femmenietzsche:

trickytalks:

femmenietzsche:

femmenietzsche:

My favorite thing from this book is how Christians keep denouncing these New Age movements as unsophisticated Oriental doomsday cults with dark underbellies of vice and graft.

eternalfarnham said: Ooh, title?

Mystics and Messiahs: Cults and New Religions in American History, although it’s not great or anything. It should be twice as long as it is and it’s more about society’s reaction to cults than about the cults themselves, which are treated more like cultural background noise than a developing suite of beliefs. It’s fine, but if you’re just looking for a book about the occult in general, I’d recommend The Occult Underground instead.

I’ll add The Occult Underground to my booklist. 

Does the book you’re reading talk about syncreticism and cults in the early 20th century, or does it mostly focus on the 60s and 70s?

It goes all the way back to early anti-Catholic and anti-Masonic propaganda and how those tropes influenced later depictions of cults, but the focus is on the late 1800s to today. The main thesis is that the 60s/70s cults were not actually unique in American history.