Religious Cults

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.

Discover a story of healing and personal transformation. Marlena’s childhood was full of contradictions. Her father was both a heroic doctor for people with leprosy and an abusive parent. Her Mennonite missionary community was both a devoted tribe and a controlling society. And Marlena longed to both be accepted in Paraguay and escape to somewhere new. In Nothing Bad Between Us, follow Marlena’s journey as she takes control of her life and learns to be her authentic self, scars and imperfections included.

In 1981, ambitious young Ma Anand Sheela transported the Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh to the United States to fulfill his dream of creating a utopia for his thousands of disciples. Four years later, the incendiary Rajneeshpuram commune in Oregon collapsed under the weight of audacious criminal conspiracies hatched in its inner sanctum, including the largest bioterrorism attack in US history, an unprecedented election fraud scheme, and multiple attempted murders. Rajneeshpuram explores how this extraordinary spiritual community went so wrong.

In the Shadow of Enlightenment is the gripping story of Carroll’s childhood inside the Osho Rajneesh cult—one of the most controversial spiritual movements of the 20th century. While in the commune, Sarito was submerged in a world where devotion and freedom clashed with manipulation, sexual misconduct, and neglect. This was the life she knew until the movement collapsed amid scandal and criminal charges in 1985, when sixteen-year-old Sarito was thrust into a society she knew little about.

Why would anyone join a cult? Maybe they're unhappy with their current religion, or they want to change the world, or they're disappointed with their lives and want to find something bigger or holier that makes sense of this confusing, chaotic and dangerous world. Or maybe they just want to give themselves the best possible chance of having sex with aliens. Whatever the reason, once people are in, it's usually very difficult for them to leave.

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.

Grounded in investigative research and real survivor stories, Surviving Modern Yoga uncovers the physical and sexual abuse perpetrated by Ashtanga yoga leader Pattabhi Jois—and reckons with the culture, structures, and mythos that enabled it. Yoga culture sells well-meaning westerners the full...

The year is 1970. The horror soap opera Dark Shadows is all the rage, the Vietnam War is raging and nine-year-old Katie, an imaginative and independent latch-key kid, comes home from school to discover her mother’s suicide. Taken in by her older sister who has recently become a Jehovah’s Witness, Katie is shown an illustration from a bible picture book featuring wild animals peacefully lounging by a pool of water, surrounded by happy people picking fruit. An enticing offer is made: “Katie, this is Paradise. Do you want to see Mom again, happy and living forever?

Danny Calvert thinks part of American society is about to crash and burn. Capitalism, if he's lucky. But when a college friend dies in jail, he joins an apocalyptic religious cult and begins printing the increasingly dark writings of its charismatic leader. Father Joseph says "unless you become like children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven." But "become like children" means just that. Father Joseph moves his followers to Europe to avoid scrutiny, and controls them such that Danny isn't allowed to marry Deborah, the woman he loves, but is forced to marry someone else.

This is the story of a young man who was raised as a Jehovah's Witness, seemingly destined to spend the rest of his life following the instruction of God's "Spirit Directed Organization". He soon came to discover, however, that things were not as they had first seemed. Following a patch of doubt and subsequent in-depth investigation into the religion, the young man began to realize that the things he had previously accepted without question no longer made sense.

While belief in religious supernatural claims is waning throughout the West, evidence suggests belief in nonreligious supernatural claims is on the rise. What explains this contradiction? How can a society with a falling belief in God have a rising belief in ghosts, psychic powers, ancient astronauts, and other supernatural or pseudo-scientific phenomena? Taking the same anthropological approach he employed in his notable studies of religion, atheist author and activist David G. McAfee turns his attention to nonreligious faith-based claims.

This audiobook compares Christianity with the false religions of the world today that are based on the accuracy of fulfilled Bible prophecy. No other religion has used prophecy fulfilled in our lifetime to prove its authority, except the Bible. With more than 50 prophecies fulfilled since AD 1948 and Jesus’ teaching that he is the only way to salvation, we can conclude that we must be a Christian to gain eternal life. Jesus declares you must follow his teachings in order to obtain eternal life.

"Time is that in which we live - it is horizontal. It is from A to B to C to D; it is in a line. Eternity is vertical. It is not from A to B and from B to C. It is from A to more A to still more A. It goes on upwards. The moment is rare because it happens only when meditation has reached ripening, maturity, when you have touched your innermost core." The vertical line opens a door to eternity.

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....

At the age of six, Tim Guest was taken by his mother to a commune modeled on the teachings of the notorious Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Tim and his mother were given Sanskrit names, dressed entirely in orange, and encouraged to surrender themselves into their new family. In 1985, the movement collapsed amid allegations of mass poisonings, attempted murder, and tax evasion, and Yogesh was once again Tim. In this extraordinary memoir, Tim Guest chronicles the heartbreaking experience of being left alone on earth while his mother hunted heaven.

Understandably, most people struggle with irrational fear at the mere mention of supernatural beings and concepts, including witches and ghosts based on what is portrayed about them in folklore, movies, scientific journals, fiction books, classical and contemporary art, and TV programs. But you’d be surprised by how much people’s minds are changed when they actually study the world of ghosts, witches and supernatural beings in general and gain insight.

Are you in an abusive relationship? Are you being controlled by others who say they care about you? Do you feel you have no power to change your life? Toxic people can be found anywhere in everyday life. They can be found in intimate relationships, in the workplace and in places of worship. They are self-centred, abusive, manipulative, and lacking empathy. They may be referred to as narcissistic, selfish, or sociopathic. They often mask their negative traits by being charming or friendly.

Out of The Cocoon, which has earned 5 stars on Amazon, is a heart-wrenching, yet inspirational tale about the author's escape from a religious cult after enduring decades of dysfunction. Take the incredible journey with her as she survives stifling oppression as a child, physical and emotional abuse as a teenager, and the ultimate tragedy: the loss of her family once she becomes an adult. See how, like a butterfly, she changes the world within her, as her external world becomes increasingly unyielding.

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.

Despite their centuries-old history and traditions, witchcraft and magic are still very much a part of modern Anglo-American culture. In Lucifer Ascending, Bill Ellis looks at modern practices that are universally defined as "occult," from commonplace habits such as carrying a rabbit's foot for good luck or using a Ouija board, to more esoteric traditions, such as the use of spell books. In particular, Ellis shows how the occult has been a common element in youth culture for hundreds of years.