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 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.

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.

My view is that the roots of lots of these groups of people, the small intentional and unintentional communities, was the counter culture of the 70s and 80s. They're full of loud egos convinced they are saviours, 'blue printing the future' was one term I heard. Yes there are dodgy and deluded people among them and those that seek power or otherwise don't play by the rules, just as there are small businesses that don't pay taxes, corrupt politicians, vicious bullies in school playgrounds etc. 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'm not convinced these are criminal or sinister groups, I do think they are pretentious fools who take themselves far too seriously and can cause harm to naive individuals. Whether that's by handing over money, time, intimacy or labour. The screamers did damage family relationships with some members as they adopted their psychotherapy viewpoints and 'liberated' themselves from conservative parents but I also know examples where that's happened in more conventional counselling.

Just wanted to support OP to keep posting, I’m finding it fascinating & very educational as it’s filling in some blank (repressed?) parts of my teens/twenties. The level of research you have done is phenomenal and even the haters must acknowledge the dedication to the subject and also ask themselves why they find it so uncomfortable a topic that they need to attack ? OP hope you keep safe and well

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 :)

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.

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

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 :)

This is an interesting point you make Hoodathunkit:

"there is a continuum of deception and exploitation re this kind of thing"

An example. An ex-boyfriend, some of whose family were into "hippy-witchy feminism" (mother) or "New Age" eco-warrior activities (brother) told me how he had been horrified when his older brother invited him to join a "coven" he said he had founded. The brother explained that he had "initiated" four women as "witches" and had a good laugh explaining how he had invented "rituals" where these young women would dance around naked and drink wine they drugged with 'shrooms in a "ceremony".

He invited his brother because he said he needed someone to help fuck them, that they were all "fat, ugly and stupid" but they were the easiest ones to fool and grateful that anyone wanted to fuck them!

A few months later he told his younger brother that he had disbanded the "coven", but with some difficulty because the women had become completely hooked and were distraught. He had made up some lie that he told the women, about them "failing" and that he had given up on them.

The truth was that they wanted to recruit more people and he got cold feet. He realised that they wanted to grow a cult around him while all he wanted was to exploit a few "fat, stupid, ugly" women for sex. If he had been so inclined, that could easily have ended up being yet another small-fry but extremely damaging "cult".

Molesmokes am not surprised. Cecil Williamson, the founder of the witchcraft museum of Boscastle, wrote that Gerald Gardner who founded modern Wicca set the size of the ritual circle (9 feet?) to allow him to be pressed up against naked breasts on either side of him. Rituals are done naked obviously.

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

Thank you for my gold star research awards!

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.

@hoodathunkit I'm an academic in religious studies and do research on Filianism (recent articles of mine on the movement have appeared in the International Journal of Buddhist Thought and Culture as well as the International Journal of Pilgrimage and Religious Tourism). I have been gathering archival materials and first-person testimonies on Lux Madriana, Aristasia, and related groups, and would love to compare notes with you and learn more about some of the information you've collected. Please get in touch with me via my website (www.racemochridhe.com) if you are interested.

That invitation stands for anyone else here with direct experience of any of these groups, also. Possibly @DuckWillow or @GrumpyGran8?

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.

j2020

I can't get your CV or resume to load into the archive or wayback machine

any chance of archived links or C&Ps of the text if you can't do that? thanks

@rj2020 Please see hood's post above.

I'm very interested in what you're posting, hood. I lost a boyfriend to a cult called Emin in Dublin in the nineties, and have recently discovered that there's a far-right cult living near me here in France.

I'm going to go back and read your posts properly now, but please do keep posting. I'm fascinated.

@hoodathunkit - the Children of God cult came up in this Prostitution thread www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3879465-Prostitution-resource-help-please but this seems a better place to drop this link:

BBC Radio4 "Afterlives"

Two women meet for the first time to share their journeys from brokenness and despair to where both say they can find the good as well as the bad in their past.

Both were born into the Children of God cult which began as an idealistic movement to change the world, but became known for its sexual exploitation including child abuse and paedophilia.

Petra Velzeboer is of Dutch extraction but lived in cult missions around the world before leaving the community with alcohol addiction, no formal education and no clear direction of where to go. She lives in London with her two children, while Dawn Watson, who grew up in cults across Brazil, still lives in South America.

Both are now successful businesswomen. Without glossing over the horrors of the past, they examine with each other what drives them and agree that speaking out has helped them to heal. They also challenge the #MeToo campaign for continuing to see victims as victims rather than empowering them.

The conversation gets away from binaries of good and bad, looks forward and not back - examining the strength of self-preservation and how vulnerability can become the birthplace of love, trust, intimacy and courage - the very things that bring meaning and joy to life.

An Overtone production for BBC Radio 4

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jvxz

Something interesting that they both mention, in light of the observation by Tavistock GIDS that a significant number of girls opting to transition have suffered sexual abuse, is that they both strove to become as "masculine" as possible after escaping the cult. They felt weak and vulnerable as women and saw "masculinity" as protecting them from further abuse. (All their abusers in the cult were "uncles".)

After a while they were able to discard their attempts at "masculinity", which had created difficulties in their relationships with men outside the cult.

Thanks for sharing this MoleSmokes

I listened to it yesterday and found it fascinating and, of course, very disturbing.

The Children of God (subsequently renamed many times) is a very important cult for anyone who is concerned about the sexual exploitation of children and vulnerable adults to research. Many of the themes and issues in cults arise again in other cults, sometimes through a criminal lineage, sometimes via a pseudo-academic lineage and sometimes via convergent evolution.

The issues relating to gender and to the women adopting maculine personas as a defence against overwhelming abuse is an important issue and one I can relate to personally from my own history.

Another important issue raised was that of victims becoming perpetrators and the pressure to conform within cults. One of the women interviewed disclosed that she had, aged 11 and while deeply under the influence of the cult, sexually abused a little boy.

Anyone studying sex cults on even the most basic level will appreciate very quickly just how easy it is for psychopaths, sexual predators and con men and women to "flip" people into committing acts that they would otherwise not dream of committing.

Various psychological experiments have demonstrated this, some videos to illustrate this

I'm very interested in what you're posting, hood. I lost a boyfriend to a cult called Emin in Dublin in the nineties, and have recently discovered that there's a far-right cult living near me here in France.

I am so sorry to hear about your boyfriend FancyPants20. Please excuse my tardiness in replying to your post, I really am struggling to deal with various real life challenges as well as trying hard to best present the material I have in a way that will best help stop abuses against the vulnerable.

Part of the difficulty I face is that a lot of the material I have is too disturbing to post here. Some evidential material is material I cannot post without identifying victims of sex trafficking.

I have lost many friend to cults. I am extremely cautious about making friends as I do not want any new friends to be targeted or harmed by cults because of their association with me.

I'm going to go back and read your posts properly now, but please do keep posting. I'm fascinated.

I will be posting here very soon, my problem is an overwhelming amount of material, limited time and real life challenges, but I haven't forgotten

@hoodathunkit , do you know anything about roger hallam/founder of extinction rebellion, and his history? Specifically the last 20 years?

WaveWalker

I don't know much about him at all, however....

I understand that some of the people centrally involved in XR are involved in the kind of neo-pagan "women's circles" that are of extreme concern to me as many are fronts for very sinister activities in which sensitive information is harvested via "sharing circles". Women tend to have their guards down at these kinds of events and may share a lot of intimate / compromising intel.

Also the "womens circles" are like an onion with many layers. On the outside it is all mindfullness, positive thinking, yoga and llove and light.

Further in it is sharing circles, sharing secrets, bonding.

Next layer "awaken your inner goddess" via sexy time trainings about skills of seduction, how to reclaim your lost feminity, how to have whole body orgasms / tantric orgasms.

There are other layers that I'm not going to describe here but women get exploited sexually, financially and isolated from friends and family.

On a tangent - what interested me about XR was the ability to orchestrate large crowds / the mob via the use of flashmobs, community theatre and performace art. This is something that some of the worst and most exploitative cults excell at and I had a sense of deja vu watching the XR theatricals.

Also of interest to me is the resonating themes with cults and country lines criminality.

Both MOs make extensive use of children and vulnerable adults as assets. They understand that for decent, kind people, children and vulnerable people should not be hurt. therefore they use them as assets and human shields while they operate behind the scenes as "hidden hands".

If you are researching astroturfing within XR I suggest that you might be interested to check out their links to womens circles and to theatre and performace art.

WaveWalker - a lot of the people involved in XR were involved in earlier Climate activism - like COP15, Climate Camp etc. Some of the ppl I knew had been involved in earlier movements like Reclaim the Streets. Some are also the children of these activists. I knew someone from Climate Activism get sucked into an abusive tantric sex cult (and thankfully escape again).

My experience of Climate Activism was also that it was very "onion" like: on the outside was veganism and permaculture; but get a few layers in and you had people with serious mental health / addiction problems being exploited by creepy abusers, and everyone politely turning a blind eye, because ' he's a good organiser' or 'we were on an action together'.

Thank you, that's really helpful.
On a tangent - what interested me about XR was the ability to orchestrate large crowds / the mob via the use of flashmobs, community theatre and performace art. This is something that some of the worst and most exploitative cults excell at and I had a sense of deja vu watching the XR
Same.
. I'm looking at my personal historic links and indoctrinative behaviour within specific activist circles, direct action groups and specific community structures and federations that he founded 20 years ago.

Both MOs make extensive use of...vulnerable adults as assets. They understand that for decent, kind people, and vulnerable people should not be hurt. therefore they use them as assets and human shields while they operate behind the scenes as "hidden hands".
That is part of my experience. I was collateral damage when I experienced extreme abuse and exploitation, along with cult like behaviour, within the housing federation he created. I've experienced gaslighting and denial ever since.

I used to live with activist performance artists in one of his membershipped houses. Never again - both to living with her or in that environment again.

Thanks again - lots of food for thought.

@InvisibleDragon

WaveWalker - a lot of the people involved in XR were involved in earlier Climate activism - like COP15, Climate Camp etc. Some of the ppl I knew had been involved in earlier movements like Reclaim the Streets. Some are also the children of these activists. I knew someone from Climate Activism get sucked into an abusive tantric sex cult (and thankfully escape again).

My experience of Climate Activism was also that it was very "onion" like: on the outside was veganism and permaculture; but get a few layers in and you had people with serious mental health / addiction problems being exploited by creepy abusers, and everyone politely turning a blind eye, because ' he's a good organiser' or 'we were on an action together'.

100% this. My abusers were RTS and Newbury old hands. One of them is currently on a boat being stuck while the undercover policing enquiry kicks off. The police have files on the activists, the activists have files on the police, and I know more than I'd like to about people on both sides.

There are other layers that I'm not going to describe here but women get exploited sexually, financially and isolated from friends and family.
Another bingo tick...