Religious Cults

Join Moss Matthey as he recounts his uplifting journey from the confines of a fundamentalist Christian cult to an empowering Pagan coven. Weaving his lived experiences with a gentle introduction to Witchcraft, Moss explores what differentiates Paganism from cults and high-control religions, inviting you to shed oppressive spiritual experiences and find support.

When he first met the man who called himself David Koresh, David Thibodeau was drumming for a rock band that was going nowhere fast. Intrigued and frustrated with a stalled music career, Thibodeau gradually became a follower and moved to the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. He remained there until April 19, 1993, when the compound was stormed and burnt to the ground after a 51-day standoff. In this book, Thibodeau explores why so many people came to believe that Koresh was divinely inspired.

Tom Cruise and John Travolta say the Church of Scientology is a force for good. Others disagree. Award-winning journalist John Sweeney investigated the Church for more than half a decade. During that time he was intimidated, spied on, and followed, and the results were spectacular: Sweeney lost his temper with the Church's spokesman on camera, and his infamous 'exploding tomato' clip was seen by millions around the world.

One-on-one with Satan. A chilling and highly convincing account of possession and exorcism in modern America, hailed by NBC Radio as "one of the most stirring books on the contemporary scene."

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 18th-century society of French home invaders, who set fire to their victims' feet.

For years, Michelle LeClair, former president of Scientology's international humanitarian organization, tried to reconcile her same-sex attraction with the anti-gay ideology of the church. Michelle finally ends her horrific marriage, finds the love of her life, a woman, and ultimately leaves the Church. But the split comes at a terrible price. In this tell-all memoir, Michelle offers an insider's perspective on Scientology's pervasive influence, secret rituals, and ruthless practices for keeping members in line.

Something terrible has happened in the snowbound village of Kingdom Come, Wyoming, where 12 eerily identical houses stand dark and abandoned. Meals remain untouched on dining room tables, cars are still in garages, and the town's residents have vanished into thin air. This is the disturbing setting where vacationing medical examiner Maura Isles and her traveling companions find themselves trapped during a ferocious snowstorm.

At the heart of being human is the desire to belong. It can make us unspeakably vulnerable to the manipulations of others. Cult leaders prey on this desire, but so do many unscrupulous operators hiding in plain sight. Sarah Steel, the creator of the popular 'Let's Talk About Sects' podcast, has researched the cults you've heard of—and dozens you haven't. What strikes her most are not the differences between bizarre cult behaviour and 'normal' behaviour but the depressing similarities. Her work reveals that we are all susceptible to the power of cult dynamics.

At age 14, Wendy Gossard was drawn by the tranquil blue eyes and personal magnetism of a man known as Yahowah, leader of a spiritual group called the Source Family. Fleeing her own family and becoming a fugitive from justice in the state of California, Wendy followed the 1970s cult group across settlements in California and Hawaii on a quest for spiritual direction, communal harmony, and basic survival. Growing up, the teenager, called Mushroom by Yahowah, had questions about her pregnancy, relationships, and place in the universe.

John Alexander Dowie (1847-1907) was a Scottish evangelist and “faith healer” who migrated to the United States from Australia in the late 1800s. Dowie was referred to by critics of his time as a “confidence man”, a person who appealed to the confidence of victims using deception to convince or persuade them out of money or into submission. In the case of Dowie’s Christian Catholic Church cult following, commonly referred to as “Zionites” or “Dowieites”, both money and power were gained.

In Escaping Utopia: Growing Up in a Cult, Getting Out, and Starting Over, the authors craft Lalich’s original and groundbreaking research into an accessible and engaging book. The authors explore fundamental questions about human nature, human development, group dynamics, abuse and control, and triumphs of the human spirit.

In 1971 Paulette Cooper wrote a scathing book about the Church of Scientology. Desperate to shut the book down, Scientology unleashed on her one of the most sinister personal campaigns the free world has ever known. The onslaught, which lasted years, ruined her life and drove her to the brink of suicide. The story of Paulette's terrifying ordeal is told in full for the first time in The Unbreakable Miss Lovely.

やさしく、やわらかく、面白く日本経済に警鐘を鳴らす本。ザイム真理教はいかにして生まれ、どう国民生活を破壊してきたのか？

Any work about the mercurial Aleister Crowley is better off being labeled a “story” than a “biography” thanks to the impossibility of being sure that anything one reads about him is true. The basic recorded facts, including birth date, educational records, and published works, are reliable indicators that can be likened to stars guiding a lost desert traveler if the sky is clear. For the rest, one is wandering in the wilderness.

What do we really know about modern practicing polygamists - not fictional ones like the Henrickson family on HBO’s Big Love? We’ve seen the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the news, the underage brides in pioneer dresses on a Texas ranch. But the FLDS is just one of many groups that have broken with mainstream Mormonism to follow those parts of Joseph Smith’s doctrine disavowed by the LDS Church. Gaining unprecedented access to these communities, journalist Sanjiv Bhattacharya reveals a shadow country....

In the tradition of Educated and The Glass Castle, this shattering and poetic memoir from a brave new voice tells the story of the author’s experience in an apocalyptic cult, and how understanding the natural world was her key to escape—and survival.

Many young African Americans are disinterested in Christianity and others are leaving the church in search of what these false religious ideas appear to offer, a spirituality more indigenous to their history and ethnicity. Edited by Dr. Eric Mason and featuring a top-notch lineup of contributors, Urban Apologetics is the first book focused entirely on cults, religious groups, and ethnocentric ideologies prevalent in the black community.

In the middle of the Ozzie and Harriet 1950s, the birth control pill became available and a maverick psychoanalytic institute, the Sullivan Institute for Research in Psychoanalysis, opened its doors in New York City. Its founders wanted to start a revolution, one grounded in ideals of creative expression, sexual liberation, and freedom from societal norms, and the revolution needed to begin at home.

When Charlie Dodge gets a phone call from a frantic woman stating her daughter has been kidnapped by her ex-husband and taken into a cult called Fourth Dimension, he takes the case without hesitation. The cult’s rumored purpose is to gather men with psychic abilities with the goal of breeding a race of people who have supernatural powers. Once accepted into the cult, men are given a young girl to marry in exchange for one of their own daughters.

An in-depth look into the creation of the post-WWII Healing Revival focusing on the historical perspective of William Marrion Branham, who has been credited by some as the evangelist who both initiated and led the movement. From his involvement with the Kardashian family in California to his politically-charged sermons supporting the revival of the Ku Klux Klan, William Branham lived a fascinating and unbelievable history connected to the collaboration, influence, and power of recognized public figures and events in American history.