Cults

[Chaostracize]

I'm curious to hear about people's experiences with cults, whether it be yourselves or friends and family members.

ED: Note from Chaos re: this thread "I don't want to the thread to degenerate into a religion thread (or is that even possible)? That is, yeah I think Mormonism and Scientology (Christianity?) is just as [censored] up as anyone else, but I'm talking about lesser known Cults (ie CUT and Landmark)."

I remember when I was younger my parents were involved in the CUT cult (Church Universal Triumphant). The leader of this cult was Elizabeth Clare Profit. Linky.

I don't remember much to be honest, my mom was never as into it as my dad was (they've since gotten divorced, and I was raised mostly by my mother), but even at the time, when I was around 8, I knew that the whole place was kind of [censored] up. I wish I had been more cognizant of what the deal was, but I always remembered heated debates about how over the next couple of years half of the country would be swept underwater (hence why my dad wanted to move from Connecticut to Montana).

Did anyone else have any specific experience with this cult? As far as they go this one wasn't too bad as far as I'm aware...there weren't any mass killings, but there was still a lot of money being taken from gullible people, and there were a lot of mantras, and colors, and chakras.

I would be really interesting to hear stories about how the cult affected your either directly or indirectly, as well.

There's a woman here in Ithaca who's also been trying to get me to go to something called the Landmark Forum, which is supposedly on a cult watchlist, and I was going through the site ( <a href="www.landmarkeducation.com" target="_blank">Linky</a&gt and it seemed weird, but not that bad. Cheesy, insubstantial, but I was kind of entertaining the idea of going to their 3 hour long weekly seminar, out of curiosity. Anyone heard of this or have any thoughts?