The Religion & Cult Iceberg Explained

Bothers me so much that the Jonestown mass murder is called a mass suicide. Most were forced to drink that kool-aid and those who tried to run were shot.

Fun fact: For some jobs in Bavaria, Germany such as teaching, you have to sign a form that you are NOT associated with Scientology or financially supporting them in any way.

Growing up Greek Orthodox, I always heard people describe our church as "new calendar" and I didn't understand until I was an adult that our church had split over something as petty as what day it is

I find “Cargo Cults” interesting because their beliefs and tactics actually worked. The soldiers eventually did come back and brought more resources.

i know it’s a big deal because beards have religious significance to the amish, but the idea of someone breaking into another person’s house then angrily shaving their beard is so funny

I deeply fear any cult that has the power to live nude somewhere as cold as Saskatchewan.

imo Scientology could have its own iceberg. Xenu and thetans (the stuff discussed in South Park) is literally just the tip of it, things like "Fair Game", the Hole, their shadow organizations like Narcanon, whatever happened to Shelly Miscavige, child labor, the million year contracts with the Sea Org...

4:36 that windows notification jumpscared me

Scientology is waaaaay worse than he made it sound. There’s so many stories of people who left the church you can find online of them being trapped and unable to leave, being stalked/bugged, being abused, etc

Society for Ethetical Culture sounds like a group therapy TED Talk where everyone is depressed but excited to be there.

It's also alleged that Wesson not only murdered everyone in the house, but killed each one of them with a gunshot to the eye. He shot them in the EYE to kill them. There is nothing about this man that isn't the most depraved thing I've ever heard. What happened to them was completely horrific, but a part of me is relieved to know that they at least aren't suffering his abuse anymore.

The weird thing is that if Jim Jones had had died suddenly in the 60s when his church was still in Indianapolis, he'd likely be remembered relatively fondly as a figure of the civil rights movement; then he moved the church to San Francisco where his church had a truly astounding amount of political sway in the city during the 70s. And then the whole situation in Guyana, where his behavior was very similar to that of a family annihilator write large. Truly terrifying to imagine the people who experienced the full trajectory of the church.

Frustrating thing about Jim Jones is that he actually didn't drink the "kool-aid" himself. He died from a gunshot wound to the head when just about everyone else at Jones town died a slow agonizing death.

Most of these are the definition of “we can make a religion out of this”

Jewish person here! Kabbalah was actually originally only allowed to be learned by men in their 40’s (mostly rabbi’s and other religious figures) however, in recent years (I mean really recent) people of all ages have been learning about it as well. In high school (Jewish high school to be specific) my Jewish Culture teacher made us write a report on different parts of Kabbalah; we had to expand on what we thought was most interesting and important and while doing my research and learning about it I understood why only certain people could learn it cause it is very complicated (on both surface level and deeper into the practice)

I love that you mentioned Church of the Subgenius: and yes, its complete satire and totally "serious" at the exact same time.

Wendigoon: "I wanna be monetised guys, can't say bad words." Also Wendigoon: "SO ABOUT THAT EXTREME RELIGIOUS PREJUDICE IN CHINA..."

the best thing is how he decribes absolutely horrible stuff with a soft dancy music on the background, i love it

Funny story: I went to a second hand bookshop with two friends. I breezed by the occult section because that’s what usually interests me but my friends had already gone upstairs so I followed them. We came back down later and a book was there that I could have sworn wasn’t there before. Meanwhile a shady guy rushed out of the shop. It was a satanic Bible. I signaled my friends over and we laughed hard at the shock value. One friend and I looked at each other and had a moment of “when are we ever going to find something like this again”. We bought it. I RECOGNIZE Levayan Satanism from that book. It had a picture of the guy in the image inside the book and all. He is the author. I still have it, just lying around in a bag full of books.

I'm an ex-member of the Ordo Templi Orientis. I was in it for 10 years. The OTO is an occult organization which started in Germany in the late 1800s as an attempt to create an "Academia Masonica" which would bring together various Masonic rites (Masonry only has 3 regular degrees, called Blue Lodge, and everything after that is done through semi-autonomous "rites" like the most popular Scottish Rite which has 33 degrees or York Rite which has 10 degrees) to learn from one another (and bring those which had existed in other countries into Germany) as well as be a reconstitution of the 1776 Bavarian Illuminati. On top of this the OTO claimed to hold a "key" which one of the co-founders Kellner says he discovered in his travels meeting and unifying Eastern and Western spiritualities). Eventually Aleister Crowley joined and, as is his norm, took over entirely. He reformed the Order to match his own self created religion called Thelema (a hodge podge of many different religions but which focus on him being a Prophet of "The New Aeon of Horus". I was a dedicated Thelemite for around 13 years (including my time in the OTO) and after a series of weird personal events sought out the local chapter of the OTO to ask them for help and see if I wanted to join. I was a little stunned to see they had so few members and their temple space was running out of temporary rentals above an occult book store. All the same these people had chill vibes and were able to talk about things I just could not with anyone else as there's so much esoteric jargon in Thelema telling someone like a friend or family about Nuit, Hadit, Ra-Hoor-Khuit, Babalon, The City of Pyramids etc etc is near impossible. I decided to join. They offer a 0th degree called Minerval which allows you to attend Lodge meetings (non-members can only come to the after gathering, usually at a pub, bar or restaurant or attend the public demonstrations of Crowley's "Gnostic" Mass which in reality is just a Thelemic Mass based off the Mass of Russian Orthodox Christianity... but be warned if you go the eucharist, called Cakes of Light, contain a single drop of either blood or semen put into the massive batch before cooking it to kill any viruses possibly present) and the 0th degree is supposed to be an unbinding way to see if you want to go further or back away... but in reality the ritual contains vows which are far from unbinding. I progressed through several of the degrees before I left. I left for many different reasons but was in it for 10 years (I'm about to turn 31). My Lodge itself was full of pretty normal people but the Grand Lodge which ran out of the US began to be something I questioned more and more especially when one of the highest rank members, James Wasserman, begun outwardly spouting far-right ideals, posting pics of himself smiling with people like Roger Stone and Milo Yiannopoulos. If you search up "Proud Boys founder" on Google Images several pics in you'll see a picture with a man on the right wearing a shirt that has a unicursal hexagram and the number 93, those are Thelemic symbols. Looking into it he was an OTO member as were others in the Proud Boys due to James Wasserman's militant Trumpism. The man in the pic sadly passed away due to an overdose. Then there's Augustus Sol Invictus who was only booted from the Order when public relations got bad as he was a keynote speaker at the tragic hate rally Unite The Right. He was not kicked out for his views which were known beforehand but for making the news... oh and he was a candidate for the Libertarian Party nomination in the 2016 United States Senate election in Florida, was the publisher of Revolutionary Conservative, a magazine which calls for a violent far-right white uprising. To add to that In response to Invictus's campaign, the chairman of the Libertarian Party resigned due to Invictus calling him a "violent Fascist and Neo-Nazi" whose ideology was incompatible with libertarianism and saying he did not want to be part of the same party. The chairman also accused Invictus of supporting eugenics and of "sadistically dismembering a goat in a ritualistic sacrifice". Invictus responded by admitting that he once wrote a paper advocating eugenics but saying that he has since "changed his mind". He said he had sacrificed the goat and drunk its blood as part of a ritual to give thanks for surviving a pilgrimage in spring 2013, but denied it was "sadistic". So yeh while my Lodge was full of normal people the same cannot be said of many others especially those in America and Australia. I started being far more critical and doing research, openly breaking my vows to keep silent about all I've experienced and seeking out leaks about future degrees. I found out that the Order had actually essentially died out in the past (in the 70s I think, I'd have to look it up to find exact dates) and an author named Francis King wrote a book called The Secret Rituals of the OTO with every degree's ceremony and teachings included. The book matched precisely my experiences although certain signs, grips and passcodes were changed following the book being published. I knew the OTO was openly leading towards sx magick, that didn't bother me, but what I found and read in the final degree teachings was far more messed up than the sort of thing I was expecting. Those interested can easily google "Secret Rituals of the OTO pdf" and find it to see what I'm talking about. I also found out there was a long history of far-right tendencies within the OTO going back to Crowley. When the OTO first came to America the FBI puts tabs on them and heard the leader state that he believed evil-moustache-man from WW2 was right in thinking Germans were superior to others. Crowley's own opinions on evil-moustache-man are harder to pin down as the British government has declassified the fact he was working for British secret intelligence against Germany during WW1. It's highly implied he joined the Golden Dawn and caused the schism that brought it down because of direct orders from the British Government as The Golden Dawn was becoming a hub for well known Irish Nationalists who wanted to British to relinquish control over their country. However in his personal diaries he writes actual sx dreams about evil-moustache-man. A man, who doesn't seem too stable himself but none the less has acquired and is collecting and publishing primary source material about the OTO runs a website the OTO has been trying to get shut down for many years but can't as it is hosted in Sweden. It is called parareligion (search "parareligion oto" in google to find it) and while it is hard to navigate and full of weird stuff its a treasure trove of primary source material covering the entire 100+ years of OTO history. It even, kinda sillily, logs conversations about my own Lodge Master and a "controversy" where he took 5$ from the dues of members (which he replaced immediately) to buy uhh some white stuff that goes in the nose. Throughout my time in the OTO I met people from many different esoteric Mystery Schools and cults ranging from Freemasons (by far the most down to Earth, chill and normal of all the people I met were all Masons with 32nd degree Scottish Rite Masons being regular people like one who was a university teacher and specialist in translating ancient Sanskrit into English) to several versions of reconstituted Golden Dawns, several reconstituted Rosicrucian Orders (the most cult and kinda pathetic just successful is AMORC and the most respectable and legitimate was the SRIA available only to Master Masons affiliated with the United Grand Lodge of England which most Masonry is), non-English Grand Lodge Masons like Memphis-Misraim which many of the OTO's own initiations are based off of, an ARG that turned into an actual cult called Project 89 that convinced me to bring around 10 friends to farm to start a commune which failed miserable (please do not harass anyone who was affiliated with 89, most have moved on and are very good people who just did some stupid stuff when their were younger), chaos magick groups such as DKMU and much more. If you're interested in asking me anything, really anything, about any of this just let me know. To close off I want to note I was introduced to the occult through YouTube videos and the algorithm driving my interest in spirituality into deeper and deeper weirdness.