FORTEAN TIMES UNCONVENTION 1996
12. CULTS (William Shaw, author of SPYING IN GURU LAND)
William Shaw, a music journalist, wrote SPYING IN GURU LAND - INSIDE BRITAIN’S CULTS, in
which he describes what went on in various cults when he joined them, never revealing to their leaders or
members that he was a “spy”.
Shaw’s initial question to himself was “What’s in it for people within cults?”
Shaw telephoned the Cult Information Centre. He was told that they had identified twenty-seven different
types of “mind control”. The newspapers believe this kind of thing. Why is this view widely held?
There have always been cults. At times of change more cults appear. Change is endemic at the moment.
In the late twentieth century there is a belief in “mind control”. The anti-cult movement is a system of
beliefs - a cult - in itself.
Shaw first came across the world of cults while writing a book on New Age travellers. He had heard
travellers talk of some strange group in Cornwall. He went there and found out the story. Some time in the
1980’s an antique dealer called Holy John had arrived there. HJ had been in prison and had had a vision
of King Arthur rising. New Age travellers were the “poor coming together” according to him and he
befriended some. Many of them believed in him. That was how his cult started. The believers in Holy
John became isolated from the network of New Age travellers. The cult lived on its own on the edge of a
cliff in Cornwll, awaiting the rising. Then the date of John’s prophecy for the rising came and went. The
cult failed. The huge majority of cults fail without anyone noticing. You only hear about the ones that
conform to the media image (violence, brainwashing etc: there are 399,000 “other” cults in Japan, apart
from the one you’ve heard of).
Three months after Shaw went to Cornwall, Waco happened. Thirty of the people in the siege were
British. The headlines were all about Koresh the “charistmatic vampire”.
But is it really all about brainwashing? Why do people want to join cults?
Everyone who joins a cult is a “seeker”. Cults are hard to get into but harder to get out of because it is
hard to abandon beliefs entirely. Cults believe the world is horribly wrong, and claim the answer. It is
hard to leave a cult because the world outside is corrupt. Cults become “cults” as we see them. Prior to the
Waco and the Order of the Solar Temple deaths, the groups had become paranoid because they had been
targeted by anti-cult groups [Shaw actually met Branch Davidians, including Waco escapees].
“A cult is a religion without political power” - Tom Wolfe.
Shaw decided to join cults to see what it was like on the inside.
*THE EMIN
He went to a festival of “mind, body and spirit”, and at one stall at this exhibition was the “Eminent
Theatre Journey”. The Eminent Theatre Journey claimed to be a research group into the esoteric,
believing this to be an ending epoch. They were smiling people. Shaw accepted an invitation to attend one
of their classes. Eight people, including Shaw, were new arrivals at the first meeting he attended. At the
meeting they were welcomed like the prodigal son (they were, in the language of the anti-cultists, “love-
bombed”). This was a tiny group trying to sustain their beliefs, so a smidgen of interest from new people
was exciting for them. The Eminent Theatre Journey was just a public title for the group. Their real name
was the Emin, a name which many reading this may have heard of already. The Emin were at the time
“secretive”, though. They are a British cult, invented in the 1960’s. There are about 2,500 members
worldwide. They have a complex cosmology. They apply meanings to numbers, colours, shapes and
words. They believe that the unseen (supernatural) world uses ANYTHING to communicate with us. The
leader - Leo - believed he had identified “technologies” (i.e. methods) for understanding the unseen world.
The meetings that Shaw attended involved aura work first, then weeks later he was told about Leo. Leo
(real name Raymond Armin) lived in Florida, and communicates with the cult by fax. New Age
assimilation is slower than Christian Fundamentalism. You buy Leo’s book first. You’ll never climb to his
level, but can get to an “upper level”. The upper level had many concepts and much vocabulary that made
the book hard to understand. Shaw had to stay with the cult to learn more. He noticed a few weird things.
Like the Emin all had similar haircuts. They all listened to New Age music and “Tubular Bells II”
[laughter from the audience] and used incense. People started to introduce themselves with different
names (e.g. “Sky”). Leo was a heavy smoker so they all smoked cigarettes (Silk Cut). Shaw compares this
to the cult of Economic Science, where they also took on their leader’s tastes: fine wine and Mozart. Shaw
said that once you start ripping up the “real” world it is hard to stop, including making a fool out of
yourself in public. In the Emin you change your name frequently. Then one week came the ritual
garments, complete with washing instructions. However, nearly all of the eight left the Emin. Most cults
keep people for a very short period of time.
Shaw detected a “conservative morality” in all cults. For instance, Leo was homophobic. There were no
Bacchanalian elements. Women were encouraged to take “feminine” roles. Women made food while men
moved furniture.
* CHRISEMMA
Shaw came across two gurus who formed a cult called Chrisemma. The two gurus’ names were, of course,
Chris and Emma. Their followers were all couples. They had a grim orientalist faith. Sex meant the death
of the ego.There were rules for believers to do with personal relationships. Shaw thought that this “got
dodgy”.
Chris advised everyone to drive no faster than fifty-six miles per hour.
* AETHERIUS SOCIETY
“Sir” George King founded this old British UFO cult. He was appointed to the interplanetary parliament
in 1954! The cult used trances. In the trances, the members were overshadowed by space heroes, fighting
evil fish. Faith, thought Shaw, was the feeling that you’re doing something positive for other people.
* ECONOMIC SCIENCE
In 1984 a book called SECRET CULT by Peter Hounham and Andrew Hogg, criticized the Economic
Scientists because of the amount of properties they owned, but Shaw said that they are not sinister, but are
tweedy types, with Old Testament/Hindu beliefs and are royalist and genteel.
* Many ex-cult members say they were “brainwashed”. Shaw thinks that to believe in “mind control” is to
dismiss things you don’t understand or , in the case of ex-cult members, dismiss assessment of things
you’ve been through.
* Shaw was not tempted to actually remain permanently in any of the cults he investigated, because he
was not looking to be tempted. He was not “seeking”. The Jesus Army tried to get him baptised. A cult
tries to get you to change EVERYTHING. He felt like he was at a cliff edge, that he really could throw
away everything in his life if he wanted to, and enter the new reality provided by a cult.
[Many cults were hard to get into and the uninterested had plenty of time to drop out of
courses/classes/meetings. Those “seekers”, who really wanted to believe in something, threw themselves
over that cliff-edge. It was their doing. That was why, even if they were being exploited, they were not
under “mind control”].
UnConvention '96 reviews
- feedback and comments
- discuss with other blather readers
|
