Womanzine CULT

Womanzine CULT

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Cult Leaders
Profiles, illustrations, and gif by Rosalind Carnes




 

by Tess Dworman

Bhagwan Shree RajneeshLooks like: a regs guruActually: a sex guruWhy you should join his cult: he appreciates your creativity & sense of humor Why you should leave his cult: he'll throw you under the bus after you fund his fleet of Royce's

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
Looks like: a regs guru
Actually: a sex guru
Why you should join his cult: he appreciates your creativity & sense of humor 
Why you should leave his cult: he'll throw you under the bus after you fund his fleet of Royce's

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Looks like: a regs guru
Actually: a sex guru
Why you should join his cult: he appreciates your creativity & sense of humor 
Why you should leave his cult: he'll throw you under the bus after you fund his fleet of Royce's

Charles Manson Looks like: Russell Brand Actually: craaaazyyy Why you should join his cult: celebrity access & experimental music Why you should leave his cult: all hitmen and hoes

Charles Manson

Looks like: Russell Brand
Actually: craaaazyyy
Why you should join his cult: celebrity access & experimental music
Why you should leave his cult: all hitmen and hoes

Charles Manson

Looks like: Russell Brand
Actually: craaaazyyy
Why you should join his cult: celebrity access & experimental music
Why you should leave his cult: all hitmen and hoes

how to make gifshow to make gifsmake gifsmake gifs

Marina Tsvigen Looks like: a bejeweled Anna Kournikova Actually: a bejeweled despot Why you should join her cult: looks... mystical? Why you should leave her cult: they take your money and property

Marina Tsvigen

Looks like: a bejeweled Anna Kournikova
Actually: a bejeweled despot
Why you should join her cult: looks... mystical?
Why you should leave her cult: they take your money and property

Marina Tsvigen

Looks like: a bejeweled Anna Kournikova
Actually: a bejeweled despot
Why you should join her cult: looks... mystical?
Why you should leave her cult: they take your money and property

by Carrie Cook 

Marshall Applewhite Looks like: Ron Paul Actually: a paranoid schizophrenic Why you should join his cult: cool logo Why you should leave his cult: UFO never shows up.

Marshall Applewhite
Looks like: Ron Paul
Actually: a paranoid schizophrenic
Why you should join his cult: cool logo
Why you should leave his cult: UFO never shows up.

 

Marshall Applewhite
Looks like: Ron Paul
Actually: a paranoid schizophrenic
Why you should join his cult: cool logo
Why you should leave his cult: UFO never shows up.

 

David Berg Looks like: a gnome Actually: a pedophile Why you should join his cult: no idea. Why you should leave his cult: because you joined, duh.

David Berg
Looks like: a gnome
Actually: a pedophile
Why you should join his cult: no idea.
Why you should leave his cult: because you joined, duh.

David Berg

Looks like: a gnome
Actually: a pedophile
Why you should join his cult: no idea.
Why you should leave his cult: because you joined, duh.

 

Shoko Asahara Looks like: Keone Young Actually: a criminal mastermind  Why you should join his cult: elitism & esoteric yoga Why you should leave his cult: goes terrorist and Shoko gets hanged.

Shoko Asahara

Looks like: Keone Young
Actually: a criminal mastermind 
Why you should join his cult: elitism & esoteric yoga
Why you should leave his cult: goes terrorist and Shoko gets hanged.

Shoko Asahara

Looks like: Keone Young
Actually: a criminal mastermind 
Why you should join his cult: elitism & esoteric yoga
Why you should leave his cult: goes terrorist and Shoko gets hanged.

 

True Confessions: I Was a Cult Leader
by Emily Alden Foster

 
In 2005-ish my friend and I decided to start our own cult. We were both fascinated by cults for the usual reasons: the fuzzy line between a cult and a religion, the aesthetics of a bunch of people dressing the same, mind control, mystical nonsense, etc. The most interesting thing about cults for us was probably the cult leader. How do they get people to join their cult? Why do people believe them when they say that they're chosen messengers from god or aliens or satan or whatever it is that they say. Why do they care what all these cult members do with their lives? Do they all just have really nice eyes? Are people really that desperate for someone with nice eyes to pay attention to them?

Anyway, my friend and I were pretty much doing nothing that summer. I had a job as a dishwasher and she worked in a costume shop. We lived in a small college town where none of our friends seemed to be doing much of anything most of the time either. We had a lot of really fun theme parties thanks in part to her costume shop job. On quieter nights we'd have a few people over and try to have a seance or hypnotize ourselves using a cassette tape we'd found or something. It was a pretty good summer.

At some point we decided to start our own bicycle gang. We wanted everyone to have matching outfits and elaborately decorated bikes. She painted her bike with skeletons and bones and I painted mine with eyeballs and made cool aluminum foil rims for my tires. But then no one else who claimed they wanted to join the bike gang ever really decorated their bikes and we never made shirts or whatever. We did ride our bikes everywhere and talk about how we were a bike gang, but it was a pretty steadily rotating membership based on who happened to also be riding a bike to the same place and we didn't do anything gang-like at all. Once we did get pulled over for riding our bikes in the street. The cops told us to ride on the sidewalk even though the law was that we should NOT ride on the sidewalk. I think maybe we were just dressed funny and the cops were bored. Anyhow, a bike gang is not a cult, as I am fully aware. You can just ask people if they want to join your totally low-key non-violent no-stakes bike gang and they'll probably be cool with it as long as they like riding bikes, which a lot of people do!

 

That same summer we did actually decide to start a cult after looking up some stuff about cults on the internet and flipping through her boyfriend's copy of The Satanic Bible. First we thought of the name: QUICKSAND CHAPTER, after the David Bowie song, and wrote it in big letters at the top of one of the pages of the mini-notebook I carried with me at all times. As cult leaders we also chose pseudonyms for ourselves: Euronymous (that was me) and Siddhartha Stegodeath. My namesake was Eurynomos, the Greek mythological spirit of rotting corpses dwelling in the underworld, as misspelled in the Satanic Bible. Then we got to recruiting members. Surprisingly, it turns out that you can also just ask people if they want to join a cult and a lot of them will say yes. We got nine people to join. I wrote all of their names on that page of the notebook. Nine doesn't sound like a lot of members, but we were probably only actually recruiting for an hour or two. We didn't have a real plan for what we would do as a group, so we sort of just lost interest. I guess that's where we went wrong. We weren't conniving enough. Maybe instead of asking people if they wanted to join a cult we should have asked them if they were feeling insecure and wanted to find solace in the truth or something. But that seemed like a big commitment and we had some basement noise shows to go to and we wanted to go look up some more stuff at the library and sneak into the quarry to go swimming later. I think we did tell our cult members that they had to do whatever we said, which they might have agreed to, thinking they could back out if we ever told them to do anything. I'm still in some sort of contact with all but one of them, so maybe I could still make something of this cult. I don't really talk to Siddhartha Stegodeath anymore, though. Occasionally I text her jokes I made up and she tells me they aren't funny. She's wrong, of course.

 

David Koresh Looks like: young Steven Spielberg Actually: Vernon Wayne Howell Why you should join his cult: he's a total hottie. Why you should leave his cult: child abuse, statutory rape, general weirdness.

David Koresh

Looks like: young Steven Spielberg
Actually: Vernon Wayne Howell
Why you should join his cult: he's a total hottie.
Why you should leave his cult: child abuse, statutory rape, general weirdness.

David Koresh

Looks like: young Steven Spielberg
Actually: Vernon Wayne Howell
Why you should join his cult: he's a total hottie.
Why you should leave his cult: child abuse, statutory rape, general weirdness.

Aromatherapy mixture for abundance
by Clarissa Helton 

Orange, cinnamon, clove, spruce, frankincense, myrrh

Black Tambourine: Black Car from COCO'S OCD.


Black car. White cats.
by Lara Shahd Zoabi (Coco)

Bashir appears to me sometimes, usually at the Myrtle-Broadway subway station, or in Soho, walking on the opposite sidewalk. Bashir always appears to me, to be honest. It may really be him--he might have moved to New York--though it's probably just a guy that smiles like him or has the same side-swooshed bangs. 

When I was thirteen, Mary was the first female character that I attempted to write in English. I made Bashir the protagonist in that story: he was obsessed with the older, mysterious Mary. She wore black head to toe, including black lipstick. He followed her everywhere but would tragically lose track of her every time. Once, he managed to sneak after her into an abandoned building, where he caught a glimpse of Mary's true self: she was uttering satanic verses and sacrificing a cat into a blazing fire. Bashir's world was never the same. 

The year that I wrote that, six teenage satanic-cult stories upset the local news in Israel--cat homicides and all. I was intrigued then, as I am now, by cults. Sometimes, I walk by a black brick compound in Bushwick, clad with gold trimmings, fake Egyptian pharaoh sculptures, and alien pictures. I've seen a bodyguard wearing a black bowtie guarding the metal gate during gatherings. My naive and eager teen curiosity has been revived, and I try to set my iPod to blast Black Car by Black Tambourine every time I pass it. Bashir is gone, though--long gone.





 

Money makes me multiply.

Money makes me multiply.

Fundraiser
Modified self-portrait by Sarah Wambold

Money makes me multiply.

Jim "Father Yod" Baker Looks like: Gandolf Actually: a dedicated hippie Why you should join his cult: Drag City releases your commune's psychadelic album post-breakup Why you should leave his cult: Yod dies in a tragic hang-gliding incident

Jim "Father Yod" Baker

Looks like: Gandolf
Actually: a dedicated hippie
Why you should join his cult: Drag City releases your commune's psychadelic album post-breakup
Why you should leave his cult: Yod dies in a tragic hang-gliding incident

Jim "Father Yod" Baker

Looks like: Gandolf
Actually: a dedicated hippie
Why you should join his cult: Drag City releases your commune's psychadelic album post-breakup
Why you should leave his cult: Yod dies in a tragic hang-gliding incident

Claude Vorilhon Looks like: Revenge of the Nerds' Lewis Skolnick Actually: half alien Why you should join his cult: aliens & future fashion Why you should leave his cult: bogus

Claude Vorilhon

Looks like: Revenge of the Nerds' Lewis Skolnick
Actually: half alien
Why you should join his cult: aliens & future fashion
Why you should leave his cult: bogus

Claude Vorilhon

Looks like: Revenge of the Nerds' Lewis Skolnick
Actually: half alien
Why you should join his cult: aliens & future fashion
Why you should leave his cult: bogus

L Ron Hubbard Looks like: John Lovitz Actually: a compulsive liar Why you should join his cult: yeah, I don't think you should. Why you should leave his cult: you're broke after paying test fees

L Ron Hubbard

Looks like: John Lovitz
Actually: a compulsive liar
Why you should join his cult: yeah, I don't think you should.
Why you should leave his cult: you're broke after paying test fees

L Ron Hubbard

Looks like: John Lovitz
Actually: a compulsive liar
Why you should join his cult: yeah, I don't think you should.
Why you should leave his cult: you're broke after paying test fees

 

Jim Jones

Looks like: Roy Orbison
Actually: egomaniacal mass murderer
Why you should join his cult: interesting members 
Why you should leave his cult: isolation, mind control, pending doom, etc.

All Ends
by Melanie Clemmons
Animated html page here.  

Clean Dream
by Mariana Valencia 

by Tiffanie Lanmon

Help Wanted: Away Team Leader 
by Christine Keith

 

Location: Terrestrial Headquarters
Type: Temp-to-perm
Minimum Qualifications: Charisma
Degrees: None required; on path to Next Level expected

Experience working with groups, knowledge of basic chemistry a plus.

Please send salary requirements and robe size to admin@ancientastronaut.org.

Writing Sample: “What’s the longest staring contest you’ve ever participated in?” (500 words max)

EOE

Stuff Cults Love
by Rosalind Carnes 

A Text-versation with Belle and the Beast
cult fanfic by Zoe Schwartz


Belle (Tuesday 2:34pm): Hey you J
Beast (Tuesday 2:40pm): hey yourself ;)
Belle (Tuesday 2:41pm): I can’t stop thinking about last night, I think we kept Mrs. Potts and the kids up a little late…
Beast (Tuesday 2:47pm): oh, she doesn’t mind. how are the scratches? :/
Belle (Tuesday 2:49pm): I told you, its fine. I kind of like it when you run your claws down my back, but not more than I like books!
Beast (Tuesday 2:54pm): i know, i know, you love books
Belle (Tuesday 2:56pm): Do you know what my FAVORITE book is?
Beast (Tuesday 2:59pm): is it the corrections?
Belle (Tuesday 3:00pm): No. It’s the love story we’re writing ourselves!
Beast (Tuesday 3:07pm): i’m reading the corrections right now and its really great. i love the way the economic downfall parallels the downward spiral of the family. Franzen is such a genius.
Belle (Tuesday 3:09pm): Cool.
Belle (Tuesday 3:27pm): So……See you tonight?
Beast (Tuesday 3:35pm): ya, g2g

 

Belle (Thursday 6:45pm): Raaaarrrr

Beast (Thursday 6:55pm): ?
Belle (Thursday 6:57pm): Guess what I’m wearing right now?
Beast (Thursday 7:05pm): wha?
Belle (Thursday 7:12pm): Just that velvet cape from whenever we play in the snow. With nothing under it!


Beast (Thursday 7:38pm): hawt
Belle (Thursday 7:42pm): Don’t you want to come home and take it off me and see if theres something there that wasn’t there before? ;)













Beast (Thursday 11:01pm): DAMNIT BELLE WHERE ARE YOU?
Beast (Thursday 11:01pm): ARE YOU WITH HIM?
Beast (Thursday 11:01pm): IM COMING TO FIND YOU.
Belle (Thursday 11:04pm): Don’t bother, I’m in that weird spider carriage and not coming back.
Beast (Thursday 11:05pm): Belle. Where are you planning on going? Just come back and we can talk about this in the library. You love the library.
Belle (Thursday 11:06pm): LEAVE ME ALONE.
Belle (Thursday 11:07pm): I’ve made up my mind and I can’t do this anymore. Its always about you. And finishing that goddamn book!
Beast (Thursday 11:08pm): But you love books!
Belle (Thursday 11:09pm): I LOVE YOU MORE THAN BOOKS AND IF YOU CANT SEE THAT THEN F YOU
Belle (Thursday 11:09pm): FFFFFFFF UUUUUUUUUUUU CCCCCC KKKKKK YYYYOOUUUU
Beast (Thursday 11:11pm): Baby, I’m sorry. How can I make this up to you?
Belle (Thursday 11:15pm): Take me on a trip out of this poor, provincial town. Just you and me and no work. Take me somewhere sunny where we can have brunch on a beach and listen to local live music in some night club and theres not a single enchanted object in sight!
Beast (Thursday 11:16pm): Okay, we can do that. Just come back and we’ll talk about it.
Belle (Thursday 11:18pm): You promise you won’t just sweep this under the dog ottoman like you did the idea of turning the west wing into a swimming pool?
Beast (Thursday 11:19pm): Yes, I promise. I swear on my human body’s grave. I love you.
Belle (Thursday 11:20pm): I love you, too. I’ll be back soon. Tell the violin playing coat rack that we don’t need him at dinner tonight because we will be TALKING.

Beast (Thursday 8:25pm): sry, at work

Belle (Thursday 8:30pm): OMG CLOCKSWORTH JUST WALKED IN AND SAW ME NAKED IN THE CAPE! I hope he doesn’t tell Lumiere! Hahahahaha lol lol lol!
Beast (Thursday 8:34pm): BELLE I SAID IM BUSY.

Beast (Thursday 10:25pm): You still wearing that cape?
Belle (Thursday 10:27pm): Leave me alone.
Beast (Thursday 10:29pm): Whats wrong?  Is this about earlier?
Beast (Thursday 10:32pm): Baby, I was in the middle of some writing. This book isn’t going to finish itself. I’m supposed to send the last chapters in next week!
Belle (Thursday 10:38pm): More like in the middle of SOMEONE.
Beast (Thursday 10:39pm): what! are you at the castle? I’m coming home now, lets talk about this in person.
Belle (Thursday 10:40pm): Maybe I won’t be here when you get back!
Beast (Thursday 10:41pm): Calm down. I’ll be home in a few and we’ll talk through this. We can use the magic mirror to spy on those voluptuous villager girls? ;)
Belle (Thursday 10:42pm): Maybe I’ll finally take Fasting up on his offer and get out of this dank and drafty place WITH
Belle (Thursday 10:42pm): A REAL MAN and go somewhere like PARIS. How come you never take me to Paris? We live in France! We can’t be that far away!
Belle (Thursday 10:42pm): damnit Fasting= Gaston. stupid autocorrect.
Beast (Thursday 10:43pm): Good luck getting that egg eating, brick headed d-bag to tie you up and call you a whore!
Belle (Thursday 10:44pm): !!!
Belle (Thursday 10:44pm): I thought you loved “Tie Me Up” night!?
Beast (Thursday 10:45pm): I do, I do, aghh im sry,  C U in 5.

 

CULT submission ideas
by Tiffanie Lanmon 

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Ceremony Nite
by Mercedes Kraus


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