Cults in literature and popular culture

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Cults and new religious movements and its leaders have been used as a theme or subject in literature, and popular culture.

Contents 1 Ancient 2 19th century 3 20th century 4 21st century 5 References

[edit] Ancient

One of the earliest mentions of a cult-like organization was in a satire by Lucian of Samosata, a second century AD writer. Lucian unmasks "Alexander the false prophet" who is playing tricks on his followers to obtain their money. Alexander plots Lucian's death but Lucian is forewarned and avoids the attack. Some scholars believe that Lucian's satires were cribbed from works written by other writers hundreds of years earlier.

[edit] 19th century

Among American writers, Mark Twain and Willa Cather both published what today would be called "exposes" of Christian Science. In spite of their eloquence, they failed to prevent Mary Baker Eddy's church from eventually obtaining a large measure of respectability.

Grey's story betrays the influence of Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet (1887), in which the Mormons and their leader Brigham Young are portrayed as unremittingly villainous. Two Mormons who had forced a young woman into a polygamous marriage in Utah are the targets of a revenge murder in England. However, Doyle has the murderer brought to justice by Sherlock Holmes, while Grey's gunslinger gets the girl (and the gold).

[edit] 20th century

Zane Grey, in his Riders of the Purple Sage (1912), a Western novel that would have a major influence on Hollywood, lambasts the Mormons and has his gunslinger hero rescue a wealthy young woman in the early 1870s from the clutches of elderly polygamists via exceedingly bloody gunfights. In spite of the melodrama, the novel contains an acute portrayal of the psychological conflicts of the young woman, raised a Mormon but gradually coming to the realization that she wants a supposedly freer life. It should be noted that the Mormon misdeeds depicted in the story take place on the southern frontier of Utah and there is no suggestion that Mormon leaders in Salt Lake City are involved. Indeed, the harassment of the young woman reflects a popular literary theme in Victoria's England rather than Brigham Young's Utah — the orphaned young heiress besieged by unscrupulous suitors who often profess the Anglican or Catholic faith.

Science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein had an abiding interest in cults. A leading figure in his early "Future History" series (see If This Goes On--, a short novel published in Revolt in 2100 (1953)) is Nehemiah Scudder, a religious "prophet" who becomes dictator of the United States. Heinlein pours into this book his distrust of Mormonism, Protestant fundamentalism and other religious movements that he regards as authoritarian. It apparently influenced Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1985).

Dashiell Hammett's The Dain Curse (1929) revolves around a California circle of the type that today would be called a New Age cult. A.E.W. Mason, in The Prisoner in the Opal (1928), one of his popular Inspector Hanaud mysteries, describes the unmasking of a Satanist cult. Since the advent of the anti-cult movement in the 1970s, numerous thrillers have been written in which the hero, often a private detective, rescues a young person from a cult and/or uncovers nefarious murders plotted by a cult.

In his novel That Hideous Strength (1945), C.S. Lewis describes the National Institute for Co-ordinated Experiments, or "NICE", a quasi-governmental front concealing a kind of doomsday cult that worships a disembodied head kept alive by scientific means. This head, who/which is plotting to turn the Earth into a dead world like the Moon, has been interpreted as a symbol of modernism, materialistic science, and/or irreligion. Lewis' novel is most notable for its elaboration of his essay on the "inner ring"--a seduction/recruitment lure that he believed was key to understanding how people get roped into totalitarian and other spiritually twisted organizations. The novel breaks from the convention of previous cult thrillers in that its plot does not hinge on a strong man rescuing a weak woman but rather on the opposite--a shallow and weak-minded husband is rescued from the inner ring by his strong, courageous and deeply religious wife, who becomes an agent of a godly resistance movement. ^{[citation needed]}

Persons widely regarded (rightly or wrongly) as cult leaders played an interesting if minor role in 20th century literature. Aleister Crowley, the New Age guru, was a poet and novelist who wrote an autobiography that became a widely praised bestseller after his death. Nicholas Roerich, the founder of Agni Yoga, was a travel writer and poet as well as being a major painter who captured the stark features of the mountains of Central Asia. L. Ron Hubbard was an important figure in the golden age of science fiction and also wrote Fear (1940), a ground-breaking psychological thriller that influenced later writers such as Stephen King. G.I. Gurdjieff, the guru who taught methods of "double consciousness" in Paris, authored Meetings with Remarkable Men, a minor classic of Russian literature, and Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, a curious melange of philosophy, humor and science-fiction that some regard as a masterpiece. Ayn Rand, founder of Objectivism, was the author of two major best sellers, The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957). Eli Siegel, the founder of Aesthetic Realism, was a highly regarded poet (Kenneth Rexroth even compared with to Heinrich Heine); his best known poem is "Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana" (1925) [1]. Numerous other purported cult leaders or founders of New Age tendencies or new religious movements have written works that have influenced the thinking of broad circles.

Influential founders of spiritual movements have included Helena Blavatsky, the Russian adventuress who founded Theosophy, penned The Secret Doctrine and Isis Unveiled, and had an immense cultural and intellectual influence in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, indirectly helping to stimulate the Indian nationalist movement, the interfaith ecumenical movement, parapsychology, the genre of the occult thriller, and what today is called the New Age movement. Rudolf Steiner (d. 1925), founder of Anthroposophy, was an important writer in a variety of fields (his collected works total 350 volumes) and an influence on such figures as novelist Herman Hesse and philosopher Owen Barfield. Through his writings and lectures, Steiner stimulated the development of the cooperative movement, alternative medicine, organic farming, the Waldorf schools, and "eurythmy" in modern dance.

In Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), the hero from Mars, Valentine Michael Smith, goes through a period of functioning as a cult leader, and his control techniques are described in great detail.

Psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich, who in his later years founded a psychotherapy cult around the idea of orgone energy, is widely regarded as a major inspirer of the sexual revolution, a forerunner of the interdisciplinary field of psychohistory, and an influential theorist and clinician of early psychoanalysis. Several alleged cult leaders have been prolific tract writers and although their writings have not influenced contemporary culture to the degree of a Reich or Blavatsky they have stimulated many to join their churches or movements and have expressed ideas that have been adopted and adapted by writers and spiritual "entrepreneurs" outside of their own circles. Examples include JZ Knight, founder of Ramtha's School of Enlightenment, whose popular Ramtha books have done much to spread the practice of spirit channelling among New Agers; and Elizabeth Clare Prophet of the Church Universal and Triumphant who, with her late husband Mark Prophet, wrote over 75 books on the "Ascended Masters" and similar topics. Other examples include the late Herbert W. Armstrong of the Worldwide Church of God, whose books on Biblical prophecy and British Israelism were widely read for over a half century; and rightwing ideologue and conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche — the author of over 500 books, articles and published speeches which have had a significant if often subterranean influence on various movements of the left and right as well as on the media in some countries.

In a Simpsons episode titled "The Joy of Sect", the said family are drawn into a cult known as the Movementarians, who have claimed the tangible possessions of many of Springfield's residents after brainwashing them with false promises. An unimpressed Marge tries desperately to deprogram her family.

[edit] 21st century

Popular French author Michel Houellebecq’s 2005 science-fiction novel, The Possibility of an Island, describes a cloning group that resembles the Raëlians.^[1]

[edit] References