Disclaimer: The following document fragment is presented from an in-character perspective, it should not be taken as the truth of the setting.
Context: Today I am once more showcasing some writing from my precious collaborator, Dolly. This second one deals with the relationship between occultists and terrorism, or from a wider note, the governments and people of the world. Though mages exist outside of normal society, they cannot avoid interacting with it.
In line with the rising international popularity of so-called ‘counterculture’ in the 1960s – and the open, more casualized relation to magic that was wrought in its wake – the Department of Occult Investigations for the Czech Republic have commissioned this document to inform (and attempt to explain) readers of behaviour commonly associated with pagan cults. Government stuff. Know the signs, people. Stay safe. – J
Few if any cults hold benevolent intentions or beliefs. Now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves; there’s an argument to be made that it’d be wrong and highly unscientific to word it so as to ignore the often more generic and ‘humane’ origins of many proto-cults. In origin, many of them, particularly on the domestically western front, have had their start in more “folksy” efforts. For every Presbyterian church that’s evolved to be happy enough to just get the hard-earned cash of believers true, many of them were a church ‘for the people’. Less the efforts of TV evangelists and religious do-gooders creeping into the outer rims of political power, more the friendly guy of the neighbourhood. A well-known and well-loved figure or family, maybe a couple – the emphasis is on how they’re just like you. Normal, rarely ever particularly affluent or rich… they’re relatable, and that helps draw the people in. Often it’s because of this grace period will come to excuse these cults as being anything but, haven’t you seen all their goodwill and pot-lucks? And sometimes, indeed, at the very start and beyond there’s nothing to doubt or worry for; any initial and entirely rational sense of awareness or weariness of any religious or political aside, sometimes these groups are as naturally boring as they try to make themselves appear to be. Worst you’re going to get to find out about them is mayhaps that they’ve started some collective babysitting service for the neighbourhood, and that they sit your kids down with a handful of tangerine to be regaled the story of when Mary and Joseph were visited by three very special kings that one Christmas night. Uncomfortable and unwarranted on the basis of religious freedom – or rather the freedom from religion, especially at such an age, but regardless. Babysitting has never begun to sit tall on the list of cult tendencies and proclivities. But whether it’s otherworldly influence, doomsday visions or even charlatans out to scam gullible idiots out of their money they almost universally believe that they are a step above the dumb sheeple of the world around them, and thus act accordingly. Even the ones that might’ve once grown like a reed out of a sense of goodwill and sincerity driven by the love and blessing of some semblance of a known or unknown God have always begun to devolve, deeper and further than any other group before them, eventually. Thinly-veiled contempt for non-believers, prone to questionable deeds for ‘the greater good’, borderline religious zealotry, easily swayed by their chosen messiah figure…
… recent insurgencies have, since several years back at the time of writing this deep dive into cult and terrorist excursions, begun to eschew the notion of rallying behind a great, Jesus-like leader. To elaborate, they’ve come to reject not the Messiah Complex beard and long hair on otherwise ‘normal’ and utterly unremarkable leaders, they’re still in vogue (even with certain celebrities of the same kind of cut of cloth) but the notion of huddling in under the wanting guidance of a single head on top of collective shoulders, like the great Leviathan. Increasingly, the need for a singular Face outward, of a guiding hand to be the end-all for any all decisions has started to disappear, and the few that linger in this old lane stand out as a familiar ‘oh yeah’ exception. Perhaps out of rising political ideals, or the very real power that lies behind the idea of the cooperative ‘Collective’ there’s been a quiet, but hardly invisible change slithering in and out through these groups. There’ve been some who humoured the possibility this has been a matter of security, hard to kill a snake by cutting off its head when it has none, but it’s doubtful this has come out of a Zapatista-like rejection of “leadership states” rather than mere indoctrinating convenience. For every wayward individual you could earnestly convince that following a singular Great Figure is the path of least resistance and Milk and Honey Both, all the more crave the shared ability to feel like you’re special by being Part of Something. All wonderful being as part of an equally wonderful goal to ascend ever towards, clinging tightly around their group like a squeeze, almost insulted by the notion there’d be anything but love and prosperity within their crowded walls of human bodies and shared delusion. What has largely begun to replace once guiding voices uniting one and all under the cult’s banner is something like a collective ghost, an impossible shape haunting and herding wayward thoughts or beginning ideas through implication and self-wrought fears. The idea of the leader has not simply become a thing of the past, but something banal, reduced to holding together the ranks of civilian and church-like institutions, scoffed at by the names of now like a ‘in my day’ tale regaled to them by elder parents. Of course, the few remnants of this cult ideal that lingers in our world, and still tries to escape away onto secluded compounds or islands to preach and control undisturbed must still be recognized and remembered…
Rebellious spirit has always been a favourite recruitment tool of every sort of organization and group you can think of. Religious, political, religiopolitical, immanentizing practitioners of chaos theory… different ideals, but the same idea. The same Cause, like how everybody worships the same God. They get ’em when they’re young, dumb and delightfully impressionable; often young adults, men more often than women, who are itching to get the miracle chance to “finally” stand up against the boring ol’ ‘live and let lie’ principles they imagine Mom and Dad lived under and forced upon their kids. Generally, they only require a friendly, smiling face, a couple of drinks to get them soft and cushiony and maybe some real hardcore mind-bending drugs they insist they actually totally got from that Weird Guy Neighbors’s garage lab, and suddenly they’ve managed to get their hooks in. It’s a practices and proven tactic, and all those warnings of this hidden in plain sight as helpful PSAs or pamphlets pinned up amidst the hail of club advertisements to college pinboards have all too often worked completely ignorant to this fact. What does a notice that reads like it was written by your worrywart grandma compare to the Cool Guy with all his seemingly infinite Cool Guy Connections? Does that paper know a guy who knows a guy for your every increasingly debaucherous need? Probably not. And that’s the problem; it’s become something of an open secret that potential recruiters go for the young and early to hook their talons in easier, and what countermeasures have been put in, if at all against this? Instead, people are too busy not seeing the forest for the trees, choosing instead to chase after virtual ghosts on the internet or the old Y2K spooky geist of dangerous websites and internet influencers telling your kids to try this pill. No, the horror of it is that we live in the now and so do these things, we see it around us – disillusioned teens and young adults being nabbed, lured into and fooled with promises and conclusions tailor-made with the precision of decades of manipulation to get them to always say ‘Yes’ when you ask them to put their finger on this trigger here, to point this gun at those non-believers there. And if they dare think to leave, to reconsider… well, they don’t want to lose everything you’ve given them, do they? They’re Cool, now, or maybe they’re finally part of something Bigger and Greater than themselves, so far beyond whatever their parents tried to stop them from being. History reminds us exactly how this works, and how it has continued to work. And it works too well.
Esoteric Musings... 