The Cult

Cult is one of those words that has had attached to it a good deal of stigma and today seems to almost be synnomous in the minds of others with sacrifcies, orgies, devil worship and other such things. Though Cults have exisisted for just about as long as the history of man and infact near every religon, encluding the major relgions of today once began as a cult and some could argue still are cults to some degree or another. Christainty itself had been a cult.

So then the question is, just what is a cult?

Well litteraly the word means "care" the word cult first came to be In England 1617, and derived from the french word culte which means worship or a particular form of worship which in turn came from the Lantin word cultus which means: care, cultivation, worship," originally "tended, cultivated.

By extention the word cult came to refer to a relgion that has distinqushed itself from other relgions through change and individulism. This can be seen as either when a group breaks away from a main relgion to form its own beleif only taking some aspsects of the origional religon with it, or in a Polythestic beleif system a group the dedicates itself to one God in specific. It can also be a new group that forms with its own set of beleifs and ideas.

In retrospect a Cult is really nothing more then a minority group that has its own set of practices, beleifs, ceremonines, rituals, and festivals, but has not reached the majority to come to the status of being considered a Relgion.

One of the possible reasons for the villification of the Cult, is becasue often a cult would challange the ideas of the large more mainstream religion which would draw resentment, and so they would "demonize" if you will the cult to prevent thier own followers from leaving them to follow the Cult, and to protect thier own establishment, as if a cult should grow too big it could overthrow the exisisting religon.

This can be seen with Christianity, which did just that. It started out as a Cult with radical ideas which differed from those of the exisisting religon and gathered enough fellowship to challange what was that the time the mainstream religon.

And now today, every little fanatic, radical group, such as Heavensgate for example, is dubbed a "Cult" and though by definition one could argue that they are techniqually a cult, that is not in fact that the traditional and typical Cult is made up of.

But the media throws words like Cult around in association with these things and so people then get the idea that, a Cult really is some big omminous thing.

When in fact every exisiting religon today has hordes of cults of its own, and most are prefectly legteitamte made up of perfectly regular people, that have no inclination of comitting any crimes or any other such things. But any time you have a large group, as in orginized religon, regulardless of the nature of the relgion, thier will be smaller fractions of that relgion that break away, and might have thier own interipitations of certain ideas of the main religon, and they might have a small populace, and by definition these are in fact Cults.

5:32 PM - 5/10/2007 - post comment

Quote of the Week: We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another--Jonathan Swift

ShadowEyes
The Aristos
Poem Hunter
Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
StopWhaling
NRDC BioGems
IFAW
Social Values Marketplace
Blogthings
Shadow Poetry
Seafood Choices Alliance
Look At Me
Stop The Seal Hunt
Holla Back
My Deviant Art
My Cafe Press Store
Bold, Beautiful, and Big
Internet Movie Database
Responsible Traveling
Ethical Traveling
Green Weddings
Eco-Friendly Sking and Snowboarding
Keep Winter Cool
Green Resorts
Beyond the Mystery
The Spiders Den
The Poetry Forum
The Literature Forum
Frederick W. Cook
Good Reads
Deconstruction of Kamikaze Kurt



Recent Entries
- Quote of the Week
- Don't Vote Red
- One Woman who won't vote Plain
- Don't Preach what you can't practice
- International Reading List ~ Update




Catagory
- Articles
- Books
- Arcane
- Movies
- Music
- Philosophy
- Poetry
- Writing
- Thoughts
- Rants
- The Silvernary
- Word of the day
- Quote of the Week
- In Praise Of
- Art
- Confessional
- Garden and Animal Journal
- Roots
- Raw
- Humur
- Photography




Friends
- JournalHome
- troutdude
- DAWNIE
- kaymbl0403
- Heather
- silvermelusine
- Fightingfemale
- LandsdownLad
- dutchboy
- pykimconant
- inamorata
- Realove
- sweetlydisturbed
- imagination999
- SilverWynd
- lobond
- DarthTsynn
- YankeeInnkeeper
- StarrSilverMoon
- shokat99
- sweet2pinkash
- LadySilverMoon
- glorydreamer386
- 5489
- TheSeraphim
- enelda
- Zachtin
- visitor
- thecolumn





Visit www.hostdrjack.com




www.hostdrjack.com




Visit www.hostdrjack.com




Visit www.hostdrjack.com









Visit www.hostdrjack.com