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

[hoodathunkit]

This is going to be a very long thread and posting it is very overdue

The word "cult" is quite loaded and obviously one person's religious movement or psychotherapy / life coaching / wellness organisation is another person's cult.

Sometimes cultic dynamics arise in family and extended family groups also, so the word "cult" can be a loaded and problematic one.

There is a lot I need to share here, this is made more urgent by the fact that, while I train hard and am fairly healthy, I do have underlying health problems that mean there is a chance I may not survive the comming storm.

I am somewhat dyslexic and have always struggled with spelling. I am pushed for time and do not trust spelling / grammar apps on my computer so I hope readers will forgive my occasional typos, spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.

I will be doing this in small, digestible posts for ease of reading.

I would say "enjoy!" but what I am about to share is not remotely enjoyable. This is going to be a thread of horrifying, dark, twisty rabbit holes with many network links to material other posters here have shared.

More to follow shortly

I don’t think the OP sounds unhinged at all.

It may be that there is nothing more to this than “Birds of a feather flock together”, but equally, I think that the same themes may crop up in cults because eroding people’s understanding of essential aspects of life and identity like sex and gender is a key part of the Way cults capture their followers.

It echoes a lot of the concern expressed on here about how the current dogma is used to tell individuals, particularly the young, who they are and that transition is the cure for what ails them.

HighNetGirth

There's a thread today about an article called "Female Husbands", the article is from a trans historian.The author is trans and a trans historian...

There is a theme of eroding people’s understanding of essential aspects of life and identity like sex and gender is a key part of the Way cults capture their followers.

I just wanted to post to let everyone know that, so far, I'm OK and to thank you for the posts, which I am excited and inspired by. It is going to take me a while just to reply to some of the brilliant posts here and I'll be on the case soon :)

I had a bit of a scary adventure yesterday and due to anxiety over a bus journey, ended a 60 minute work out with a 2.5 hour fast walk.

As I got up at 3.30 am yesterday I ended up falling asleep early evening yesterday

There is so much I want to share but I had to get up early to shop today and I just need to have some breakfast, do come cleaning, maybe a little nap, and normal service will be resumed :)

Well, I’m fascinated and knew nothing about these ‘communities”. The Radio 4 documentary about the Primal Scream people in the same house in Burtonport also looks interesting.

Cult dynamics are very much key to the ground level operation of a lot of what is occuring.
I'm not sure I've quite cottoned on to why they would be able to effect such root and branch institutional capture, and I suspect there may be other dynamics in play there.

If readers would like some insights into how cult dynamics are being used to control the masses this books is incredibly helpful

www.amazon.co.uk/Nothing-True-Everything-Possible-Adventures/dp/0571338526/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1A6ORY7D9CLK5&keywords=nothing+is+true+and+everything+is+possible&sprefix=nothing+is+true%2Caps%2C558&tag=mumsnetforu03-21&qid=1584438102&sr=8-1

Part of the book is about the writer, at the time a journalist and media professional working with Russian state media channels, investigates a mysterious cult linked to the deaths of 2 Russian models, one of them very famous.

One of the models had, by strange coincindence, attended a photoshoot on the subject of "Amazon women" (as in Amazon warriors) prior to meeting the author.

The Amazon women thing is a common theme that, just like the Jack the Ripper theme, connects apparently disparate networks. It connects the Aristasia cult with other cults that use Jungian arrchetypal themes as part of their MOs.

I suggest that it may be important to reflect upon the significance of these common themes and ask ourselves some questions, for example

Are these themes

1. coincidences with no meaningful significance

1. themes that indicate network connections / cooperative enterprises between cults that evolved independently and are cross-fertilising their ideas

1. themes that arise due to a shared evolutionary branch on the cultic tree

1. themes that arise due to convergent evolution of cultic networks - basically, let's say re Jack the Ripper for example, the JtR thing may indicate something to do with hatred of women and maybe that is the sole connection? Is there some other connection?

1. some other possibility

So what I am wanting to do here is to create a database and knowledge base where we can use our minds to reflect upon what might be going on in a dynamic and creative way

A commitment towards retaining the capacity to think is essential as the effects of the various mind viruses that are associated with this issue are to prevent rational thinking

We have to be open to not knowing, not drawing premature conclusions and to just trying to exercise and develop our cognitive capacities together.

I sugges that allowing ourselves to have provisional hypotheses about what might be going on and to subjecting these hypotheses to testing is the way forward

Although the subject matter is extremely disturbing and otherwise diversionary and distracting it is important to allow ourselves to think creatively together about these complex issues

Take good care, hood. Several of us here happy to help if you want to chat, I'm sure.

I cannot tell you how grateful I am for this thank you so much

This is very interesting hood, thanks for posting. I'm not able to look at all the links just yet because I don't have time, but also as I read the posts, I'm starting to see similarities between this TIM and someone my father knew (also TIM) when I was a kid. It gives me a very odd feeling that I had from that person and I'm not ready to go too into it. Can't say much more either as it's outing (and I like my username so don't want to find another!), but keep going with this.

I am only a PM away if you would like to discuss this further, no pressure, only what you feel comfortable with of course

I wonder if any of the agricultural folk way down under have anything about this, or if not, if they'll pick up on your links and make a thread there.

Sorry, I very much want to understand but am not getting it. I may simply be tired and stressed so forgive my ineptutude if so

I've just skimmed some of your links, OP, and was a bit confused about the chronology of the various Burtonport reinventions. Are the 'Rhenne'/'Maids of the Silver Sisterhood' group in Burtonport the same people as the 'Victorian' women who seem to have lived in the same house around the same time? I mean, did they just get tired of the whole matriarchal mother goddess thing and reinvent themselves as a paid-for sort of Victorian fetish community? And what is the relationship with the 'St Trinian's' style caning scene going on somewhere in English suburbia in your first set of links? Is this 'Miss Martindale' character the link between all of these?

And have direct family contact with a cult which was very damaging to all

I am so sorry to hear this littlebrowndog

If someone punches, stabs or shoots another person the police can get involved. If someone befriends someone, turns them against their friends and family and exploits them ruthlessley, very often the police, social services, etc. tend not to be able to act because of current safeguarding structures.

Unless the vulnerable who is being exploited complains to the police or social services they will not act in my experience. Possibly the only exception is in relation to county lines, an interseting subject as the way the cults operate has many similarities with county lines, more on this later.

It may be that through demonstrating the similarities with county lines that we can change policies? This is something I have spent some time thinking about but I need help with it.

I've just skimmed some of your links, OP, and was a bit confused about the chronology of the various Burtonport reinventions. Are the 'Rhenne'/'Maids of the Silver Sisterhood' group in Burtonport the same people as the 'Victorian' women who seem to have lived in the same house around the same time?

Thank you for your important question. I do not know whether they are all the same people but certainly the same faces / people appear throughout the various metamorphases, usually with diffeent names, costumes and roles.

In one case one woman who appears to be a central person to the cult appears in a subsequent video, filmed years later, as an independent woman imersing herself in the the schoolgirl exerience for the first time and providing a testimony of how it felt for her.

This is extremely typical of certain types of cult involved in long cons. Long cons are criminal MOs including actors, theatre, and the creation of alternative realities. Long cons are actually forms of participatory theatre in which the only member of the audiaence is the "mark" (victims).

It should come as no surprise to learn that cults use theatre, conjouring, sleight of hand and the creation of alternative realities to exploit their victims.

What makes cult a little different to a typical long con is that there are multiple victims who are coerced (often without their knowledge) into acting as shills(a much overused work in conspiracy theorist circles), flying monkeys and human assets for criminals.

"I mean, did they just get tired of the whole matriarchal mother goddess thing and reinvent themselves as a paid-for sort of Victorian fetish community? And what is the relationship with the 'St Trinian's' style caning scene going on somewhere in English suburbia in your first set of links? Is this 'Miss Martindale' character the link between all of these?"

The links need to be examined closely but Miss Martindale or whatever her name is (press reports of her conviction for caning / assaulting a follower list her name as Tyrell I think - will check) is definitely a constant presence in all of these controversial communities.

arghh please excuse my spelling mistakes and typos, am quite tired

I mean, did they just get tired of the whole matriarchal mother goddess thing and reinvent themselves as a paid-for sort of Victorian fetish community? And what is the relationship with the 'St Trinian's' style caning scene going on somewhere in English suburbia in your first set of links? Is this 'Miss Martindale' character the link between all of these?

If you check out some of my earlier posts you will find that Tyrell / Martindale / aka various other names is still operating various facebook pages and websites themed on "god the mother' and an apparently "matriarchal" religion called Deanism aka Filianism

as with all these scams it is a synchretic hodgepodge of Buddhism, Hinduism, astrology, sci-fi, bizarre beliefs about sex, gender and femininity with an added dollop of MLM / get rich quick and dodgy psychotherapy

Do you know when this was written, the FAO on the sundaughter website?

I am sorry I have not had ttime to check that out. The archive may prove helpful? Because so much material in relation to cults disappears I have concentrated on archiving and taking screen shots. I keep mening to collate everything but keep finding more related rabbit holes.

One of the reasons I am posting is so that clever women (and men if they want to - I'm not precious) can help to think about this stuff.

The language about gender is familiar...interesting that the term sex is not used apart from saying that:

.Darwin fundamentally changed what Tellurian human beings think they are and made possible the concept of “sex” in the modern sense (the word is first used in that sense 1926, by the way).

I understand the they are saying Intermorphiction is a genre, but then it's like they are saying it's an actual world, an alternative world.

I am absolutely thrilled and excited that you are starting to engage with this and thinking about it.

I have so much data linking different themes in different cults, i have so many thoughts and insights that I want to share, but I think the most important thing is for readers to know that I do not know everything about these groups and that I need help to research and think about them.

Working out a family tree, as happens with the evolution of lifeforms, including viruses, is important to our helping us to understand what the hell is going on.

This virus is scary and very bad news, however with clever women on lockdown and with a great demand fo podcasts and content we might be able to turn some elements of this to our advantage and help stop vulnerable people from being abused.

We need to develop immunity to the mind viruses and the only way to do that it to engage in creative and analytical thinking about what is going on

I would really welcome your thoughts on the writings of this cult about sex and gender, I am brewing some of my own but, because of the contraints of time, they are mostly about common themes, nodes and indicators.

Yes, for those if us in similar situations, we can see that effect=/=cause.

I am so sorry to hear that you have endured gaslighting and related challenges

Have some flowers
I wish I could give you more I really do

Do take care of yourself. You're not mad xx

Thanks so much for this

I know I am not mad, not least of which because sometimes tha gaslighting has been so intense that I have questioned my own sanity (something tryuly mad people never do)

How lolvely it would be to be mad and to wake up and realise that all of this was just a nightmare or hallucination.

Not gonnna happen, so hey ho, onwards and upwards, got to keep fighting, now is a time for sheroes and heroes and some of us thrive in tough times like these.

I am no shero myself. I am flawed in many ways, have done many things I later regretted, not done things I should have done, I am very far from perfect. I never give up though. Relentless when I have th bit between my teeth lol

I need to attend to some things IRL, back soon

One of the Russian models who committed suicide after joining a controversial LGAT cult was Ruslana Korshunova.

There are many disturbing press reports of her death, but Peter Pomerantsev's book provides much background information.

It has been a while since I read it and I am unsure which of the models in the cult who committed suicide (2 that I know of there may be more) had been involved in the Amazon women photo shoot mentioned in passing in Pomerantsev's excellent book.

I only noticed the connection because of my enthusiasm for harvesting screen grabs, videos etc re cults and had noticed other cults involved in Amazon women workshops, retreats and photoshoots. More to foloow re this

From the wiki about Ruslana Korshunova

British TV producer and filmmaker Peter Pomerantsev has theorised that Korshunova's suicide was related to her involvement with Rose of the World, a controversial Moscow-based organisation which describes itself as "training for personality development". While researching for a documentary into Korshunova's death, Pomerantsev learned that the model spent three months attending training session at Rose of the World. These sessions—which encourage participants to share their worst experiences and recall repressed memories—are modelled after Lifespring, whose controversial methods were the subject of multiple lawsuits for mental damages in the US during the 1980s. Korshunova attended training sessions with a friend, Ukrainian model Anastasia Drozdova, who committed suicide under similar circumstances in 2009. Friends of the two women reported changes in behaviour after several months at the Rose. Korshunova became aggressive, while Drozdova experienced violent mood swings and grew reclusive; both lost weight. After three months of training, Korshunova returned to New York to look for work, where she wrote of feeling lost and doubting herself. Rick Ross, head of the Cult Education Forum, argues that organisations such as Rose of the World "work like drugs: giving you peak experiences, their adherents always coming back for more. The serious problems start when people leave. The trainings have become their lives—they come back to emptiness. The sensitive ones break." Only months after leaving the Rose, Korshunova was found dead.[18]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruslana_Korshunova

Pomerantsev's book describes how he decides to infiltrate the cult using hidden cameras, mics etc. and using the best undercover jounrnalist in the business, a real no-nonsense tough guy who had gone undecover to expose extremely dangerous groups.

Unfortunately, after exposure to the cult's intensive training sessions, the tough guy jounrmalist starts to behave strangely and feel anxious when away from the cult.

Pomerantsev's book how the MOs of the cults can be used by a nation state to control the masses. There are som elements of book that feminists may not like, however it is an important book re understanding the use of cultic dynamics and I would recommend it for this reason alone.

back to the cleaning for a bit

Am very interested in this thread and bemused at some of the aggressive posts at the beginning - I can’t see how creating this thread is harmful to others or should elicit such a strong reaction and am not sure why people who don’t like it can’t just scroll past.

I had some very peripheral contact with this cult (and indeed a few other highly unrelated cults) in the early noughties when I was in a vulnerable place, but luckily it didn’t go any further than a one off meeting. I had forgotten all about the group before today.

I’d be interested to hear more and find out about what I had avoided. For example I didn’t know about the far right links. I also didn’t know it was such a wide ranging organisation with links to therapy.

I don’t see the slightest sinister intent in some early hostile or dismissive responses to this thread, which I imagine were primarily to do with the way the information was expressed and laid out, as a series of info-blurts, there was no initial explanation of the purpose of the lengthy posts, and the fact that the OP did not sound well. (And has said so herself.)

I mean, I’ve seen similar responses to, say, lack of paragraphing on Mn in general.

In fact, it’s very interesting, and I’m glad to have seen the thread and not dismissed it, but I’m not surprised some people (who didn’t know the OP, and her longterm work on cults) had a different response, at least initially. I’m sure there were others who, like me, first thought ‘What on earth?’ and scrolled past, but without commenting.

I mean, if the first post had begun ‘Dear all, I’m posting this information here to disseminate information that might be of interest from my longtime research on cults with gender beliefs as I’m in poor health and wanted to get it out there’, rather than vague warnings about dark material and not surviving the coming storm, I think initial responses would have been different.

I’m not in the least blaming the OP, who says she struggles with written communication, but I think initial hostility stems from this, not some more ideological motives.

I mean, if the first post had begun ‘Dear all, I’m posting this information here to disseminate information that might be of interest from my longtime research on cults with gender beliefs

I did post something similar to that

as I’m in poor health and wanted to get it out there’

I am not in poor health.

I am an older poster on the cusp of the "at risk" age category and with some health issues that put me at risk from the virus. Up until very recently I trained at the gym 5-6 days a week as well as other exercise. The only reason I stopped going to the gym was to protect my close neighbours who are mostly aged 70+.

rather than vague warnings about dark material and not surviving the coming storm, I think initial responses would have been different.

I live very close to an outbreak and, while it is likely that I would survive it is not guaranteed,

The material I research is "dark" and disturbing and the storm is coming.

I have been told that I have a "flowery" way of communicating. I also write poetry and make art and many artistically inclined people communicate in this way. It does not mean that they are mad.

I’m not in the least blaming the OP, who says she struggles with written communication, but I think initial hostility stems from this, not some more ideological motives.

I do not struggle with communication and have been told by many people that I excell at communication.

I make spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes and typos due to dyslexia.

However, as someone with extensive experience of researching cults I am extremely familiar with being told that I have strange beliefs typical of deluded people.

It is easy to understand how this happens and it is an experience that many posters here will be familiar with when they try to point out that the emperor has no clothes and that a man cannot become a woman or vice versa.

In honesty I can completely understand how some people who are unfamiliar with my posts might deduce that I might be "eccentric", however some posts were, IMO, gaslighting and deeply unpleasant.

One of the central issues around the cults that I study is that their MO is veiled in a strange theatrical camouflage with a Carry On films flavour.

In this instance the camouflage involves Miss Whiplash / St Trinnians style theatrics and other elements that, should a victim attempt to disclose abuse, is likely to result in them being gaslighted by well meaning people with an elevated opinion of their ability to discern mad from not mad.

Hopefully this will be a lesson so that readers will pay attention should a traumatised person attempt to describe something that has traumatised them but that appears superficially ridiculous and even comedic,

How are you today hooda? Following with interest.

Fascinating. Thanks for posting.

How are you today hooda? Following with interest.

I am, fingers crossed, well today

Unfortunately there have been significant real life issues I am having to deal with

I am likely to be on lock down any day as I live in sheltered housing with many people who are much more vulnerable than me, although they are in denial about the virus and are not listening to my warnings.

Basically, over the last few weeks the kind of response I got from some readers here is very similar to what I am getting in real life over concerns about the virus

People, mostly women over 70 many over 80 and a few in their 90s live here. The Housing association lets children visit and today I had a strong exchange of words over this issue with one of the more beligerent tenants.

Frankly it is quite hellish. Physical fitness is extremely important to me and without it I am in constant pain and will fall into disability. I have avoided the nearby gym so as not to put the more vulnerable tenants at risk. I have been foolish really as lots of them spend all day in the pub or betting shop.

Today I am disturbed by the loud, constant coughing of one of my neighbours. Not constant as she went out to the shops and cafes a couple of times.

I am very likely soon going to be locked in with them. I will get the virus as we have one small laundry and 3 machines between 75+ tenants.

I have spent all day trying to clean, decluttering (have been decanting DVDs into folders) and sorting out my indoor exercise kit. I still have stuff to do to prepare for when it hits me.

I think it likely I will survive as, even with my health issues I am extremely strong for my age. It is inevitable that I will get sick and I am just looking forward to it being over, having a modicum of immunity and being able to volunteer as I used to work in the NHS I will probably help out at my local GP surgery.

Right now I am trying to get as much indoor exercise as I can and getting cleaning and decluttering done. Once I'm on lockdown I'll be posting all the time that I'm well enough to do so.