Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies

Zusatztext The kind of reference manual that the Internet cannot supplant . . . Goldwag keeps the facts straight and gives the rumors -- no matter how lurid and entertaining -- about as much respect as they deserve. The Washington Post Marvelous.Scie ntific American Arthur Goldwag is a shrewd! fair minded! learned and entertaining tour guide through a world that's simultaneously funny and frightening. Not a page goes by without some I-didn't-know-that! nugget. Given what's going on this ever-more-paranoid society! a book like this becomes not only titillating but crucially important.Steven Waldman! Editor-in-Chief and co-founder of Beliefnet.com The answer to your burning questions about subjects from Area 51 to the Yakuza. Details Delightful. The Weekly Standard Goldwag is a colorful writer who makes good use of his material as he aims to explain! rather than debunk or expose! a fascinating diversity of beliefs. Boston Globe The author's delivery is engaging and entertaining. The amount of research done in this book is astounding. . . . An incredibly insightful! thoroughly enjoyable look at society's shadow. Armchair Interviews Goldwag navigates his way through the wilder reaches of human belief with great urbanity. Mark Booth! author of The Secret History of the World: As Laid Down by the Secret Societies As entertainingly written as it is enlightening. Phillip Lopate Informationen zum Autor Arthur Goldwag Klappentext Did you know? • Freemasonry's first American lodge included a young Benjamin Franklin among its members. • The Knights Templar began as impoverished warrior monks then evolved into bankers. • Groom Lake! Dreamland! Homey Airport! Paradise Ranch! The Farm! Watertown Strip! Red Square! "The Box! are all names for Area 51. An indispensable guide! Cults! Conspiracies! and Secret Societies connects the dots and sets the record straight on a host of greedy gurus and murderous messiahs! crepuscular cabals and suspicious coincidences. Some topics are familiarthe Kennedy assassinations! the Bilderberg Group! the Illuminati! the People's Temple and Heaven's Gateand some surprising! like Oulipo! a select group of intellectuals who created wild formulas for creating literary masterpieces! and the Chauffeurs! an eighteenth-century society of French home invaders! who set fire to their victims' feet. Zusammenfassung Did you know? • Freemasonry's first American lodge included a young Benjamin Franklin among its members. • The Knights Templar began as impoverished warrior monks then evolved into bankers. • Groom Lake! Dreamland! Homey Airport! Paradise Ranch! The Farm! Watertown Strip! Red Square! The Box! are all names for Area 51. An indispensable guide! Cults! Conspiracies! and Secret Societies connects the dots and sets the record straight on a host of greedy gurus and murderous messiahs! crepuscular cabals and suspicious coincidences. Some topics are familiarthe Kennedy assassinations! the Bilderberg Group! the Illuminati! the People's Temple and Heaven's Gateand some surprising! like Oulipo! a select group of intellectuals who created wild formulas for creating literary masterpieces! and the Chauffeurs! an eighteenth-century society of French home invaders! who set fire to their victims' feet. ...

Autorentext
Arthur Goldwag

Klappentext
Did you know?

• Freemasonry's first American lodge included a young Benjamin Franklin among its members.

• The Knights Templar began as impoverished warrior monks then evolved into bankers.

• Groom Lake, Dreamland, Homey Airport, Paradise Ranch, The Farm, Watertown Strip, Red Square, "The Box,” are all names for Area 51.

An indispensable guide, Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies connects the dots and sets the record straight on a host of greedy gurus and murderous messiahs, crepuscular cabals and suspicious coincidences. Some topics are familiar—the Kennedy assassinations, the Bilderberg Group, the Illuminati, the People's Temple and Heaven's Gate—and some surprising, like Oulipo, a select group of intellectuals who created wild formulas for creating literary masterpieces, and the Chauffeurs, an eighteenth-century society of French home invaders, who set fire to their victims' feet.

Leseprobe
CULTS

What Makes a Cult Cultish?

The dictionary defines "cult" as a system of worship, but the word is usually used to denote a religious movement that is out of the mainstream. Christianity, for example, began as a cultic offshoot of Judaism, enjoying a similar status to the Essenes, the desert-dwelling ascetics who preserved the Dead Sea Scrolls, or the Samaritans, who not only belonged to a different ethnicity than the ancient Hebrews, but also didn't worship in the Temple in Jerusalem or acknowledge any but the first five books of the Bible. If a cult gains enough adherents, cultural currency, money, and other appurtenances of respectability, it generally becomes either a recognized denomination of the orthodoxy that spawned it or a full-fledged religion in its own right.

When members of one of those orthodoxies use the word "cult," more often than not they are using it pejoratively, to undercut a disreputably heterodox challenge to their own authority. Many evangelical Christians, for example, dismiss even such large, established movements as the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Church of Christ Scientist, and the Latter-Day Saints as cults, refusing to grant them the status of legitimate Christian denominations. On May 11, 2007, televangelist Bill Keller sent the following message about then-presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and a practicing Mormon, to the millions of subscribers to his daily Internet devotional, "LivePrayer":

Romney winning the White House will lead millions of people into the Mormon cult. Those who follow the false teachings of this cult, believe in the false Jesus of the Mormon cult and reject faith in the one true Jesus of the Bible, will die and spend eternity in hell.

Although my tone may be snarky at times, I strive to be agnostic when it comes to the tenets and doctrines of the movements I describe in these pages. Though I have occasionally given in to the temptation to write about a group merely because its ideas are entertainingly strange (a la Koreshanity), I am much more interested in the power relations between the leadership of a group and its members than I am in its doctrines. For the most part, when I characterize a group as a cult I am using the word as a social scientist or a psychologist would, to denote a coercive or totalizing relationship between a dominating leader and his or her unhealthily dependent followers. What makes a cult cultish is not so much what it espouses, but how much authority its leaders grant themselves--and how slavishly devoted to them its followers are.

On February 25, 2009, the Supreme Court issued its judgment in Pleasant Grove City, Utah v. Summum. Summum is a tiny sect founded in 1975 by Claude Nowell (1944-2008)--aka Corky King, Corky Ra, and Summum Bonum Amon Ra--whose members, among other things, mummify their pets and themselves after they die. A statue of the Ten Commandments stands in one of Pleasant Grove's public parks. Summum members wanted to erect a monument of their own commemorating their Seven Aphorisms* (according to Nowell's teachings, the aphorisms were inscribed on the tablets Moses smashed after his first descent from Mount Sinai; he received the Ten Commandments during his second ascent). Not surprisingly, Pleasant Grove did not wish to accommodate them, and the Supreme Court agreed that the city does not need to. Obviously Summum is more than a little weird by conventional standards--though Nowell claimed to have channeled his revelations from otherworldly beings, the theology he devel…

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