The Oxford English Dictionary offers this definition of the cult: “a small group of people who have extreme religious beliefs and who are not part of any established religion.” They illustrate the term with this example: “Their son ran away from home and joined a cult.” This definition is not wrong, it’s just far too tepid and tame. But we mustn’t be too hard on the English lexicographers employed by the O.E.D. since we don’t suppose any of them had even the slightest acquaintance with the world of the cults which appeared in America beginning in the 1960s and 70s and was carried forward to the present in the U.S.A. and in many other lands. One thinks of a group of people being in lockstep–all becoming alike and no one  thinking for themselves, and that’s true enough. So what is a cult? To warn people away from them, a good definition is a big first step, but that still won’t make it easy to recognize one when you come upon it. People join because cults are difficult to recognize for what they really are; they always sail under a disguise and so they can fool you. But if you understand two things—the nature of both cult leader and cult member—then you can begin not only to define the thing, but to recognize it.

As the proverb says, “Surely in vain is the net spread in the sight of any bird.” But one has to look carefully, lest you end up a trapped bird! Unless a person cultivates a lot of wariness about the possible untruths behind the charms, the words, the appearances and the actions which one’s fellowman is capable of, and at the same time holds on to a wise understanding of one’s own susceptibilities—two sets of things often not easily gained—then a person like you, or like me, can be fooled, and rather easily, too. In fact, our very nature makes avoiding being deceived in a big way at some point in our lives an outstanding accomplishment. Seeing this is so, how does one recognize a cult? From personal experience I think there are four things to look for. Of course there are more, but I want to dwell on those which are probably the easiest to spy out. The first of these is this: The cult will be set apart, opaque and, though perhaps not obviously so, secretive. Read more for an explanation, and for descriptions three other signs that you’re in the presence of a cult.

What would have prevented me, once I joined, from continuing to follow as long as I did? I might list the answers to these questions under the heading, “What I wish I’d known,” or I could put the matter this way: “What I’ve learned.” Had I been more attuned in respect to any of the lessons, either before I joined, or somehow once I had joined, I might very well have either never joined or been in for far less time. I’ve listed twelve lessons ranging “Don’t give up thinking for yourself” and “Courage is often the first thing required when one is struggling to think for oneself” to “Wolves in sheep’s clothing are real” and “Beware of being charmed.” Another I discuss is “Misuse of human sexuality is a principal way cults reveal their true nature.” I am sure there were more lessons than these, but the ones I’ve chosen did not come cheaply. Though I have not at all finished learning them even now, I have been enabled to bring up from the depths of that mine—the cult—such ore, refined in fire, as have enabled me to offer these tenets for avoiding cults and other shipwrecks. May they prove useful to you, dear Reader.

Though social-science ways of explaining behavior leading to joining what turn out to be cults are certainly valid, it was ultimately a spiritual hunger to satisfy these deepest of desires for meaning that moved me most of all to join when I met the group, which I only much later realized was a cult. When I first saw them they appeared to be a band of Christian hippies living communally, arguing that forsaking everything to follow Jesus was the best way to live, prompting me to think, “This is what I’m looking for!” I learned—though it took nearly a decade—that joining The Children of God was not a real solution; it could not finally satisfy the needs and desires of my heart. All who join cults do so, I believe, when they particularly vulnerable; they may do so for a whole spectrum of reasons. But for whatever reason they join, though it may take a long time for someone who joins to see this, the cults can never deliver on their promises and all who join them cannot help being finally disappointed, even while some still cannot find a way to escape.

In totalitarian environments cults cannot flourish; the state itself has a monopoly on extreme and total power—though the entire entity—the entire nation—can itself be taken over by the cult of the leader, as we see, for example, in North Korea. There are religious cults and political cults, New Age cults, psychotherapeutic cults, human potential cults and commercial cults (organizations centered on marketing some product but exhibiting in their organization and leadership structures cult-like characteristics). But the typing of cults into such categories cannot be too strictly followed since the types not infrequently tend to blend into hybrids. Also, in a sense, almost all cults have a religious component, though this is much more evident in some than in others. Perhaps this is due to the religious nature or inclination in human beings generally, by which I mean the tendency to want to worship and serve something, the desire to give oneself to something in a deeply committed manner. What all these groups have in common is that the person in the cult trusts himself or herself to its leadership in a total way, suspending something inside them in order to allow themselves wholly to yield to the leader and his worldview. The flowering of the cult relies on a perfect combination: the follower needs a leader who is ready and able to take such power, while they, the followers, are ready and willing not only to submit, but to believe and corroborate the uniqueness of the leader.

The year 1968 was a year of turmoil and protest as the war in Vietnam intensified. There was talk of the U.S. being on the verge of revolutionary change. It was just around this time that the birth took place of the group started under the leadership of one David Berg—later known as “Moses David” or “Mo” and even “Father David.” It started in a little coffeehouse in Huntington Beach, California with the help of  Berg’s young-adult children. “Mo,” starting to wear a beret and dark glasses, declared to the hippies, radicals, surfers and drop-outs who were congregating in their coffeehouse near the beach, that Jesus had come to start a revolution. This was the beginning of the Children of God. In early 1969 they would leave California after upsetting too many people with their mass demonstrations inside local churches. When they left, it was in a caravan of vehicles heading out to wander across North America, talking everywhere of Jesus and revolution. I joined in late 1969 and would be a member for nine years. Pictured here are several of the early leaders of the group in 1969. As time went on the Children of God became an almost a perfect specimen of the phenomenon that came to be known as the cult.