Cults come in all shapes and sizes. While you might picture stereotypical cults as religious zealots, many groups with cultic tendencies are not religious ones, and instead deal in secular self-help ideologies, psychology, multi-level marketing, and other areas.
These groups also exist on a continuum, a social worker who specializes in cult issues and wished to remain anonymous, told ATTN:. "Any group has cultic characteristics, but it doesn't make them a cult," she said.
What makes a group a cult?
Still, cultic groups share certain key patterns and structures, according to the International Cultic Studies Association. Members and leaders typically exhibit unquestioning commitment to a leader, and those who fail to do so are discouraged, outcast, or punished. Leaders of these groups often use manipulative tactics to control members' behavior, and shame dissenters in order to keep them in the fold.
Many — but not all — cults aim to make money, and may ask members for large sums or justify exploiting their labor or resources in favor of the collective good.
Above all, cultic groups trumpet an 'us vs. them' mentality, and paint individuals and authorities outside of the group as enemies. They often discourage or even ultimately forbid members from maintaining relationships with outsiders. "The most loyal members (the “true believers”) feel there can be no life outside the context of the group," the ICSU explains. "They believe there is no other way to be, and often fear reprisals to themselves or others if they leave (or even consider leaving) the group."
Here are four popular groups that might actually be cults.
1. Landmark Education
Landmark Education is a for-profit company that offers steeply priced leadership and development seminars. Numerous journalists have attended these events in hopes of gaining insight into the group's popularity and to find out if it actually qualifies as a cult.
Powerful Now.
The Landmark Forum. Advance Course. Self Expression And Leadership Course. https://t.co/l1nn5x1DPK… pic.twitter.com/m9CNy6hKQh
— KNICKS SELFIE (@knicksselfie1) December 22, 2015
In 2003, writer Amelia Hill described in The Guardian how the conferences's transformative promises and ideological pastiche — drawing from "existential philosophy and motivational psychology" to Zen Buddhism, Freud, Dale Carnegie, and the film "Citizen Kane" — devolved into a barrage of verbal abuse from the seminar leader:
"'You're disgusting,' he shouts. 'You just don't realise quite how disgusting you are yet.' He pauses. 'But you're just about to find out.' His timing is impeccable; we've hardly woken up and we're already hanging on his every word."
Hill continues:
"I can hardly bear it. I resent the way he struts across the stage and the way he takes stock of us all, smoothing the pleats in his trousers and patting his hair. I find his confidence intolerable and am maddened by his belief that he knows us better than we know ourselves. And yet, I am gradually forced to admit that he might be right."
Laura McClure, who wrote about Landmark in a Mother Jones piece in 2009, described a similar experience, but emerged with a far more cynical take on the group.
"After nearly 40 hours inside the basement of Landmark Education's world headquarters, I have not Transformed. Nor have I "popped" like microwave popcorn, as the Forum Leader striding back and forth at the front of the windowless gray room has promised," she wrote. "In fact, by the time he starts yelling and stabbing the board with a piece of chalk around hour 36, it's become clear that I'll be the hard kernel left at the bottom of this three-and-a-half-day Landmark Forum."
The course ends with what McClure perceives as a crude up-selling pitch from the leader:
"I am committed to having every one of you register for the Advanced Course tonight," he says. He's no longer smiling. We can demonstrate our commitment to ourselves, to David, to Landmarkall for $650, a $200 discount but only if we act now.
McClure points out that Landmark Education is "a for-profit 'employee owned' private company and collected a tidy $89 million from seminars the previous year.
It also is rooted in similar methods to an older, controversial self-help group. McClure writes:
"Though it's hardly a secret, Landmark does not advertise that it is the buttoned-down reincarnation of the ultimate '70s self-actualization philosophy, est. Erhard Seminars Training was founded by Werner Erhard, a former used car salesman who'd changed his name from Jack Rosenberg, moved to Northern California, and dabbled in Dale Carnegie, Zen, and Scientology before seizing upon the idea that you, and only you, are responsible for your own happiness or unhappiness, success or failure. Est's marathon Transformation sessions were legendary for their confrontational tactics (Erhard calling his students "assholes"), inscrutable platitudes ("What is, is, and what ain't, ain't"), and the pressure put on participants to bring in new recruits for the next cycle of seminars."
Numerous popular companies have allegedly required or strongly encouraged employees to attend Landmark seminars, including the yoga brand Lululemon Athletica, health food restaurant Cafe Gratitude, and mall chain Panda Express.
ATTN: reached out to Landmark Forum regarding these allegations and will update this post if we receive a response.
2. Radical Honesty
Radical Honesty is a self-help seminar focused on the premise that authenticity is the key to happiness, and that many people suffer because they are acting fundamentally dishonest throughout their day-to-day lives.
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These ideas are not insane. Most people lie to partners, coworkers, friends, and family members somewhat regularly — and on a common sense level, pathologically telling 'little white lies' may very well be a bad thing.
The group's tactics and leadership, however, veer toward the nastier side of the cultic continuum. Radio producer Starlee Kine shared her experience attending a retreat on the Moth podcast in 2009. Kine was kicked out of the group — which she concluded was a cult — after she refused to get naked with other attendees and the seminar's leader, psychologist Dr. Brad Blanton.
"It was totally crazy—a total cult," she told the New Yinzer in an interview.
"There’s this mad man who runs it, and he just yells at you a lot," Kine expanded. "He yells at you for not being honest, and he kept calling me a bitch.“[Radical Honesty] just feels like a sex cult. You live in this house for a week, and you do all of these bullshit exercises."
https://t.co/Bej5YPe6KS Dr. Brad Blanton - Learn to Tell The Truth pic.twitter.com/fenRUnP6BB
— Екимова Ива (@worldnewsvideo2) January 24, 2016
"Any place where it’s one guy that’s come up with a philosophy [is] trouble," Kine said. "It [encourages] cult-like behavior. There was a day when you were supposed to get naked, and I wouldn’t get naked. So I got kicked out. We were already fighting before that. He told me when he was kicking me out that it was going to be really great if I got kicked out for not getting naked cause people could understand that. So I hesitate to say that’s why I got kicked out.”
ATTN: reached out to Radical Honesty regarding these allegations and will update this post if we receive a response.
3. Raëlism
On the surface, Landmark Forum and Radical Honesty both deal with somewhat tame self-help psychology. Raëlism is considered a bit more salacious — the group was founded in the 1970s, and claims that "scientists from another planet created human life," the Miami New Times reported.
The UFO religion is also known for its nude demonstrations, and in 2007 founded a nude advocacy group GoTopless.org and subgroup, Rael's Girls, which is made up of women who work in or support the sex industry. But Raëlism may be most known for a 2002 cloning experiment that many believed to be a hoax.
@TheRealDratch as the Eve, the clonaid baby, has got to be one of my favorite things on earth. pic.twitter.com/HzBqve1X
— Mitchell Voorhies (@MitchVoorhies) January 4, 2013
In 2005, Wired reported on a documentary about Raelism and its Las Vegas seminars:
"Raelian theology states that aliens long ago visited the Earth and populated it through cloning. The religion also teaches that nudity and sexuality are pure and beautiful, and that if people were more in touch with their feminine sides, there would be less violence in the world."
Documentary filmmakers Abdullah Hashem and Joe McGowen were attracted to the group when they discovered that one of its religious commandments was to donate 1 percent of your annual income to the group. The group was founded by French journalist Claude Vorilhon, who led the seminar Hashem and McGowen attended.
Learn how you can be like former journalist Claude Vorilhon/Rael, an ambassador to aliens!http://t.co/AllsT7OO6t pic.twitter.com/ASgvd7d3ts
— TheDailyNewsHack (@dailynewshack) June 3, 2014
"I think what's disturbing about the Raelians is the total submission members have to Claude Vorilhon, and the fact that families have been estranged and marriages have been broken as a result of his influence," said Rick Ross, a New Jersey-based cult expert who screened the documentary, said.
The documentary filmmakers suspected that the group used sex to coerce members.
This women follows Raelism she so hot pic.twitter.com/3w4CJAjeOX
— ♕ JosephVandebor ☮ (@Vandebor85) January 5, 2016
"There are a lot of people (at these seminars) who believe in aliens, and all these beautiful women who will have sex with you even though you're a dork," Abdullah Hashem, one of the filmmakers, told Wired. "And that's why most people were there."
Raelian spokesman Sage Ali answered the filmmakers concerns in an interview with Wired. "We love sensuality," he said. "We're very proud of what goes on. We have nothing to hide. The footage taken at the seminar is all great as far as I'm concerned."
In August 2008, the group claimed to have more than 70,000 members in 97 countries.
ATTN: has reached out to Raelism about the following allegations and will update this post if we hear back.
4. OneTaste/Orgasmic Meditation
Getting fingered surrounded by strangers may sound like the end of a terrible movie date, but that is exactly what what flocks of young Londoners are paying for in weekly therapy sessions, according to Dazed.
While it has recently seen a surge of popularity in the U.K., the technique was coined in California by Nicole Daedone and first popularized in the U.S. around 2009, when Daedone was profiled in The New York Times Style section. The U.K. sessions are conducted by TurnON Britain, a branch of Daedone's company OneTaste.
Sessions are apparently conducted in groups made up of couples and singles paired up and directed by an OM practitioner. Each clothed male or female participant strokes the clitoris of a female partner, who is exposed from the waist down, for 15 minutes. The goal is not to achieve climax — though some attendees do — but a prolonged experience of sexual awakening.
#orgasm #OM #orgasmic #meditation onetaste.us pic.twitter.com/5ximu5cf5n
— OneTaste NYC (@OneTasteNYC) May 26, 2015
But many journalists who have attended conferences have expressed concern about the way the group markets and up-sells these techniques.
Reporter Nitasha Tiku chronicled her experience at a OneTaste seminar on Gawker. She observed:
"Everyone is interested in doing fun things with their bodies. But the impulse to systematize, replicate, package, sell, and build an ideology around it is uniquely Silicon Valley. Part of what drives app makers and investors is the urge to bend the world to their desires—turn a thing on its side to see if it works better that way. In the personal realm, that translates to a libertine sense of entitlement and the pursuit of total optimization. OM seems ideally designed to meet those goals."
The first ever Orgasmic Meditation Conference. #onetaste #om pic.twitter.com/CxPM5njBF7
— TurnON San Francisco (@TurnONSF) February 21, 2013
For many people, the possible or actual benefits of orgasmic meditation are difficult to extricate from the manner in which it is sleekly branded, packaged and upsold. The Frisky reported:
"Make no mistake, this is the kind of sexual awakening that you can pay anywhere from small bucks to big bucks for. OneTaste has centers in London, Los Angeles, Austin, Las Vegas, San Diego, Boulder, Philadelphia and New York City The company offers Coaching Certification ($15,000), a Mastery Program ($7,500, a one-day PLay Class ($195) and Turn On events ($10), as well as merchandise and badges for entry into their exclusive social media hub."
ATTN: reached out to OneTaste about these allegations and will update this post if we receive a response.