The Acolytes

This content was translated using artificial intelligence and may therefore contain errors.

What obsesses so many of us about cults and sects is that, on the face of it, they don't fit into any logical framework: they're ordinary people who form sophisticated groups and make decisions that defy every instinct for survival.

For example, in Jonestown in 1978, the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project carried out the largest mass suicide in modern history. There, more than 900 people, following recorded orders from their leader, Jim Jones, drank cyanide mixed with grape juice. They died in a line, in an orderly, bureaucratic fashion—first their children—after spending years building a utopian community in the Guyanese jungle.

At the Waco Ranch in 1993, a group of families led by the prophet David Koresh resisted a 51-day police siege. The officers arrived after neighbors reported Koresh for weapons possession and sexual abuse. Convinced they were living through the end times, the acolytes chose to set fire to their home and die in the blaze rather than surrender to the federal forces surrounding them.

Some cases show extreme cold-bloodedness, like that of the 66 followers of the Order of the Solar Temple, found dead in robes, their heads inside plastic bags, in a kind of final ritual of purity. Or that of the members of Heaven’s Gate, who, dressed in identical tracksuits and brand-new Nike sneakers, left their “human containers” behind, believing they would ascend to a spacecraft following the Hale-Bopp comet. Reports on Aum Shinrikyo (Supreme Truth) recount how engineers and scientists, the top graduates of their classes, meticulously manufactured sarin gas in state-of-the-art laboratories to release it in the Tokyo subway.

What intrigues us isn't only the horror, but the systematization. The methodical way the unthinkable—dying, killing, waiting for a spaceship—becomes a procedure, with steps, schedules, and its own jargon. Human rationality put to the service of the irrational. The question that arises isn't how could they believe that?, but something more uncomfortable for the rest of us: how did they manage to make it seem, within the world they'd built, like the most logical, practical, and even hopeful thing to believe?

Just into my twenties, the things I liked most about the apartment I rented were that my psychologist was in the building next door, that they sold Arab food across the street, and that I only had to go down one floor to see the orthodontist who was straightening my crooked teeth: her office was in Apt. 1C. I could practically go in slippers. The only downside was, of course, the discomfort of being immobilized in a chair under a bright white light, lying that it didn't hurt so I wouldn't be embarrassed when I ran into her in the elevator afterward. Daniela was a dentist, an orthodontist, and something else I can't remember that had to do with bruxism. She had very modern equipment for the time—like the machine that prints clear aligners—a secretary, lots of plants, and chairs upholstered in light colors. A husband and two daughters. She'd just turned 40.

Sometimes I'd strike up a conversation with her, not just because I liked her, but also because it helped me put off for a little while the moment she'd put in that plastic thing dentists use to make you open your mouth wide, the one that makes you feel like you're going to choke. Perky and lively, she'd tell me gossip about the building, show me things she'd brought back from a trip, the latest thing she'd tried from Just, or her older daughter's grades. Her daughter was smarter than average, like Daniela, who had finished her studies earlier than usual.

My treatment was going to take a long time, two years, so during that time we witnessed each other's lives once a month. I don't know what she saw, but I got to witness a collapse.

About halfway through the treatment, I noticed Daniela was starting to dress worse, look more disheveled, forget appointments we'd scheduled. One day, while my mouth was immobilized, she told me her husband—now her ex—had turned out to be “a son of a bitch, like all the rest.” They'd separated but were still living together until he found a place. When he found one, he didn't come back.

There were more and more people in the waiting room. I used to spend the wait sneaking a look at my college notes; now I could read whole novels. She told me she was taking on every patient she could, no matter what health plan they had, because she needed money to cover what her ex wasn't paying toward supporting their daughters. “Daughters who are still both of ours, even though he decided to disappear.”

Before long, I started running into her in the elevator later in the day, when I was going down to have dinner at the Arab place across the street. She was more and more tired, more and more angry at him, at everything, at the fact that something like this could happen in any universe. “A malignant tumor in my right breast, can you believe it.” The look on her face as she told me, her eyes wide open and unblinking, came more from surprise that the tragedies just kept piling up. A pane of glass broken when a machine struck it hard, the secretary sometimes not showing up, Daniela's name climbing higher and higher on the list of residents behind on their building fees. “Can't the building association be a little more considerate? I'm asking for a little humanity. I have to have chemo, I have no one to leave the girls with, I can't afford a babysitter. They have to be able to wait a little while for me to catch up.”

It's uncomfortable to witness someone else's collapse, and at the time, the things happening to her still seemed unbelievable to me. But I couldn't stop going, couldn't abandon her, either as a patient or as a neighbor. So I kept going, and sometimes I'd secretly water some of the plants that were left.

Until one day, Daniela simply stopped taking appointments. For three months, while I kept wearing the same braces, I feared the worst.

When I finally managed to get an appointment and she opened the door, I found her cheerful, lively. Not only was she seeing patients again, she seemed happy. She moved quickly among her things and spoke with conviction. “Sit down and tell me the gossip before the anesthetic. I think the couple on the third floor split up; they yelled at each other so much, I heard it all day.”

 I asked her about her cancer. “Luckily, they were able to remove it all. Now we just have to wait and hope it doesn't come back,” she told me, then went on to explain it in more clinical terms, without caring too much whether I understood. She was fine. I asked about her ex, and wanted to know if this new happiness had anything to do with a new love.

“How could I have met someone? There's no way I'm getting involved with someone; men are disgusting. No, never again. But I met a spectacular group of women, you have no idea what they're like. I can't tell you much, honestly, it's a secret, I can't tell you, but you have no idea. They saved my life.” I didn't know, but I could see it: I could see that she was really well. “I really, really can't tell you the name of anything or what we do. I took an oath, they'd kill me. Don't even ask, what if they kick me out? They're a group of women in an organization. They're wonderful. The girls looked after me through my whole treatment, helped me out financially, it's amazing, they're so lovely. And I wasn't a believer in that kind of thing, but honestly, what they say makes sense. It can't all be random. One day I'll lend you the book where they explain it all in a way I'd never thought of before. It's amazing. And on top of that, men and women are kept separate. I can't tell you more; it's a very traditional lodge, that's all I can say. Once I'm more involved, you can come meet them. You'll love it.”

I didn't know what a lodge was. I didn't even know the difference between a lodge, a cult, a sect, and a religion. I was raised atheist, distrustful, and sometimes cynical. I didn't understand whether it was something good or dangerous, or both. I didn't understand why strangers were more willing to look after her children in the middle of a crisis than her family, friends, or even public services. I only knew that whatever it was, it seemed to have been able to shelter her in hell.

I was happy. It was a relief, for her, for me, for what is possible. Then I moved away and never heard anything again.

“You'll love it,” she'd told me.
Would I have loved it? Would I have joined?
No. I didn't need that kind of support. I didn't feel vulnerable; I hadn't faced any abyss yet.
Everything was in order. Why would I get involved in that?

By the time he joined Scientology, Paul Haggis was already a screenwriter and film director with a long Hollywood career, two Oscars won in 2006, steady work with major studios, well-known actors, and his own teams. He had money, prestige, connections, autonomy. An established professional life, public recognition, the ability to choose. He didn't fit the image of collapse or urgency.

When he talked about how he'd joined, he was very specific. He said he hadn't been looking for a religion, but for something that worked, something that would make him a better person. He talked about courses, tools, a method for understanding himself better. He said he felt listened to, that things seemed to fall into place, that there was a sense of progress. In an interview, he described the first groups he spent time with as “atheists looking for something to believe in and lonely people looking for a club to join.” He didn't talk about faith or revelation, but about improvement, clarity, an experience that produced immediate results.

But belonging can be very costly. And his eventual break with Scientology had a very specific cause: the organization's public support for Proposition 8 in California, which sought to ban same-sex marriage. For Haggis, that was a red line. That endorsement of a measure he considered deeply discriminatory forced him, for the first time, to look at the structure he was part of. He no longer saw a neutral medium, but an organization with its own morality, willing to act in the world in ways he couldn't support.

He challenged it. And when he began to dissent, the same group that had welcomed him as a valued member turned against him. Pressure, veiled threats to expose his private life, a network of contacts that suddenly went cold. The method that offered tools for life also revealed itself as a mechanism of control that protected the group over individuals. The community that gave meaning also showed itself to be a machine for isolation and exile.

That makes his case different from Daniela's. She came to a group amid an illness, a separation, and financial hardship, all pressing in on her at once. Haggis came from a position of success, stability, and resources. Daniela's entry was marked by collapse. Paul's was driven by a search that coexisted with a life that was already working. Two very different paths that nonetheless led to the same gesture: drawing close to a collective that promised regular companionship, constant attention, and a way of being with others less scattered and utilitarian than adult life offered on its own.

Paul's life was full of friendships tied to his work and projects. Prolific, demanding, productive relationships. Friendships that were there as long as they had something to do together. When the project ended, the bond loosened.

For Daniela, the scene was different. There wasn't a wide network of functional relationships to cushion the fall. When everything fell apart and there wasn't enough time, her existing relationships couldn't absorb that burden. They weren't made for that.

Maybe the only thing Paul Haggis and my dentist Daniela had in common was that both were missing something in their ecosystem.

If I stay away from strange names, the occult, and oaths, am I safe?

When Vera returned to Buenos Aires after years in Madrid, she had little of what she'd once taken for granted. Two kids, a law degree she no longer used, no fixed schedule, friends scattered far and wide, the feeling of arriving somewhere familiar but slightly off-kilter. Javier traveled for work, and she spent many hours alone with the kids and a silent question: what was she going to do with her life now?

The ashtanga group first appeared as a physical solution. She got up at dawn, made it to the studio in San Isidro, rolled out her mat. Other bodies breathing at the same time, a sequence she could learn, a teacher correcting her with a hand on her back. She started going often enough for the place to feel like a second home. She knew who was absent, who'd had a good day, who was injured. Yoga gave her something concrete: a schedule that didn't depend on the kids, visible progress, people who greeted her by name.

Over time, the group grew closer-knit. The practice was no longer just a sequence of movements. The ashtangis stayed afterward to talk, got together outside the studio, organized retreats, held birthdays that were almost ceremonies. They dressed alike, a neat asceticism mixed with expensive brands brought back from trips. They didn't wear high heels, avoided certain foods, told stories about India and about teachers they'd never met in person but revered all the same. The phrase that organized everything was simple: “Practice, practice, and everything will come.” If something didn't come, the problem wasn't the method, but a lack of commitment.

Vera could see in detail how the group was taking shape as a parallel family. Vacations chosen according to where there were ashtanga studios, friendships reduced to other people who practiced, everyday decisions made according to what the system recommended for body and mind. Some of the women started talking about sexual finances, about rules around desire, about implicit rules concerning what was distracting and needed to be cut out. She also noticed that her own objections went down badly. She asked questions, raised concerns, said she ate pasta with cream, and that was enough for her to be labeled weird.

There wasn't one exact day when Vera decided to leave. Instead, there was a sequence of small scenes. Comments about her food. Jokes about not being “that committed.” Invitations that stopped coming, stories she only heard summarized. Insistent questions about why she wasn't going to a particular retreat. The discomfort settled in her body before she could find words for it. She started missing some days. She tried another style, Iyengar, which also had a community and a formal association, but not the same pressure to turn the practice into an identity. She focused on the poses, basic anatomy, breathing. But she didn't want to join the official Iyengar association, so she kept her distance, just in case.

“That wasn't a cult, not at all. They were a group. A very close-knit group that made them feel welcome and kept them organized. In the religious sphere, yes, that's where I saw it, almost at the same time.”

As she moved away from radicalized yoga, she started noticing something similar in another part of her life. In the religious community she'd always been part of, she heard more and more stories about women who, after separating or after their children left home, started going to Orthodox temples. First they went to breakfasts with the rabbi, then to talks, later to regular prayers. Little by little, they changed how they ate, how they dressed, how they marked Friday night. They found support at a time when everything felt overwhelming. There was always someone to listen, a table to go to, a network that kept them from being alone.

Those spaces offered exactly what contemporary life skimped on: stable companionship, rituals that marked time, a network that didn't leave people alone in critical moments. They also offered something else, more delicate. A form of guardianship. Advice on how to raise children, who to choose as a partner, what to read, where to work, what was acceptable to say. Sometimes even financial help, opportunities, very concrete acts of care that made it harder to imagine leaving. She'd seen many of her friends get better; even friends with bulimia seemed to manage their illness almost organically with help from these spaces. She saw disoriented teenagers find order in a temple. Newly separated mothers who needed a group where no one judged them. Women her age whose children were leaving home and who discovered they had whole days with no plans. People having panic attacks back when clinical terminology wasn't yet in circulation. Lives coming undone just as an intense collective offered to hold on tight. She saw people say they never felt alone because they were always accompanied in spirit. She saw people say their own loneliness didn't matter; instead, as their teachings told them, they should worry about other people's loneliness.

When there was a difference, it wasn't so much in the content of the doctrine as in the structure of the relationship. There were clubs where belonging was strong but not total, where you could disagree, come and go. There were temples that offered support without demanding radical transformation. And there were spaces that, like the ashtanga studio when it closed in on itself, tended to organize your entire life. The boundary was fine. You noticed it in the details: what happened when someone wanted to stop going, how hard it was to say no, how much guilt was stirred up by disobeying an instruction.

Vera knew that part of what protected her was something that still worked as a buffer in Argentina: childhood friends, the club in Boedo, a big family where there was always someone with an opinion, ready to argue, ready to interrupt.

In other countries, that buffer doesn't always exist. The combination of starker loneliness, more fragmented religiosity, and less present states made the extremes of the spectrum more visible: communities that moved to the jungle, groups that waited for spaceships, leaders who ended up deciding even when their followers would die. Here, the same structure appears on a smaller scale, wrapped in mate, WhatsApp groups, weekend retreats, daily classes at 6 in the morning.

Vera teaches Iyengar now, and it's very different, she says, but just in case, she never registered with the association.

So, no intense groups. If they start telling me what to do, I'll leave.

In her book Cultish, Amanda Montell takes apart the word cult and keeps the adjective: cultish. It's not a binary category, but a gradient of intensity. What defines the cultish isn't the content—it could be theology, yoga, cryptocurrency, or coaching—but a set of linguistic and social tools that, in low doses, create cohesion and, in high doses, create control.

The first and most powerful of these tools is language. Montell calls it loaded language. These aren't just technical terms; they're words that redefine the group's reality, create boundaries, and turn doubt into heresy. In Scientology, it's “thetan,” “engram,” “clear.” In ashtanga yoga, it's “prana,” “drishti,” “Mysore.” In crypto, it's “hoDL,” “FuD,” “moon.” Cultish language doesn't communicate; it signals. People who use it show they're on the inside. People who question it are left out.

The second dose is the ritualization of time. Cultish groups do more than demand attention: they structure the day, the week, the year. Ashtanga practice at 6 am, weekend retreats, brand-launch events, weekly meetings for a self-improvement course. Ordinary time is replaced by meaningful time, marked by the group's milestones.

The third dose is the economy of belonging. Loyalty is measured in visible transactions: buying the latest product, attending the retreat, investing in the next level of the course. Spending is called “investing in yourself.” Lack of resources is called “lack of faith.” The promise is always the same: the next step will bring definitive transformation.

Montell insists that these tools aren't inherently malign. A running group that meets every Saturday at 8 am is using ritualization and insider language (“runners” versus “non-runners”). A technical clothing brand that creates jargon around “breathability technology” is selling belonging. The difference between a club and a cult isn't in the nature of the tools they use, but in the dose and direction of the pressure they exert. In mild cases, the pressure is horizontal, diffuse: the group waits, the brand entices. In intense cases, the pressure becomes vertical and personalized: the leader demands, the doctrine allows no dissent. In mild groups, leaving means dropping out of the WhatsApp group. In intense ones, it means an existential crisis, the loss of an entire social network.

In a healthy group, the tools serve the individual: ritual brings order, language connects, belonging supports. On the cultish slope, the individual serves the tools: they have to protect the language, uphold the ritual, prove they belong, measure up. That's how the cultish flourishes where there are gaps in meaning. Daniela's dramatic void, Haggis's existential void, Vera's structural void. And the everyday void, too: the lack of community rituals, the disappearance of shared narratives, the loneliness of making endless decisions without a clear standard.

What they sell, in every case, is cognitive relief. The reduction of the complexity of adult life to a system of clear rules, identifiable enemies, measurable progress. The cult, radical yoga, the miracle course, and fanatical corporatism all distribute the same product at different concentrations. They provide an instruction manual when your own has been lost, become obsolete, or never arrived. And the market knows it. That's why it sells meaning packaged as experiences: the ritual of unboxing a new iPhone, the ceremony of drinking a specialty coffee, the pilgrimage to a brand's flagship store. These are secular liturgies that offer, for a moment, the feeling of being in the right world, among the right people.

So perhaps the antidote isn't avoiding every altar—a task that's impossible—but going in with your eyes open. Recognizing the mechanism. Asking ourselves, without making a big deal of it, whenever we feel at home in a new us: what am I exchanging here? Am I giving time and attention in exchange for community? Or am I buying an expensive T-shirt just because it makes me feel part of something?

That honesty is what it takes to keep from ending up, without even realizing it, at too many altars that ask for our money and attention, and give us neither a robe nor a role.

Solitude is fertile ground, and the market for meaning is always open.