Nathan Lee Chasing His Horse, also known as Nathan Chasing Horse, is a Sicangu Lakota actor and a subject of legal proceedings concerning multiple sexual offenses. He is also alleged to be the leader of a small sect called The Circle. Chasing Horse was born on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota and is Continue reading

The Church of the SubGenius originated in the late 1970s as a parody religion critiquing belief systems including Christianity, New Age spirituality, and commercialism. The organization officially formed as the SubGenius Foundation and was co-founded by Ivan Stang (Douglas St. Clair Smith) and Philo Drummond (Steve Wilcox). Stang serves as a leader and publicist and Continue reading

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM), also known as Pastafarianism (a portmanteau of “pasta” and “Rastafarianism”) is a satirical faith commenting on religion and public policy. Its adherents describe it as “a real, legitimate religion, as much as any other.” The movement began in the United States in 2005 as a public response Continue reading

Bernhardt “Ben” Klassen founded the Church of the Creator in 1973, later changing its name to the World Church of the Creator following litigation by another unrelated sect with the same name. It is also known as part of the Creativity Alliance, a grouping of atheistic white supremacist sects that promotes white separatism, anti-Christianity, antisemitism, Continue reading

The Church of Sacrifice was a short-lived death cult that may not have actually existed. Clementine Barnabet, an African American woman who became lined to a series of unsolved axe murders in Louisiana and southeastern Texas, claimed in a confession to have been acting on the orders of such a sect, but its existence and Continue reading

The Church of Euthanasia was launched in Boston in 1992 by Chris Korda, an artist and musician. Though Korda insisted that the church was a serious new religion, most aspects of its publicity and activities had overtones of performance art and it is unclear how sincere Korda was in this assertion. Korda was born in Continue reading

The idea of a “Church of AI” has emerged as a cultural development in which people attribute religious or spiritual meaning to advanced artificial intelligence models, particularly Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT. The phenomenon reflects how these systems’ conversational fluency and emotional responsiveness can shape users’ beliefs, sometimes reinforcing existing psychological or spiritual Continue reading

John C. Kim, known to followers as “Grandmaster ‘Iron’ Kim,” founded the martial arts organization Chung Moo Quan after emigrating from South Korea to the United States in the early 1970s. He opened his first school in Westmont, Illinois, in 1973. Over time, the organization expanded under several names, including Chung Moo Doe and Oom Continue reading

Eleven members of the Chundawat family of the Burari neighborhood of Delhi died in a group suicide on July 1, 2018. The incident was later formally ruled by police to be motivated by a shared psychotic disorder (folie à deux), but the investigation uncovered a complex, cultlike belief system rooted in a spiritual delusion that Continue reading

Egon Cholakian has presented himself as a distinguished professional with a wide-ranging career spanning international tax law, particle physics, and national security. His resume, as described by him, includes service to multiple U.S. presidential administrations and prominent roles in both government and scientific research. At the same time, closer scrutiny of his claims reveals a Continue reading

Norman “Snake” Brooks was the founder and leader of a communal group known as the Children of the Valley of Life. He first appeared in Eugene, Oregon, in the 1970s with several of his wives and followers. Brooks, originally from Austin, Texas, had a troubled past, claiming to have been a car thief before becoming Continue reading

Elior Chen was a self-proclaimed rabbi and spiritual leader who became the central figure in one of Israel’s most notorious child abuse cases. He gathered a circle of followers in Jerusalem, within which he orchestrated the systematic abuse of eight minors. The brutality of the crimes, combined with Chen’s manipulation of religious authority, drew nationwide Continue reading

Jorge Beltrão Negromonte da Silveira was a Brazilian serial killer and the founder of a sect he called “The Cartel.” Born in Portugal on December 14, 1961, he later moved with them to Pernambuco, Brazil. His early life was marked by instability and violence. As a young man, he was charged with murdering a 17-year-old Continue reading

Christopher Cantelmo was an American biochemist and founder of Cantelmoism, a spiritual cult that gained most of its following through Reddit. A Yale University graduate, he worked for more than three decades in the pharmaceutical industry. He became known for claiming that he had cured his brain cancer with the psychedelic drug Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a Continue reading

Call of the Shofar was a spiritual development organization founded by Steven (Simcha) Frischling. The group operated for several years with little public attention before receiving extensive media coverage starting in late 2013. The ensuing debate centered on the group’s methods and whether they were compatible with Orthodox Jewish law. Frischling, who had a background Continue reading

Bokononism is a fictional religion created by author Kurt Vonnegut in his 1963 novel Cat’s Cradle. The religion, which posits the ultimate futility of life and the need for religion to provide comfort in a universe without meaning, freely admits that it offers “harmless untruths,” with its writer proclaiming, “All of the true things that Continue reading

The Bene Gesserit Sisterhood is an Internet-based group inspired by the fictional sisterhood of the same name in Frank Herbert’s Dune series. In the novels, the Bene Gesserit is a centuries-old religious sisterhood with immense political power. Its members go through years of mental and physical training starting in adolescence in order to move into Continue reading

The Baháʼí Faith is a monotheistic religion that emerged in 19th century Persia, with a focus on the fundamental worth of all religions and the essential unity of humanity. Since its founding by Baháʼu’lláh in 1863, it has grown to approximately eight million adherents worldwide, and is the only religion to have grown faster in Continue reading

Bábism is a monotheistic religion founded in Persia by Siyyid ‘Alí Muhammad Shírází. Known to his followers as the Báb, meaning “gate,” his title reflects his role as a divinely inspired intermediary, one who opened the way to a new spiritual era. Born in 1819 in the city of Shiraz into a family of merchants, Continue reading

On July 22, 2013, a role-playing game called “Kanye Quest 3030” was released for the Windows PC platform. The game, developed with the RPG Maker engine, was published by a creator named “Phenix,” who would later be revealed to be Australian designer Clara Hope. The game, which was not authorized by West, involved the rapper Continue reading

The Asatru Folk Assembly (AFA) is the largest organization in the “Neo-Völkisch” movement. A subset of the larger Germanic Neopaganism “Ásatrú” movement that seeks to revive pre-Christian belief systems of the Germanic peoples through reverence for nature, ancestor veneration, and worship of Norse gods, Neo-Völkism promotes a romanticized Viking mythos that has been used to Continue reading

Daniel Perez was born in Texas in 1959. Few details about his early life are known, but he fled that state in 1997 to avoid sentencing for a child sex crime conviction. He relocated to Kansas, where he adopted the name Lou Castro. He would later claim that he was assaulted by police officers following Continue reading

The American Way Association, or Amway, is a multi-level marketing (MLM) company founded by lifelong friends Richard DeVos and Jay Van Andel in 1959. The two had partnered on several endeavors and in 1949 created the Ja-Ri Corporation to import goods from South America. Later that year, they attended a seminar for Nutrilite food supplements, Continue reading

In 1972, Fred and Linda Chamberlain founded the Alcor Society for Solid State Hypothermia, naming it for Alcor, a faint star in the Big Dipper constellation. They changed the name to the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in 1977. Its intention is to develop a rational and financially reasonable approach to cryonics. Alcor’s initial human cryopreservation Continue reading

The Aiyy Faith is a contemporary Yakut religious organization that is the successor to Kut-Siur, founded in 1990 by philologist Lazar Afanasyev, known as Téris, during the period of religious liberation that came with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Afanasyev, who studied shamanism during the Soviet era, articulated his monotheistic modernization of Yakut teachings Continue reading