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Cults continue to fascinate the western psyche, nurturing suspicions of their intentions. Whether there is a reality to these concerns is hard to tell, but most cults have proved to be peaceful and innocuous.
The vast majority of cult gurus tend to be male. But this is not exclusively so. There have been a handful of female gurus, most being totally peaceful, but even here there is an exception.
MARGARET PETER
This exception was Margaret Peter, and her activities in the German border town of Wildisbuch in 1823. Her group included most of her family, but things came to a head when Margaret was convinced the Devil lived in her loft and they needed a sacrifice.
A sister immediately hit herself with a mallet. Six members then battered her to death. The Devil still there, Margaret decided to be crucified, to be resurrected in three days.
The group crucified her and battered her to death.
Margaret didn’t come back to life, but the police did come to the house and throw them all in prison. However, other than Margaret, female cult gurus tend to be different in many respects to their male counterparts.
JOANNA SOUTHCOTT
Consider the 19th century British Christian sect that grew around Joanna Southcott. A deeply religious woman, she had a vision that she would give birth to the new Messiah, whom she named Shiloh.
Dying in 1814, disciples waited for days by her dead body for the birth. When the smell became too bad, a doctor opened her up but found no child. Hence, it must have been spiritually born in heaven.
The Panacea Society was then formed, still waiting for Shiloh, and also keeping a box containing Southcott’s wisdom. This box can only be opened in the presence of twenty four Anglican bishops. So far, the bishops have declined to attend the opening of the box.
ANN LEE
Ann Lee from Manchester, England, was another female cult leader. She was a Quaker who, after all four of her children died whilst young, rejected sex. Forming the Shakers, so named for their ecstatic dancing which led to hysteria and hallucination, she became known as Mother Ann for reflecting the feminine aspects of God.
Moving to America in 1774, the Shakers grew to six thousand, but her rejection of sex led to persecution, Ann being branded a witch. Dying in 1784, she began to appear in Shaker meetings and headed a number of spiritual entities who appeared to the sect. Today, only one tiny Shaker community remains.
MADAME BLAVATSKY
Perhaps the most famous female guru was Russian eccentric and Spiritualist medium, Helena Blavatsky. Becoming famous in America, this obese lady began receiving letters from Koot Hoomi, an immortal master, or Mahatma, who existed in Tibet with others.
In 1875 she formed the Theosophical Society with Col HS Olcott, espousing her spiritual philosophy that all religions were versions of the one truth. This truth was that we existed on many ‘planes’, reincarnation was a reality, and the cosmos underwent spiritual development.
In 1877 the society moved to Adyar, Madras, in India, and became fundamental to allowing eastern philosophies into the west. Derided by many, leadership passed to Annie Besant who declared the guru Krishnamurti as the coming World Teacher.
Krishnamurti later rejected this, which was a huge blow for the society. Fellow Theosophist Rudolf Steiner broke away, forming the Anthroposophical Society, which did pioneering work in the spiritual education of children, still practiced today as the Waldorf Schools Movement.
GENDER DIFFERENCES
With the exception of Margaret Peter, who we can reliably argue was not as sane as she might have been, we can see several different aspects to these female gurus above the male equivalent.
A male led cult tends to be a society based around the reverence of the guru himself. As well a certain level of violence, it can also include abuse of the sexual or psychological kind. However, this does not seem to happen with female gurus.
The obvious answer to this is that the female guru is not egotistical to the same extent as a man would be in this position. So many male led cults can be seen as a product of ego rather than a definite spiritual system.
A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM
With the female guru, spirituality seems to be the central key. And lack of ego can also be identified in the fact that, with Southcott, Lee and Blavatsky, they were not so much the centre of the spiritual system that manifested.
Rather, there was a wider purpose above the guru herself, Blavatsky even managing to birth a process that fundamentally changed the nature of spirituality in the west with the Theosophical Society.
Essential to female led cults seems, therefore, to be a definite spirituality other than the ego of the guru. And in understanding this, we can argue that there are far more female gurus than we at first believe.
But these gurus are so different that we do not see them as gurus in the classic cult sense. Such gurus are the multitude of Channelers around today, imparting wisdom to their groups through possessed entities – a process that can clearly be seen as beginning with Blavatsky.
An obvious advancement on the Spiritualist medium, Channeling can also, here, be seen to be an advancement on the cult, too. Does such an influence suggest a new stage in cult development, the notorious cults of the past becoming just that – of the past?
© Anthony North, November 2007
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