cult
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /kʌlt/
ipa: [kʰʌlt]
note: gulf-golf merger
ipa: /ˈkɒlt/
note: without the foot-strut split
ipa: /ˈkʊlt/
rhymes: -ʌlt
Forms: form: cults
Etymology: Derived from French culte, from Latin cultus (“care, adoration; cult”), from colō (“cultivate; protect”).
Senses: examples: text: imperial cult
text: the cult of Mary
topics: lifestyle
religion
glosses: The veneration, devotion, and religious rites given to a deity (especially in a historical polytheistic context), or (in a Christian context) to a saint; a subset of worship.
examples: text: the heavy metal cult
text: the cult of basketball
text: the guitarist's cult of loyal fans
text: the cult of celebrity
glosses: A group of people having an obsession with or intense admiration for a particular activity, idea, person or thing.
examples: text: Two former cult members explain the difficulties they had extricating themselves from it.
text: Werner Erhard's highly successful est cult is partly derived from Scientology. Erhard had some experience with Scientology in 1969. Then he worked for a while in Mind Dynamics, itself an offshoot of Jose Silva's Mind Control.
ref: 1985, Rodney Stark, Religious movements: Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers, Paragon House Publishers, →ISBN, page 167:
text: There are scores of modern religious cults and sects that have been influenced by Hinduism to varying degrees. Werner Erhard, founder of 'Landmark Education's 'The Forum',' and 'est' seminars, which have about 700,000 graduates, was influenced by Hinduism through Swami Muktananda, one of Erhard's principal gurus.
ref: 1996, John Ankerberg, John Weldon, Encyclopedia of New Age Beliefs, Harvest House Publishers, →ISBN, page 216:
text: Outsiders often criticize the extreme commitment of group members. But what is really happening is that leader and followers are conspiring to realize a vision that is falsified daily. For the cult is not paradise, and the leader is not God. Hence the follower is embattled; to squarely confront the many failings of the leader and the group is to call into question one's own great work. Only by daily recommitting himself can the follower continue to work toward his ultimate goal. Each follower works out a secret compromise, acknowledging some things while denying or distorting others. Clearly this is a high-risk strategy that may go awry.
ref: 1997, Len Oakes, “Followers and Their Quest”, in Prophetic charisma: The Psychology of Prophetic Charisma, Syracuse University Press, →ISBN, page 137:
text: The difference between a cult and an established religion is sometimes about one generation.
ref: 1998 June 17, Scott McLemee, “Rethinking Jonestown”, in Salon.com:
text: If Jones' People's Temple wasn't a cult, then the term has no meaning.
ref: 1998 June 17, Scott McLemee, “Rethinking Jonestown”, in Salon.com:
text: Another potent element of the new cult milieu was the therapy sect, which offered believers the chance to achieve their full human potential through personal growth and self-actualization by taking total responsibility for one's actions. The prototypical movement of this kind was est (Erhard Seminar Training), in which intense and often grueling sessions forced followers to confront a new view of reality.
ref: 2000, Philip Jenkins, Mystics and Messiahs : Cults and New Religions in American History, London: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 180:
text: He sounds like a cult leader about to demand his followers drink poison. And it frankly doesn’t help that he looks like Jim Jones to a genuinely creepy degree.
ref: 2016 November 6, “Multilevel Marketing”, in Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, season 3, episode 29, John Oliver (actor), via HBO:
text: Marc Andreessen, a venture capitalist who has become one of Silicon Valley's most outspoken opponents of regulation, has described people who warn of existential risks from AI as a cult, no different from other millenarian movements that warn of impending social disasters.
ref: 2023 November 25, Richard Waters, John Thornhill, quoting Marc Andreessen, “Tech's philosophical rift over AI”, in FT Weekend, Big Read, page 6:
glosses: A group, sect or movement following an unorthodox religious or philosophical system of beliefs, especially one in which members remove and exclude themselves from greater society, including family members not part of the cult, and show extreme devotion to a charismatic leader.
Derived terms: anticult
cargo cult
cargo cult science
cult archaeology
cultbuster
cultdom
cult film
cult follower
cult following
culthead
cult hero
cult hit
cultic
cultish
cultishly
cultishness
cultism
cultist
cultlike
cult of personality
cultship
cult stock
culty
cybercult
death cult
doomsday cult
fertility cult
imperial cult
masscult
megacult
midcult
mystery cult
noncult
personality cult
Qult
sex cult
subcult
suicide cult
trans cult
witch cult