When I got into researching cults and trying to develop a working idea of what that looks like in a pagan context, I found very few anecdotes that confirmed my suspicion, but the number was not zero. The podcast Was I In a Cult? had an episode involving a Heathen-flavored, witchy cult, for one, and Storm Faerywulf has also written on this issue in The Wild Hunt.
And yet, even with that confirmation, I still felt that most of the people who understood (or claimed to understand) the general mechanisms of cults didn’t seem to be able to apply them to the specifics of the pagan experience, and this gulf made it difficult for those familiar with the specifics of the pagan experience to apply those generalities. I was left with the impression that the anti-cult movements are not equipped for the reality of specifically neopagan cults because of biases, ignorance, and bad scholarly habits.
That said, I think the neopagan community isn’t well-equipped for the reality of cults at all because of various factors common across our subcultures.
We think it can’t happen here (and we’re wrong)
I feel comfortable asserting that one of the key draws to pagan practices, as practitioners are overwhelmingly converts, is an implicit promise of freedom. Most pagans are raised in a different religion and then leave because they’ve already suffered excessive control and constraint. They end up becoming pagans after seeking something that satisfies their individual need for faith while being (or at least, seeming) less structured and hierarchical, and therefore emotionally safer. This isn’t nothing! I still believe that this tendency in pagan traditions is a benefit, and not a detriment, as it addresses a very real need.
The peril is in the assumption that this is not a simple tendency but rather an essential and fixed quality of paganism. It’s understandable, even logical, to have that association with a sense of freedom if that’s been your experience.
And, yet, while many are able to correctly recognize that “love and light” mentalities are often just a shield for secretly vicious beliefs and actions, that starry-eyed surrender to an unaccountable Universe is spiritual bypassing and a refusal to push for a better here-and-now…I feel that we fail to recognize the same mechanisms at play in other forms and other contexts, as in the tyranny of structurelessness I have continually seen crop up time and time again across multiple group settings geared towards pagans—cults or otherwise. The phrase “tyranny of structurelessness” originates from an essay by Joreen, and while she initially applies the analysis to consciousness-raising groups, her point stands in reference to paganism: In the absence of a formal structure, the unspoken attribution of authority will fall along lines of bias and prejudice, and of personal alliances. This comes at the expense of granting credibility on merit grounds (such as based on verifiable wisdom or achievement) or those which are more conducive to achieving stated goals.
In other words, it’s a ripe environment for the charismatic authority that is often so central to the development of high-control and high-demand groups. And when it is difficult to clearly identify what has gone wrong and why, it is harder to combat it.
Charismatic authority is our default (and we like it that way)
I should note that “charismatic” in this sense is a label arrived at by process of elimination when you are using Max Weber’s tripartite model, the other two options being traditional authority (inherited through lineage) and rational-legal authority (bestowed by a government). It does not inherently imply that leaders possess charism (though many pagans claim to have it) let alone rizz to make up for a lack of intellectual rigor or actual expertise. A leader can be blockheaded and charmless but will get away with it by virtue of just getting there first.
This makes it all the more easy to be believed if you happen to be peddling absolute bullshit, because in this scenario you’ve got a head start of years, if not decades. This is a key part of why the newness of a religious movement influences the vulnerability for it to develop into a cult.
As you might also find time and time again while researching cults within other traditions, lay-leadership is also not a protective factor against the development of cults.
Discernment is for assholes
I can say for my part that there are several times where I have made the decision to simply accept what a trusted person tells me, probably as a matter of what I’ll call Discernment Fatigue. I like to think that I value discernment, and, when you are exposed to an idea by people you trust and there isn’t accessible information to counter it or lend it nuance, it is easier to simply accept that idea as presented. Many of these ideas have, by their nature, been difficult-to-impossible to apply the skill of discernment to.
There are other barriers to applying the skill of discernment which I’ve noticed: Because we so often only have one another, because many of us have experienced religions with a more obvious top-down structure, because we often have higher rates of trauma (getting to that), we are more likely to feel as though our spiritual reality is under attack and particularly vulnerable when confronted by disbelief or lack of validation within our communities.
People who insist on outsourcing the responsibility for a sense of control and who depend on compliance from others to protect their feelings tend to be excitable assholes. Pushing back on someone with this mindset, even when justified, tends to trigger efforts to shut down and pile on.
If all experiences are valid (or else), or if the social norm is to assume validity of experience as a default (or else) and we allow lashing out at those who don’t fall in line, then we are not in an environment where the safeguards that protect against indoctrination are even allowed to function. If we are hostile to disagreement or any kind of (detectable) structure, we are more vulnerable to subtler, or more superficially appealing, forms of control.
Higher rates of trauma
As my therapist continually reminds me when I vent about pagan drama in their office: There is a lot of trauma in the pagan community.
People who become involved with cults are seeking to have very real needs met and see what is offered to them as a viable means to do it.
Often a sense of community is a massive factor in tolerating unhealthy groups. You develop a sense of solidarity and even genuine emotional connection by being in the company of people who require very little explanation to understand what you have to say. A social group, however dysfunctional, still provides some sense of emotional and material support. Being left without these things by removing yourself can be terrifying. We are social beings and we belong to a social species.
The other half of the trauma component is that trauma inflicted through more obvious harm still creates this openness—yes, the openness to ecstatic experience; yes, the drive to seek relevant truths that lie outside of measurable and concrete reality…but also vulnerability to further harm. Humans are a social species, but we are also a highly adaptable species. If we are forced to survive and adapt in an environment where we are subjected to abnormal and inhumane treatment over a prolonged period—for example, parental abuse, bullying, social rejection or IPV—then we are forced to adapt to an environment where we cannot afford to recognize and react to mistreatment, or we become unable to recognize mistreatment and control exerted in ways that are unfamiliar to us, as we were not forced to attune to it.
For as long as it feels plausible that it could be worse elsewhere, there is motivation to linger where you shouldn’t.
Small population size
Going by the 2013 Heathen census (pains me to cite Seigfried, but he’s the one who has any data to offer), Heathens number at an optimistic upper estimate of a little over 40 thousand worldwide. (I think this number is wildly unrealistic, though.) Wikipedia says there’s probably around 60 thousand druids, but that this number is probably too low to reflect the actual number of practitioners, as many censuses don’t offer this as a listed option. Wikipedia’s article on Wicca says the median estimate of adherents worldwide is 800 thousand. It depends on the region, but in America, which is fertile ground for the development of religious movements, the cumulative practicing population of all pagan traditions is an estimated 1.5 million—0.004% of the country’s population. Four out of every one-thousand. Wicca, despite being one of the more populous pagan traditions, and the one that is the most likely to have dedicated resources, is still small enough to fall under the radar.
These numbers also don’t tell us about regional density; generally pagans are going to find themselves pretty geographically scattered.
Pagans, then, have fewer options for group worship available to them from the start, with many operating solitarily offline due to that absence, or from recognizing that available options are not up to par. Those opting against a solitary practice are then more vulnerable if the settings for group education and ceremony are operated or occupied by high-control groups, who use these settings for promotion and recruitment.
Additionally, because newer and smaller religions are going to have to make do with limited resources and places to practice any kind of worship or ritual, things that would ordinarily serve as warning signs might be harder to spot. Things like obsessing over expansion and growth, gathering resources, or using volunteer labor to get things done, is going to either be less obvious or just be unavoidable. Many pagan organizations genuinely don’t have the means to operate otherwise, but it makes it easier to overuse those resources. Tighter control of information is easily waved away by the fact that there’s a limited number of people with the skill and motivation to adapt scholarship to something usable for a religious practice (for more historically grounded traditions), or the fact that a new religion by necessity will have to build its lore just like it builds its following. Unfortunately, this also makes it much easier to outright lie to recruits and adherents.
Fewer potential members to start with also translates to fewer defectors, because defection is that much more inherently costly. Those whose only options are solitary practice or a dysfunctional community, and who value community access highly enough to tolerate bullshit, are forced to settle. This is a simple numbers thing but it’s also a matter of lacking other options. Even if the concentration of defectors is comparatively high, there’s still not a strength in numbers. Smaller groups mean that those who speak out about their experience are much easier to identify and target for mistreatment. When leaving these groups, there is the immediate threat of isolation, and the lingering threat of harassment and dead-agenting to try and ensure the isolation continues, and it is that much easier to achieve.
Paganism is already pre-emptively stigmatized by the anti-cult movements
One of the frustrations I had when I first got “cult vibes” from a group and was trying to assess the situation was that one of the lists I looked at had this fuckery:
Mind-numbing techniques (such as meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues, denunciation sessions, debilitating work routines) are used to suppress doubts about the group and its leader(s).
I remember being on a voice chat and saying, “no, meditation or chanting is just normal fucking ritual!” While I’ve since reached the conclusion that the group in question was a cult after all, I stand by my initial reaction. These aren’t comparable activities to struggle sessions, or the Synanon Game, or exhausting labor. Context matters. Excessive use would fit the bill, but that’s not what’s being said.
For my part, I think rune intonations are dumb as hell, but every Heathen group I’ve done ritual with in North America does it. Yes, it was for trying to induce a change in mental state in preparation for ritual. It was also normal. Doing ritual and intentionally cultivating a specific headspace for it is, honest to goodness, normal.
But it’s not recognized as normal because “normal” is usually a concept that structurally excludes pagans by design.
The anti-cult movement first originated in Christian concerns with keeping heterodoxy and eclecticism contained. The focus is not on the authoritarianism that we now recognize that defines a cult, but on deviance from a permitted norm. Even ostensibly non-Christian viewpoints on what defines a cult often bypass concerns about power and mistreatment and focus on what they just think is weird. When I peeked at Steven Hassan’s site out of curiosity (because I do not like this dude) and saw he had an open study, I peeked at it out of curiosity and discovered that in the dropdown list of several NRMs with highly specific names, many of them much smaller in membership size even than most neo-pagan traditions, “paganism” was one singular option. The entire umbrella, just shoved in there with 3HO and the Unification Church.
In short, we’re usually forced into a position where we are viewed with enough suspicion, by enough of the population, that we have to reassure people that we’re not inherently in cults solely on the grounds of having “weird” beliefs. I’ve noticed that we often appeal to respectability in response to this, but I wish we didn’t. We have the right to believe weird things, and to do weird things, so long as we are ethical about it. But public perception insists on conflating Weird with unethical. It’s religious stranger danger.
Because of all of this, speaking to the reality that cults do actually develop within neopagan traditions is threatening in a society that is already hostile to us, and which is ignorant of what actually defines these groups in opposition to viable religious movements.
The anti-cult movements and pop-wisdom about cults have issues completely unrelated to paganism
The secular anti-cult movement has also been kind of a shitshow, and much of the public objection to cults, when they are not focused on the weirdness, are largely focused on the idea that you’d have to be stupid to end up in one, or that only certain kinds of people join them.
Trustworthy and compassionate research on cults (to the extent that it does exist) doesn’t support this perception. Per ICSA:
There is no “personality profile” of people who become involved in cults. All kinds of people become involved for all kinds of reasons. Although some cult members may have had psychological problems before joining their groups, the majority were psychologically normal before becoming affiliated with a cultic group.
Media on cults are often reductive, focused on presenting a simplistic typology or creating a spectacle. Followers are dehumanized all over again by being turned into zoo animals for the true crime demographic that’s bored of serial killers. The How To Become a Cult Leader series on Netflix was guilty of this, which disappointed me greatly because it provided a lot more historical background than I would have found on my own. The more visible cult “experts” seem more like opportunistic grifters peddling tiresome “dark triad” pseudopsychology. It does not help my impression of them that they, themselves, often have an outsized sense of authority, expensive consulting and speaking fees, and a disconcertingly invested and uncritical following.
In both the Christian and secular anti-cult movements, and in the popular perception of cults, the language is intense, dramatic, almost cartoonish: Lovebombing, brainwashing, thought reform, mind control, deprogramming, etc., characterizing the experience of cult involvement (and departure from that involvement) as a tactical onslaught, an act of psychological warfare, rather than an extreme end result of what are actually very normal, natural human tendencies. Given the right motivations, any person can believe or do just about anything.
There have been multiple attempts to redefine and rehabilitate “brainwashing” as a concept, but no amount of semantic drift will remedy the fact that “brainwashing” as a theory suffers from a simultaneous absence of evidence and evidence of absence.
Most troubling of all to me, the theory really only serves to try and relieve the anxiety of witnessing outlandish behavior and struggling to reconcile it with the assumption of sanity we grant other people. It serves to neutralize the threat of having to acknowledge that they, too, could fall into something like this organically, without a conscious scheme, and without external force. It reflects, and protects, an ignorance of how people actually work.
The willful ignorance of this reality is load bearing: It allows uninvolved people to pat themselves on the back and tell themselves they’d never be the kind of person to wind up in a cult, and further entrenches people who are involved and insults people who have successfully ended their involvement.
I think this also further explains the popularity of “dark triad” pop-psych in the anti-cult movement, which provides an efficient shorthand with which to label leaders and recruiters as abnormally powerful and/or abnormally evil, while relying on ableism. It creates an Other with an aura of academic structure to justify it.
All of this also ignores that most manipulation is quite mundane. Boring, even. I doubt that most cult leaders are consciously scheming to overtake someone to the degree they’re assumed to, given how little insight I have observed in people given to manipulative behavior in general. Manipulation and control are not the observable symptoms of some inhuman, bone-deep evil, but rather very human behaviors that get results at the expense of the target’s better interests, and the intensification and escalation of control is the result of a feedback loop when those behaviors are still rewarded.
This doesn’t make it any less awful. But cult leaders, recruiters, and committed adherents are quite often acting out of sincere belief in the value of their cause, and when they are successful it registers as confirmation of that perceived righteousness. When they are unsuccessful, it strengthens their sense of solidarity with their group.
None of this is to place blame on those who find themselves in a cult situation and realize they need to get out, but rather to examine various factors that create or increase vulnerability. Usually, those who engage in manipulation will shop for prospects and abandon the ones who are too difficult. The recruitment process of high control groups is one of filtering, as is testing the waters and escalating control. (Check out the linked paper by Corvaglia below.) Those who stay after this process, who are the most available, most willing, most trusting, are the ones who are the easiest to control, and they become the people who are the most at risk if a cult takes a darker turn. There is no humane way to pull someone out before they’re ready, and people’s tolerances for bullshit are wildly diverse. Some people may never be ready.
I don’t think the solution is to place hard restrictions on what is acceptable in religious groups, or to introduce standardized controls about how religious groups ought to operate. Any time those restrictions come into play, it is religious minorities who are harmed first, and operating humanely isn’t enough to protect them. Additionally, I find myself doubting that it would do much good for the pagan community to join or create our own anti-cult movement, for basically the same reasons.
The closest thing to a solution that I can suggest is education, inoculation, and cultivating resilience. How, I’m not sure, because there’s a fear lurking in the back of my mind that a trend in offering guidance on that may in itself become a tactic that increases vulnerability. Anyone showing up claiming to have all the answers warrants suspicion. That’s the point.
And I don’t have the answers—I don’t claim to be an expert, nor do I ever want to be viewed as one. I’m just a guy who sees shit and thinks really hard about it.
Some stuff I found useful, which you might find interesting:
Cults and Persuasion: Submission as Preference Shifting, by Luigi Corvaglia
A list of vulnerable characteristics, by Robert Fellows
Common myths and misconceptions about cults and coercive groups, from ICSA
INFORM, or the Information Network Focus on Religious Movements, which aims to provide balanced information on various movements, some of which are generally recognized as cults, and to act as mediators between members of these movements and concerned outsiders
Falkabarn 