I love cults!!! And other life updates

4/7/25

The other day, I finally acted on the steady urge to rewatch a playthrough (I only have a console) of FAITH that had plagued me for around a week before. The first game was a little generic, lifted a little too much from The Exorcist, but the last two exceeded the expectations I had set myself before sitting down to watch. God, the switches between the 8-Bit style to the rotoscoping are wonderfully creepy (even if they look corny out of context). Without spoiling anything major, a huge part of the story follows a cult. A cult, of all things!

Anything marketing itself as revolving around cults is an instant sell for me. I can’t tell you how many movies I’ve saved (and then neglected to watch, since I’m not a movie person) because the description alluded to cults being a theme. The word ‘cult’ is my weakness. Even the general concept of a tight community practicing something ‘esoteric’ away from outsiders will pull me in, despite it not quite fitting the definition of a cult. I don’t know what it is about the trope that drives me wild. There’s nothing that beats the tension of everybody but you being in on something, finding yourself slowly isolated, never knowing where to go or who to trust, only able to turn to these strangers who tell you that they love you so, so much. An old tradition being remembered by a select few who only know how to use it for their own self satisfaction, even at the cost of those deemed outsiders and unworthy. Complete devotion to something, or someone, somewhere? All delicious.

Back to Faith for a second. Reading up on the game a little more, I found two facts that quite amused me; first, that the creator is a missionary, and second, the story was based on the Satanic Panic.

The Satanic Panic was something I was only just reminded of while reading about Faith, and it’s been fun to dive back into it. Basically a huge chunk of people in the USA (it bled into other countries, but it never hit them quite as hard as it did the USA) went from believing that heavy metal and Dungeons and Dragons were converting teenagers to Satanism (as in Devil worship, not the kind from Antony LaVay) all the way to daycares performing satanic rituals on young children and murdering in the name of Satan. Weird stuff. My exact recollection is foggy - I’m trying to fix that now - but most of the methods used to extract this information were iffy at best. You can manipulate people to admit pretty much anything, if you know how to do it. Terrifying stuff.

While the obvious tie into cultism is the Satanic, well, everything, I’m far more interested in how these rumours came to be. Does the mentality behind the widespread belief in Satanic Ritual Abuse not seem cultish? The othering of those with different lifestyles and accusing them of worshipping the incarnation of evil? That’s what gets me about the Satanic Panic.

Tabletop RPGs inciting Devil worship sounds like cult shit, let’s be honest here. Who thinks that way?

I’m reading through this thesis right now; I haven’t been touching it much in between my other pastimes, so I’m only just starting chapter ⅓, but… it looks promising? Unfortunately, I find it difficult to get hold of research on this era.

This is gearing a little further towards occultism, rather than cults. Cults can, of course, exist within occultism, but they’re not synonyms. For me, cults are interesting in fiction, and occultism is interesting in real life. I consider myself firmly atheist, this is purely an interest rather than something I practise or dedicate myself to.

Wicca as a whole is fascinating, taking from what we believed about paganism in the 50’s and turning it into its own practice. If I recall, it was started by a man named Gerald Gardner… that’s all I know about him, really. I need to brush up on my knowledge here too.

I like how it mostly feels as though you do what you want/can, instead of sticking to strict rules. While this won’t prevent cult-like behaviour happening in independent groups, it does set Wicca as a concept apart from cults. Worshiping the universe, or at least a deity who represents the universe and energy, as opposed to a single omnipotent being. Does that make sense? I know what I’m trying to articulate but it most likely isn’t showing well. Much of the practice seems to be self-serving first instead of prioritising worship, or at least treating pleasure as a form of worship.

Blah. None of this matters. I think that’s everything I wanted to say? Okay onto personal life things.

I don’t see myself continuing with Welsh, so I’m picking up Russian instead. I see it pretty frequently on the internet (which is half the reason I chose to learn it in the first place) which will make it infinitely easier to study. I got Anki to start working for me, and it seems helpful so far - all I need is a deck that actually teaches me the basics. Most of the ones I’ve found move straight onto conjugation and long sentences without teaching basic vocabulary, which I desperately need. Surely a good deck exists for me.

I’ll finally start working full time in a couple weeks… let’s see how I cope with that. The last time I had to get up at 7am for 5 days a week was when I was 16, arguably the worst time of my life. This will be a true test of whether my problems in high school were due to me being incompatible with 5 days of working, or if it was just because high school is a bad place to be. I hope I can cope with it. I hope I was just being dramatic when I was younger.

There has been some room for improvement rearding my wellbeing recently. You know when you're doing something you enjoy and suddenly think to yourself, 'What is the point in any of this? What do I get from it?' Ruins everything for you! That's been happening a little more often and it's eating me whole. It's okay though.

Maybe I could learn to draw again…? I probably won’t, but it’s a nice idea.