Cults first began to appear in the mid-1800’s, possibly as an exploitive response to the work of Sigmund Freud and other early psychologists.
The first important cult research was done by Robert J. Lifton in the 1960’s.
The word “Cult” entered English from the French word “culte,” which derived from the latin “cultus,” meaning “care or adoration,” the past participle of “colere,” “to cultivate.”
The earliest sense of “cult” referred to formal religious veneration or worship, and its first known appearance in print was in 1617.
Cults have made headlines around the world for many years and continue to fascinate in documentaries and popular podcasts.
The stories behind these cults’ origins, leaders and demises are unbelievable.
Since the era of the Summerians (Babylonians) Akhadians, Assyrians and Egyptians, Cult groups have been dominant and created by men or women seen as demigods.
Men and women with great charisma who acted in the capacity of gods!
For instance, Nimrod and Gilgamesh created powerful cults in their days.
Read: The Epic Adventures of Nimrod and Gilgamesh (Final Part)
Let’s look at some of the most brutal cult groups that caused untold damage to life in the name of religious beliefs over the past 63 years before I delve into the story of Dr. Malachi York.
Love Has Won
On April 28, 2021, the mummified remains of Amy Carlson, the 45-year-old leader of the group Love Has Won, were found in a home in Moffat, Colorado.
Carlson was known to her followers as “Mother God” and claimed to be able to cure cancer and communicate with angels.
She also said she was the reincarnation of both Jesus Christ and Marilyn Monroe.
According to affidavits taken by the Saguache County Sheriff’s Office, the group was brainwashing people and stealing their money.
While police do not believe that there was any foul play associated with Carlson’s death, seven members of the group were arrested and charged with abuse of a corpse and two counts of child abuse.
Police identified the arrested members as Ryan Kramer, Christopher Royer, Sarah Rudolph, Karin Raymond, Jason Castillo, John Robertson and Obdulia Franco.
Kramer and Raymond were released from jail on personal recognizance bonds, with more hearings scheduled for later this month.
School of Prophets
Ron Lafferty was convicted of murdering his brother’s wife and her toddler in 1984. Lafferty, a member of a renegade polygamist cult called the “School of Prophets,” killed the woman because of her opposition to plural marriage.
Lafferty claimed he committed the killing after a revelation from God!
Lafferty was sent to Utah’s death row; he died there in November 2019.
NXIVM
NXIVM founder Keith Raniere was accused of running an abusive sex cult through his Albany-based seminar company.
He denied the charges after his March 2018 arrest, but a judge ordered him held without bail until trial.
Before Raniere’s arrest, in 2017, a New York Times exposé accused NXIVM of fronting a cult called “DOS” or “The Vow.”
The Times reported that female cult members were branded, used as sex slaves, punished by their “masters” and blackmailed.
“Smallville” actress Allison Mack was subsequently accused of recruiting “DOS” slaves by convincing women they were joining a female empowerment group that would help them overcome weaknesses.
Mack was arrested and indicted on federal charges, including sex trafficking.
She initially pleaded not guilty.
Mack was found guilty on all counts on June 19, 2019. In October 2020, a judge sentenced him to 120 years in prison.
Mack was also fined $20,000 and will have to do 1,000 hours of community service as part of her sentence, CBS New York reported.
At her sentencing, Mack expressed remorse.
“I made choices I will forever regret,” she said, telling the judge she was filled with “remorse and guilt.”
Rajneeshpuram: The Mystic
Indian mystic Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh attracted followers by the thousands in the 1970s.
He preached a “religious-less religion” that embraced sexual liberation.
The Netflix documentary “Wild Wild Country” showed followers wearing only red and worshipping the mysteriously wealthy leader, even when he stopped speaking for a prolonged period.
In the early 1980s, Rajneesh was having trouble with the Indian government and sent his followers to buy a ranch in Wasco County, Oregon, which they converted into a compound.
The community attracted American and international followers, some of whom left families and high-paying jobs to meditate at the feet of Rajneesh.
Wasco residents were frustrated by the cult members, known as Rajneeshees, to begin with, but tensions rose when the Rajneeshees attempted to take over the government of the nearby town of Antelope.
The cult collapsed after authorities deported Rajneesh and convicted some of his staff, including secretary Ma Anand Sheela of orchestrating a food-poisoning scheme against locals.
No one was killed, but at least 700 people were poisoned in an effort to influence a local election.
Sheela fled to Switzerland, where she served time for her crimes, and later opened nursing homes.
In interviews she granted for “Wild Wild Country,” she largely spoke kindly of Rajneesh, who died in 1990.
The movement still has followers in India, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.
Angels’ Landing
For 15 years, Daniel Perez — a self-described “seer” who claimed to be a 1,000-year-old angel — led a traveling group of mostly women from state to state.
Perez told his followers that he needed to have sex with young girls to stay alive!
Over the years, Perez collected millions of dollars in life insurance policies from members who died.
The 2003 drowning death of 26-year-old Patricia Hughes at the group’s compound outside of Wichita, Kansas, was originally ruled an accident.
But when police received new witness testimony, they arrested Perez on suspicion of murder.
Prosecutors alleged that Perez forcibly drowned Hughes to collect a life insurance policy after her death.
He pleaded not guilty.
Following his 2015 trial, Perez was convicted of 28 crimes, including first-degree murder, rape, aggravated assault, and sexual exploitation of a child, among others.
He was sentenced to life in prison.
Heaven’s Gate Cult
In the early 1970s, Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles renamed themselves Bo and Peep and took a road trip across the U.S., assembling a group they called “The Crew.”
For the next 20 years, the group lived in various camps in Southern California and took on new followers.
The group believed that Earth was about to be wiped clean and the only chance to survive was to leave it.
Nettles died of liver cancer in 1985, but Applewhite continued to lead the group.
About 5 years later, the group isolated themselves from their friends, family and the public, and relied on the internet to recruit new members.
In 1997, Applewhite persuaded 38 followers to kill themselves, telling them that they wouldn’t be dying, but leaving their earthly vessels behind.
The group rented a mansion in Southern California, where members took phenobarbital mixed with applesauce and washed it down with vodka, then put plastic bags over their heads.
Applewhite plus 38 other people between the ages of 26 and 72 died in three groups over three days.
Authorities found the corpses lying in bunk beds, covered by purple cloths.
They were dressed in identical black shirts and sweatpants, new black-and-white Nike sneakers, and armbands reading “Heaven’s Gate Away Team.”
Three other people connected to Heaven’s Gate later committed suicide, bringing the cult’s death toll to 42.
The Manson Family
The Manson Family was a commune and cult created by Charles Manson in California in the 1960s.
Manson’s followers were mostly young women.
They believed that he was a reincarnation of Jesus, and he taught that a race war was coming.
Manson instructed followers to kill people because he believed the murders would provoke the race war.
In all, nine people were murdered in several separate attacks.
Manson was convicted of nine counts of first-degree murder.
He was imprisoned until his death in 2017.
Other members of the cult are still in prison.
One of the victims (murdered) was actress Sharon Tate, she was eight months pregnant.
Children of God
The Family International, also known as the Children of God, was founded in Huntington Beach, California, by David Brandt Berg in 1968.
By the 1970s, the group had communes around the country and outposts overseas.
Berg encouraged female members to recruit new members through sex – a practice he called “flirty fishing.”
Berg also encouraged sex with children.
In one letter to members, he said, “God created boys and girls able to have children by about 12 years of age.”
Several former members have alleged they were sexually assaulted and beaten as children.
Some people who were born into the group later killed themselves, including one of Berg’s sons, who first killed his nanny.
Actor Joaquin Phoenix was born into the Children of God.
His parents, suspicious that the group was becoming something more insidious than a religious community, decided to separate from the group in 1977, when Joaquin was 3 years old.
They changed their surname from Bottom to Phoenix, signaling their new beginning, and moved from Venezuela to the United States.
Actress Rose McGowan was also born into Children of God.
During her childhood, her family lived in Italy with other members of the group.
McGowan has said that when her father learned Berg was advocating for child-adult sexual relations, he packed up his three daughters and escaped to the U.S.
After Berg’s death in 1984, the group tried to distance itself from his endorsement of pedophilia.
Now they preach that they are in a war of good versus evil.
It’s unclear how many members the group still has.
The Peoples Temple
The Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ was founded by Jim Jones in Indiana in 1955.
Jones taught a blend of Christianity, socialism and communism, with an emphasis on racial equality.
He eventually attracted several thousand followers.
As U.S. media began to scrutinize the group, they fled to Guyana, where they created a settlement called Jonestown.
By 1978, the population there had swelled to about 900.
Around that time, some members warned American media of mass suicide rehearsals at Jonestown.
Congressman Leo Ryan flew into Jonestown to investigate.
He, three journalists and a cult defector were shot to death.
Later, Jones had his followers kill themselves by drinking a cyanide-laced drink.
Jones was later found dead.
More than 900 people died at Jonestown.
Aum Shinrikyo cult
Aum Shinrikyo was a Japanese doomsday cult founded by Shoko Asahara in 1984.
The cult attracted young, elite university students and graduates who believed that the apocalypse was near and that they would be the only ones to survive.
In 1995, members carried out a sarin nerve gas attack in the Tokyo subway system, possibly in an attempt to bring about the apocalypse, and possibly to keep authorities from shutting down the group.
Thirteen people died, and thousands were injured in the attack.
Thirteen members of the group received death sentences.
The first seven, including leader Shoko Asahara, were hanged in early July 2018, and the remaining members were executed later that month.
The cult was never banned in Japan, and lives on in offshoots including Aleph and Hikari no Wa, which have an estimated 1,500 followers today.
Matamoros Human Sacrifice Cult
In 1989, authorities found 12 male bodies on a ranch in Mexico, near the U.S. border. They would later find three more.
Five drug smugglers were arrested in connection with the murders.
They told police they thought the human sacrifices would protect their drug smuggling operations.
When the suspects were asked who murdered an American victim, Mark Kilroy, they named Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo, 26, the leader of the cult, and Sara Aldrete, a student at Texas Southmost College, known as “the witch.”
Constanzo and Aldrete fled to Mexico City with three cult followers.
By the time police tracked him down, they found Constanzo and another follower both fatally shot.
Constanzo had instructed his follower to kill him to avoid arrest.
Aldrete and the other follower were arrested on the spot.
Order of the Solar Temple
The Order of the Solar Temple was formed in 1984 by Joseph Di Mambro and Luc Jouret.
The cult, based on New Age spiritualism, drew followers in Switzerland, France, and Canada.
As the cult became more doomsday focused, it got more followers, who brought in more money.
But in the 1990s, authorities in Canada began investigating the group amid accusations of sexual misconduct, and people started to leave.
In 1994, a man who spoke against the cult was killed in his home, along with his wife and baby.
Days later, two Solar Temple buildings in Switzerland went up in flames.
Investigators found 48 bodies inside.
Some were shot, some were found with bags over their heads and some had been injected with tranquilizers.
Joseph Di Mambro’s gun was found during the investigation.
He and his family were among the dead.
Then, in 1995, a Solar Temple building in the Swiss Alps was found burned down with 16 bodies inside.
Five more members died in a burned Quebec house in 1997.
In all, 74 cult members and former cult members died.
Branch Davidians
The Branch Davidians originated in 1955 from a schism among the Shepherd’s Rod/Davidians, which stemmed from Seventh-Day Adventist teachings.
David Koresh, their leader, began leading the group in 1987, abandoning many of the original teachings and adopting the belief that the end of the world was near.
Koresh’s followers took over the Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, also known as Mount Carmel.
Koresh kept “spiritual wives,” some of whom were underage.
The government also had eyes on the group because they believed Koresh was stockpiling weapons.
In 1993, the ATF and Texas National Guard raided the Waco compound.
The raid led to a shootout that left four agents dead, followed by a 51-day standoff with the FBI.
On April 19, federal agents launched tear gas to try to force people out.
Soon after, the compound erupted in a massive blaze.
Eighty-two people, including Koresh, died.
Russian Doomsday Cult
The Russian doomsday cult was founded by Pyotr Kuznetsov.
The group broke off from the Russian Orthodox church.
In 2007, about 30 members of the group holed up in a cave in Russia’s Penza region.
They said they would commit suicide if authorities intervened.
Kuznetsov, who was not with them, had told them to wait there for the end of the world, which he thought was coming in 2008.
After about six months, 14 members came out of the cave, and nine members came out later.
Two cult members died in the cave.
He reportedly attempted suicide when his doomsday prophecy didn’t come true.
His current whereabouts are unknown.
Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God
The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God was a breakaway movement from the Roman Catholic Church founded in Uganda in the 1980s.
The group believed that the apocalypse would occur on Dec. 31, 1999, and to avoid damnation, members had to follow the Ten Commandments very strictly.
Leaders even discouraged talking to avoid breaking the Ninth Commandment, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”
Sex and the use of soap were also forbidden!
As the year 2000 A.D. approached, the group prepared for the end.
When the apocalypse didn’t come, their leaders proposed a new date: March 17, 2000 A.D.
The leaders planned a big party at a secluded church.
After guests arrived, the venue burst into flames.
All 530 in attendance, including dozens of children, were killed.
The windows and doors had been boarded up to bar escape.
After the fire, police found hundreds of other bodies in compounds across Uganda.
Many victims had been poisoned. In all, 924 died.
Police initially suspected mass suicide but later determined that the deaths were the result of a mass murder.
Dr. Malachi York and His Nuwaubian Nation
Dr. “Malachi” Dwight York was born in Boston, Massachusetts though other sources give his birthplace as New Jersey, New York, Baltimore, Sudan, Liberia and even Takoradi, Ghana.
Dwight Malachi York was born on June 26, 1945.
He’s an American criminal, black supremacist, pedophile, child molester, musician, and writer best known as the founding leader of several black Muslim groups in New York, most notably the Nuwaubian Nation, a black supremacist, new religious movement that has existed since the 1960s.
He is a convicted child molester.
What is known is that York claimed to have been raised in Massachusetts, and at the age of 7 went to Aswan, Egypt, to study Islam.
“My grandfather, As Sayyid Abdur Rahman Al Mahdi, the Imaam of the Ansaars lived in Sudan until 1959 AD, upon looking into my eyes foretold that I was the one who would possess ‘the light.’”
York said he returned to the U.S. in 1957 at age 12 and continued to study Islam.
York told his followers he was not of this Earth but from the planet Rizq (Esoteric Planet From a Metaphysical World of Aliens).
He wrote, “We have been coming to this planet before it had your life form on it…My incarnation as an Ilah Mutajassid or Avatara was originally in the year 1945 A.D.
In order to get here, I traveled by one of the smaller passenger crafts called SHAM out of a Motherplane called MERKABAH or NIBIRU.”
This version of York came to Earth on March 16, 1970. (Comet Bennett, which was visible on that date, is said to have really been York’s spacecraft.)
York taught that the Motherplane/NIBIRU would launch the Crystal City or New Jerusalem (see: Book of Revelation 21:2) to our solar system from its position in Orion.
A 40-year process of taking the 144,000 Chosen Few (see: Book of Revelation 14:1) — 12,000 each from the Twelve Tribes of Israel — into the Planet Craft NIBIRU began on August 12, 2003, and will end on August 12, 2043.
These Chosen Few will be groomed for 1,000 years and returned to Earth for the final battle against the Luciferians and also to redeem man from the 6,000-year rulership of the Devil and his seed.
York was convicted in 2004 of child molestation and violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
He is currently serving a 135-year sentence in prison.
There were also numerous reports that York had molested numerous children of his followers.
He is serving his sentence at the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX) in Florence, Colorado.
“Many are unaware of the fact that at age 19, Dwight York was convicted of statutory rape.
At the age of 19, he pleaded guilty to raping a 13-year-old girl and was given probation.
However, he was imprisoned for 3 years after violating his probation for unrelated charges,” the Pan African Alliance.
York, now 78, remains in prison at a federal facility in Colorado nearly 15 years after his conviction.
Although his cult largely collapsed after his arrest, some of his loyal followers still maintain his innocence.
He was teaching a bizarre blend of religion, mysticism and claims about alien life.
He was exposed by former followers, including his estranged son, and his conviction in 2004 showed he was transporting minors across state lines for sexual purposes.
“Malachi York saw himself as a channel between God and the world,” cult expert Rick Ross (not the hip-hop star) told PEOPLE Magazine, “It was horrific what happened.”
The story of York and his cult, which ended in Eatonton in 2002, began in New York City in the ’70s.
It was there, in Brooklyn, where he first launched a sect called the Ansaru Allah Community.
Preaching black supremacist ideas and mystical Islam, the ex-con and street peddler also claimed to be a descendant of the prophet Mohammed and a member of the Sudanese royal family.
At his Brooklyn headquarters, York’s followers dressed in traditional Islamic clothing and adhered to his anti-white teachings.
According to former follower Niki Lopez, who later testified against York in court, children were forced to live separately from their parents and were beaten with wire hangers and broom sticks and sometimes starved by York’s concubines.
Over time, York’s need for control over his cult’s members grew more sinister and sexually depraved, according to law enforcement sources as well as previous news accounts and those of ex-followers.
Under York’s guidance, his concubines groomed the children to be his sex slaves.
“He would allow the children to watch cartoons and feed them ice cream,” says Tracey Bowen, a lieutenant in the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office, the agency that eventually arrested York in Georgia. “It was a progression, a complete grooming process he did with these kids.”
In 1993, amid mounting investigations in N.Y.C. — including probes of alleged bank robberies and counterfeit checks — York moved his group to Eatonton, Georgia, about 75 miles southeast of Atlanta.
That’s where he built a compound he called “Tama-Re,” complete with two 40-foot plywood and stucco pyramids and a Sphinx on a former 476-acre game preserve.
It was, he said, a tribute to the group’s ancient Egyptian ancestors.
“I just thought of him [York] as this magical being,” says Lopez, who joined the group at age 11, with her mother. “I was taught he was a man of miracles and everyone had to be loyal to him.”
All along, York’s teachings grew stranger and stranger.
He adopted the name “Chief Black Thunderbird Eagle”.
He declared that he was an extraterrestrial.
York eventually morphed into the leader of what he called the United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors, based on a philosophy that revolved around Egyptology and UFOs.
He came to believe that Tama-Re was a sovereign nation and “advocated they weren’t subject to our laws,” According to Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills.
“They would meet the building inspectors with guns,” he says.
By 1998, whispers of York’s sexual depravity reached law enforcement when Sills learned about a rash of underage girls giving birth in local hospitals.
“The girls weren’t allowed to speak,” the sheriff says.
“All the speaking had to be done through the men and they would take the placenta with them when they left.
I suspected it was from keeping us from matching DNA to York.”
The criminal investigation into York renewed in earnest in 2001 when his estranged son, Jacob, told Sills about York’s decades of child sexual abuse.
Soon afterwards, dozens of other victims — including Niki Lopez — came forward to give investigators additional details of sexual and physical abuse in the group.
Cults are close-knit and often secretive organizations that may recruit members through false premises, such as the promise of religious salvation.
Although not all cults are religious, most subscribe to a particular belief system unique to their organization and do not permit members to deviate from their strictures.
Members who wish to break free of a cult often have difficulty doing so and may experience psychological effects after leaving.
Why Do People Join Cults?
People who join cults often do so from a basic desire to belong to something, to feel protected and secure, and to live a life that has meaning.
Cults that are based on tenets of Christianity can fulfill this longing in some people, as the promise of eternal salvation is the primary draw for many adults who join cults.
When recruiting new members, cults often discern a need in a person and promise to satisfy it, whether the need is religious fulfillment, political activism, self-actualization, or simply a sense of belonging.
Those who are most likely to be recruited by a cult tend to come from an economically sound background, be educated and idealistic, and exhibit above-average intelligence.
Cults tend to be led by a charismatic and compelling leader who demands loyalty.
Because cults require absolute commitment to their leader and discourage questioning of the belief system set forth, often using manipulative, exploitative, or abusive tactics to prevent and punish dissent, they are generally considered to be destructive and controlling by outsiders.
In fact, cult members may adhere to the doctrine to the point of cutting off family and friends who are not also part of the cult.
Potential members are usually not aware of the extent of the cult’s beliefs before entering and only realize the totalitarian structure, abuse of members, and other harmful practices after joining.
However, by that point, a person may be so committed to the cult’s promises that he or she will wholly accept beliefs and practices he or she would have rejected before joining the cult, especially upon seeing other members obey without question.
There was also a group known as The Nation of Islam (Black Muslims).
Began in 1930s by W. D. Fard, the group teaches that the black man is good, the white man is the devil, and that Jesus was merely a prophet.
It’s a highly controlling group.
United Pentecostal Church (UPC)
A highly controlling, legalistic group that was formed in 1945.
This group denies the Trinity and teaches that in order to be saved one must be baptized in the name of Jesus only.
There are several cults scattered all over the world but true worship comes from within the SELF and NOT IN ANOTHER SELF.
God (the Supreme being) lives in all flesh! And none is special than the other, we are all SONS OF POWER AND ETERNITY.
Do not be deceived!!
