What is a cult? Are you or someone you know possibly being pushed into joining a cult or are you just interested in how to identify them? And what makes a cult leader? All these questions are answered and more on the first episode of 2023! Throughout this episode, some thoughts may be controversial and some content may be upsetting or triggering for anyone who has been affected by the actions of a cult group currently or historically please seek help from professionals I am not a professional nor do I pretend that I am I simply want to learn more.

If you feel comfortable please reach out at the links below if you want to share your experience or discuss anything from this episode I am also happy to discuss offline.

Thank you for listening I would love to hear from you all. Also please check out our network www.straightupstrange.com and follow us on Twitter @strangepodcasts Also buy some Merch at TeePublic Follow me on Twitter- @AussieOddball and LIKE, SUBSCRIBE and turn on NOTIFICATIONS on YouTube The Oddball Aussie Podcast - YouTubeFacebook- Oz OddballEmail me at - theoddballaussie@hotmail.comFind me where all good podcasts are foundI am also on iTunes- The Oddball Aussie -Please rate and review also on the Apple iTunes appand Spotify- The Oddball AussieYou can also find my show on www.greataustralianpods.comCheck out Liminal.Earth

Some online groups for resources

Cult Info Since 1979 (icsahome.com)

cult recovery 101 – Cult Recovery, cult counseling, cult professionals, mental health professionals with cult recovery experience, former cult member counseling, cult recovery therapists, experienced cult recovery counseling.

Cult group checklist

-The group is focused on a living leader to whom members seem to display excessively zealous, unquestioning commitment.-The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.-The group is preoccupied with making money.Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.-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).-The leadership dictates sometimes in great detail how members should think, act, and feel (for example: members must get permission from leaders to date, change jobs, get married; leaders may prescribe what types of clothes to wear, where to live, how to discipline children, and so forth).-The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s), and members (for example: the leader is considered the Messiah or an avatar; the group and/or the leader has a special mission to save humanity).-The group has a polarized us- versus-them mentality, which causes conflict with the wider society.-The group's leader is not accountable to any authorities (as are, for example, military commanders and ministers, priests, monks, and rabbis of mainstream denominations).-The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify means that members would have considered unethical before joining the group (for example: collecting money for bogus charities).-The leadership induces guilt feelings in members in order to control them.-Members' subservience to the group causes them to cut ties with family and friends, and to give up personal goals and activities that were of interest before joining the group.-Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group.-Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members.

Cult leader checklist

1. They tend to be charismatic and seductive with a penetrating, boundary violating gaze and leave you feeling like a spell has been cast on you.
2. They promise miracles and exaggerate their claims.
3. They are self-inflated, grandiose, deem themselves “special” and think they have the 411 direct to God.
4. They often have a fascinating origin story that can’t be proven or disproven.
5. They often claim to have been granted a miracle of their own, and having been granted the miracle, they now have the power to grant you one, for a fee, or for sex, or for something you might not wish to give away, like your power.
6. They tend to be grandiose show-offs. If they say they have mystical power, they love to flaunt it to impress you and hook you and make you feel fascinated.
7. You may find yourself feeling ungrounded, dizzy, and ecstatic as if you’ve fallen in love.
8. They disempower you to empower themselves, feeding off you energetically.
9. They are masterful at gaslighting and make you doubt yourself.
10. They are very fragile if you challenge them and wobble under anything other than blind adoration and worship. Especially if you bring up science, try to prove their claims, counter them with evidence to refute what they say, or otherwise suggest that they are anything other than the God-like messiah they claim themselves to be, they turn on you.
11. They are often extremely insightful and intuitive and use your traumatic wounding to hook your most burdened inner children and try to get those parts to bond to them so they can control you. Once those inner children bond to your own Divine Self instead, you’ll be less vulnerable.
12. They are unwilling to humble themselves, apologize, take responsibility for their behaviors, or otherwise admit to their humanity if they wind up making a mistake. Instead, they’ll double down on how special and righteous they are, even in the face of evidence to the contrary.
13. They tend to mock science and critical thinking and cast aspersions on those who care about such things, as if they’re “better” than science.
14. They try to separate you from your family and other loved ones who might question the cult leader and sow seeds of doubt in you. In order to achieve the 100% domination cult leaders require, they need to isolate you from the critically thinking, skeptical, concerned loved ones who might talk some sense into you. Any healthy leader will support and foster your other intimate relationships rather than force you to choose between the cult leader and your family/friends.
15. They create for the cult follower an intense and /or unprecedented type of emotional experience, usually cathartic or touching into trauma in some way, that trauma bonds the recruit into the leader’s group.
16. They preemptively arm the new recruit with the tools of how to fend off friends and family’s concerns, on the grounds that “ordinary people don’t understand what we’re doing here, and may try to talk you out of it. Don’t let them. We have everything you need right here.”
17. They get a power hit off controlling cult followers with uniforms, dietary restrictions, weird sleep patterns, sexual prohibitions or requirements, or other patterns of domination.
18. If you turn away from the cult, they ramp it up with persistent unwillingness to let you step away. The cult leader and often the followers as well will argue, cajole, attack, gaslight, and threaten you with dire predictions of all the catastrophic things that might happen to you if you don’t cave in and join the cult.
19. They may claim to have access to secret knowledge directly downloaded by some special spiritual power and refer you to a sacred text that cannot be questioned in its ultimate authority.
20. They may inflate themselves with some special moniker, like “John…of God” or “shaman”