I just needed a little break from this, partly because I have had so much to deal with lately that my fitness has fallen well bellow levels I am comfortable with at the best of times, but now, with the virus, it could be a life or death thing and I really would prefer to live longer if possible.

MouseandCat and MindTheMinotaur, awesome posts, I will reply to them more fully tomorrow, I have a load of stuff to post here, I just desperately want to exercise outside while I still can. I fear I will be on total lockdown with the very elderly people here before long.

Sometimes I get so involved in research and writing with the sun pouring through the window that it's dark by the time I go out. I always struggle with a fleeting feeling oof depression when that happens and I fear it happening big time if I don't get my exercise in while I can before the (I think inevitable) complete lock down for older / vulnerable people happens.

As a little taster of some things to come, a mid 1990s video of "Miss Martindale" promoting New Lady Stockings, a hosiery company that she apparently owned at that time. The video contains some interesting material

Back soon, probably tomorrow

Take care and stay safe everyone :)

I'm fine, well as fine as can be under difficult circumstances. Thanks for asking :)

Please accept my sincere apologies for not posting before, I have had some real life challenges of epic proportions to deal with, including loss of certain essential services. It never rains it pours eh?

Currently deep cleaning my flat while I wait for the engineer to turn up. Feeling extremely grateful and fortunate to have acces to an enginner under the current situation

Will post again soon.

For the record, if I become ill I will post here, even if briefly so please don't worry if you dont hear from me for a day or two, it will be because of real life challenges and not because I have become unwell.

Take care and stay safe everyone and have some flowers

I just wanted to post to let everyone know that, so far I am OK

I may risk going into the laudry tomorrow, I will just wear gloves and wash everything on a hot temperature.

I have been washing by hand for a couple of days but it is not really sustainable for 2 weeks.

I had a wonderful walk yesterday, met some stangers and, at a very safe distance of 3 meters or so, chatted to them and felt not so isolated.

Strangely it is easier to talk to people when you have to stand a long way apart. The people I chatted to yeserday were elderly and vulnerable and anxious about being on their own having recently moved to the area and not knowing many people. I will see them again today and maybe swap numbers so I can get food for them, or organise someone else to do it, if they need it. I think that their many worry was loneliness and general anxiety about the virus rather than food and that said that our chat was a boost for morale, which is great. It was a boost for my morale too :)

I stayed in my flat for a couple of days due to sheer terror as I have a neighbour who is coughing convulsively but going out and about as if everything is fine. I was scared of using the lift or the corridor. I am now using the corridor and just not touching handles. Thankfully she stayed in all day yesterday and hopefully will today too.

Today I am going to go out and get some sun. I may even try to sit in the communal garden here for a while. I need to de-stress by noticing little things in nature, the flowers and the birds. It doesn't take much to lift my spirits and I am grateful to have access to such things during these difficult times. If I stay indoors all day on the computer and only go outside when the shadows are long and it is gertting cold I am likely to experience depression, as I know from experience.

Many people are in much worse situations than me and I am grateful for the things I do have.

Re Aristasia et al

I am going to create a timeline of how Aristasia and associated entities have evolved over time. This is partly to examine the morphing of the network but mostly to use it as a way of illustrating how many similar networks use theatrical skills to disguise their activities and create "alternative realities".

For the purposes of establishing a timeline I am going to include the videos about the “Screamers” and the Atlantis commune as if they were either connected or part of the same network. This is a provisional inclusion subject to possible change at some later point.

The reasons I am including both groups is as follows:

They lived in the same premises, one group immediately after another. This can happen with cults that shape shift, the same or an offshoot entity resides in a location occupied by a former manifestation of the group. Sleight of hand and theatrics are used to make it appear that the residents have changed when they are either the same or a connected group. I am uncertain as to what happened here so am just covering all my bases.

Another poster believes that Miss Martindale is in fact Snowy James, the sister of Jenny James the spokeswoman for the Screamers household at the time of the videos. I do not know if this is correct but suggest that we explore this possibility. Fortunately the early videos show clear images of Snowy James so this should not be difficult to do.

Both households appear to live a fairly luddite lifestyle, involving keeping livestock and living off the land. It may even be that they keep the same animals that can be identified via careful scrutiny of the videos, something I have not had to time do yet. Help re this would be appreciated.

They share an identifying feature. Atlantis. The Screamers’ commune was called Atlantis House. Aristasia promotes historical narratives involving Atlantis. This may be simply a coincidence however I think this is a lead worth following, especially as the myth of Atlantis was something passionately endorsed by Nazis and still endorsed by neo-Nazis, of which more later.

They share an interest in culty flavoured types of psychotherapy that appear to be at best dubious and at worst abusive to outsiders. One theme throughout the Aristasian entities’ narratives is that of providing personal development through immersion in a highly controlled school type environment in which corporal punishment is perceived to be therapeutic.

Both groups allegedly had connections to extremist political groups / paramilitary groups. We need to further research the links of the Aristasians to the far right (I am on the case), however Jenny James’ son was murdered by the FARC when her commune moved to Columbia. FARC are not a group that I know a lot about. They have their origins as an anti-corruption focussed communist group, however they appear to be an extremely controversial paramilitary organisation portrayed in some quarters as involved in various serious criminal enterprises. It is always the case that one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter. I just do not have the resources to research FARC at this point, however I find the connections of the Screamers and and Aristasians to controversial extremist groups to be worth noticing.

There are so many posts here I want to respond to, however there are limited sunny days and I need to use them to get outside and exercise and also to clean my flat, which still requires further work, even though it looks the cleanest it has ever been.

Stay safe everyone, I'll post again soon :)

Thanks so much for the lovely postand flowers MoleSpokes, I would like to respond at length but am a little exhausted

I have been archiving from a number of rabbit holes until my eyes hurt

Need a rest, but would like to provide a collection of archived magazines, published by the Aristasia cult, to keep interested readers occupied until my eyes have recovered sufficiently for me to post again

Please note :

These files are not archived in order of date issued, this was one hoop too many for me to jump through

these are large files and some may take a while to load, all via the wayback machine

Enjoy! (if that's the right word, probably not but YKWIM)

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200323134527/filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/4f6a7088cda1c2cbbeea9888274b2050.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20200323134527/filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/4f6a7088cda1c2cbbeea9888274b2050.pdf

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I am someone who harvests and stockpiles ephemera. One of the things that has been difficult for me recently is lack of space. Any reader with a similar instinct towards collecting information will appreciate these kinds of problems.

These digitally archived copies of early Aristasian magazines will be of interest to readers and are very satisfying to those who, like me, have an unquenchable thirst for ephemera and data generally.

I have not had time to read these, my eyes can’t take it right now, but just seeing the illustrations is exciting to me.

I’ll be back later, there is so much more to report :)

I am feeling much better today, largely because it is warm and sunny here and even though I have not gone outside (I will venture into the small private garden for tenants here if the smokers aren't out in force) the sun has left me feeling inspired to do more deep cleaning.

I am pleased that posters have noticed the Jack the Ripper theme. I have no idea about how, if at all it is linked to the strange cult I am sharing information about here.

Even if connections are not immediately apparent I think it is useful to notice them and to be curious about them. File that connection in the filing cabinet in our collective minds and hopefully if other connections become apparent it is more likely that someone will notice it and maybe find a connection re lineage or some other connection.

There are so many different cults and toxic / dysfunctional groups out there and the arrival of the Internet has seen them thrive. One of the things I find interesting about Aristasia and its related entities is the combination of low tech and vintage pre-1960s tech with enthusiastic use of the Internet.

Because there are so many cults, so many different networks with overlapping liminal areas and nodes, it is impossible for one person to keep track of what is going on. Also I have a particular personal history and life experience that means that I have had a lot of RL experience on the peripheries of these groups that give me some unique insights.

However, like any subject, the greater one's knowledge base about an issue, the greater the realisation that there is a lot left unknown.

There are exceptions but it is my experience that generally people who believe that they are experts on cults and brainwashing and are confident that they are immune to brainwashing are the very people likely to be most at risk and who actually know the least.

I appreciate that there are lots of readers out there with even more experiences and knowledge than me who may have some unique and valuable insights into cults and I would appreciate them sharing information if they feel able to do so.

One of the defining features of cults is that they target people when they are at their most vulnerable. Another is that there is a significant liminal category consisting of people who are both victims and perpetrators.

These elements are also shared criminal netoworks involved in county lines.

For this reason I am going to be extremely careful about exposing private details about people in cults. For example, re Aristasia, I think there is more than enough information to demonstrate that there are cultic and dysfunctional dynamics occuring within this group.

I am gender critical, however I do not wish to dox or bully any trans person or expose their personal details. Obviously if there is mainstream media reporting on for example convictions for violent crime and a link to far right group (as we have here) I will expose it.

I have discovered some more information about "Sister Angelina" (the TIM in Aristasia). I do not know this person's real name and I would request that other posters are mindful about not exposing anyone's private details unless they are already in the public domain and there is a safeguarding reason to do so.

We have sufficient information to express concern and highlight safeguarding concerns about "Ms Martindale". At this point I do not know whether Sister Angelina is a victim, a perpetrator or both.

I will post more later today, I just wanted to thank people again for the very kind posts. I have been gaslighted to an appalling extent over the years and the process escalated fairly recently to the extent that it has been very hard to bear.

It means the world to me to have some support here.

Thanks again and I'll post again later today when I have cleaned the cupboard under the sink :)