Some ideas have been milling round in my head for a long, long time. If I had a Ph.D type mind and the time, perhaps I would have done things that-a-way.
It always seemed to me that what we regard as orthodox or acceptable ways of examining or explaining human behaviour don't actually do the job too well. They can be good hypotheses but isn't there something else? I thought so 30 years ago with my new psychology degree, and I think so now with many more books under my belt and Internet access besides.
I used to fancy being a hacker getting into libraries and books all over the place but thankfully don't have to - it's much easier to find all-sorts now and so much good stuff and hard work 'up there'. So where does one start in this welter of information, word-processing for anyone with a computer, and instant publishing available for free?
In the early 80's I wondered whether photography would be able to show the same sorts of phenomena that clairvoyants describe. I wasn't sure whether clairvoyants tended to see roughly the same sort of things in the same setting, or what. Somehow I came into contact via letter with Cyril Permutt who wrote 'Photographing the Spirit World' and 'Beyond the Spectrum'. I passed his letter with a rather fine signature at the bottom to a friend called Leslie who saw extra things in people's photos which they felt were significant. Many many times he did this.
Leslie took one look at Cyril Permutt's signature and 'saw things' which he described to me. I forwarded his comments on and received an enthusiastic reply from Mr Permutt, who exchanged correspondence with Leslie for quite a while, often sending him photos for comments and insights. I remember writing a puzzled letter to Mr Permutt saying I didn't know how Leslie's gifts worked although he did seem to need time to tune in to people and take things from there. There's a thing called cold reading which is effective but not the same phenomenon - that is more like reading body language, watching pupils of the eyes and so on.
Mr Permutt replied along the lines that clairvoyance was as much due to 'association of ideas' as it was to do with actually seeing pictures in the mind. That comment has come to my mind over the years in a number of settings. Psychoanalysis apparently works on free association and linking things, whatever else may (or may not) be involved. I can't help feeling that when we get an intuition about someone we are with, it's often along the lines of association of ideas in some form.
There's something called a Meissner field which apparently has implications for hypnosis in that the person undergoing hypnosis may pick up what is expected within the mental framework or belief system of the hypnotist. My view is that this happens more than just in that setting. Some people naturally seem to project outwards towards other people. Some may aim for it deliberately. How much individuals pick up of that probably depends on their susceptibility and/or how firm their own beliefs or needs are.
I came across a book by Ormond McGill called 'Secrets of Stage Mindreading' which really is worth a read! He outlines what seems to be a form of self-hypnosis by which he persuaded himself he could read other people's minds (rather than cues or trickery in stage magic), and also 'noisy telepathy' or Yogi mental broadcasting. He says 'A group or crowd with similar interest/purpose is very susceptible to telepathy'.
And then there came a book called 'Hungry Ghosts' by Joe Fisher, a psychic researcher who feels he got his fingers burned by his beliefs.
Friday, 22 August 2008
Beliefs that come and go
This not only applies to individuals who are free to change their minds or they should be! It can be a natural process within the individual; it can be natural within a small or large grouping, even national; it can be projected via advertising; a communication could be inadvertent yet effective; or it could be informed and deliberately designed.
Some comments on social engineering or pretexting, con tricks and scams are on the first page of Norman's Toukanalia Blog on 'Out-of-Character Behaviour' - now pasted in further down this Blog for reference.
To return here is http://unseenaspects.blogspot.com
People differ about hypnosis and what it can or cannot do. For instance it is usually said that people can't be made to do things that would be in conflict with their usual behaviour or belief system. Clearly the way round that would be to change the belief system. That doesn't necessarily have to be under hypnosis, but more in the ordinary way of things with the type of impression management or propaganda used.
NLP or neuro-linguistic-programming also gets a mixed reaction in people. There are plenty of books on how it can be used ethically as a part of therapy, and plenty more on how to get underneath a person's usual barriers with advertising or confidence tricks, or by just being smart. One book I'll mention briefly is 'Never be Lied to Again' by David J. Lieberman. He is suggesting that one sets up what's called an anchor to reinforce people telling you the truth, i.e. you don't get lied to again... This isn't quite the same thing as subliminal messages in supermarkets which encourage shoppers to buy more or to discourage them from shoplifting, but they are connected.
Then there's something called a 'convincer' which can be an object, an idea, a piece of information or disinformation, with the aim that a person is more likely to follow a belief or instruction if there is something to hook it on. Ever watched a stage magician and listened to the actual wording too? I spent a virtual fortune of £120 on a set of CDs about it. Clever, expensive, and how did I get talked - or talk myself - into that?
Project Middle Ground was started in America by Dr Paul Simpson, a therapist who wrote 'Second Thoughts: Understanding the false memory crisis and how it could affect you'. Perhaps Dr Simpson's approach of working with families involved in the controversy is not directly applicable in the UK, but that does not mean there may not be an alternative approach to suit our culture.
Various academics at UK universities have written papers about bridging what might seem an impossible divide. Sadly people tend to fight a particular corner, but Dr Simpson showed that it is possible to try for a middle ground, with some considerable effect. Several books shedding light on how some misunderstandings could have arisen have been written in America since 1995. It seems a pity to let all of that, plus what has been achieved in the UK, remain unattended for the most part.
http://www.youtube.com/user/middlegroundable
More information at http://middlegroundable.blogspot.com
Some comments on social engineering or pretexting, con tricks and scams are on the first page of Norman's Toukanalia Blog on 'Out-of-Character Behaviour' - now pasted in further down this Blog for reference.
To return here is http://unseenaspects.blogspot.com
People differ about hypnosis and what it can or cannot do. For instance it is usually said that people can't be made to do things that would be in conflict with their usual behaviour or belief system. Clearly the way round that would be to change the belief system. That doesn't necessarily have to be under hypnosis, but more in the ordinary way of things with the type of impression management or propaganda used.
NLP or neuro-linguistic-programming also gets a mixed reaction in people. There are plenty of books on how it can be used ethically as a part of therapy, and plenty more on how to get underneath a person's usual barriers with advertising or confidence tricks, or by just being smart. One book I'll mention briefly is 'Never be Lied to Again' by David J. Lieberman. He is suggesting that one sets up what's called an anchor to reinforce people telling you the truth, i.e. you don't get lied to again... This isn't quite the same thing as subliminal messages in supermarkets which encourage shoppers to buy more or to discourage them from shoplifting, but they are connected.
Then there's something called a 'convincer' which can be an object, an idea, a piece of information or disinformation, with the aim that a person is more likely to follow a belief or instruction if there is something to hook it on. Ever watched a stage magician and listened to the actual wording too? I spent a virtual fortune of £120 on a set of CDs about it. Clever, expensive, and how did I get talked - or talk myself - into that?
Project Middle Ground was started in America by Dr Paul Simpson, a therapist who wrote 'Second Thoughts: Understanding the false memory crisis and how it could affect you'. Perhaps Dr Simpson's approach of working with families involved in the controversy is not directly applicable in the UK, but that does not mean there may not be an alternative approach to suit our culture.
Various academics at UK universities have written papers about bridging what might seem an impossible divide. Sadly people tend to fight a particular corner, but Dr Simpson showed that it is possible to try for a middle ground, with some considerable effect. Several books shedding light on how some misunderstandings could have arisen have been written in America since 1995. It seems a pity to let all of that, plus what has been achieved in the UK, remain unattended for the most part.
http://www.youtube.com/user/middlegroundable
More information at http://middlegroundable.blogspot.com
Symbols, realities, the unseen
We may not believe in clairvoyance or clairsentience ourselves, but many people admit to a few instances in their lives when something tipped them off to potential danger, an event involving someone close, or something like that. Sometimes when joggling along on a bus or train thinking nothing in particular, an image pops into my head which I'm sure is not mine. Once I felt a chap opposite me was boring a hole in my calf with his eyes. I got off at the next station and ran to another carriage! Another time, in a peaceful frame of mind on a nice sunny day I felt suddenly panicked and squeamish and clutched my bag over my stomach. When the chap next to me got off I looked closely and saw nothing but an ordinary young man in smart casual clothes. I've no idea why there was that reaction in me. Another time I sat next to a woman and felt incredibly depressed which vanished as soon as she left.
To return to the INTRODUCTION where I mentioned photography and phenomena that appear on some photos or only to people with heightened abilities, I think the old plate-type method of capturing images was advantageous, but digital methods along with enhancement techniques in readily available software probably work well.
What ran through my mind was that areas of the spectrum like ultra-violet or infra-red might show things that most of us can't see. Having known a number of people who seemed consistently psychically sensitive, I realise they don't all get similar impressions or symbols, unless there is something like a group-mind phenomenon, or something is perhaps closer to the physical realm, or there is some other variable.
It seems certain symbols, constructs or psychological constellations, occur idiosyncratically to people, and their train of thought takes them towards something they interpret in ways that may be meaningful to others. Some people can be accurate for a significant percentage, then go off on some sidetrack which proves meaningless or just wrong.
The reason for listing some books written by those who are better writers than I am and experienced in their field, is so that you can follow up anything mentioned. I do not have the time or inclination to attempt explaining all sides of arguments, or to claim to be doing so then coming to roost on one side of some fence. I don't ask people to believe everything here but I do feel some of the points are valid.
Years ago I got hold of books written by Dion Fortune and was fascinated by her claim that sensitives can see or pick up complexes or aspects that people shut off from themselves. She said these dissociated parts could take on independent life of their own. To see or sense those would be a lovely time-saving way to carry out counselling or therapy, I thought, and what if you could photograph them? (This subject is mentioned in 'Healing Approaches' towards the end of the Blog, more specifically in connection with Pranic Healing and Pranic Psychotherapy.)
Another concept is that of auras or chakras, and we may be picking up on those in some way even though not seeing or believing in them. They may be the mechanics of how we become affected by others, how we affect other people, and even how we could be affecting ourselves. It's complex so here is a link to a talk by Phoebe Bendit at the Theosophical Society in London in 1953: http://www.theosophical.ca/SacredFlame.htm She was married to Dr L.J. Bendit a psychiatrist with knowledge of Jungian and depth psychology. In her talk she comments on unrecognised parts of ourselves with an autonomous life of their own.
You may prefer a different framework such as Chinese or Ayurvedic Medicine, but there are many common themes.
Although I became somewhat disenchanted with some of her approach, Dion Fortune wrote a classic book about psychic attack and methods of defence, which caught my attention because of experiences I had while moving around different work-places and environments, particularly where another person was not acknowledging a problem for them. I am not psychic but quite empathic. She describes problem areas, or attack, as taking the line of least resistance, the more sensitive people being first to be affected. It's like a circuit: remove the most sensitive person or the 'weakest link' and the next most sensitive is likely to suffer. Make of it what you will or find useful, but basically if you feel someone is putting psychological or psychic pressure on you, find a mental strategy to fend it off. Or wear leather round your waist, or on the feet, hands etc.
Before I close I'd like to mention a point relating to Asperger's Syndrome which is often described as being at the less extreme end of a continuum of Autism. I don't know, and don't wish to offend anyone here but it may help someone. I knew someone with Asperger's for a long time till it became apparent she suffers problems with psychic flashes or visions when meeting people. When I followed this up it seems this sometimes goes along with other aspects of Asperger's. I feel this type of experience of my friend has quite a lot to do with psychic sensitivity, or not being able to filter out as much as most of us do naturally.
Dr Arthur Guirdham wrote similarly about his own psychic sensitivity and many of the other things he writes on seem to fit. There will be more on these areas under 'Possession approaches', 'Influence approaches', 'Spiritual approaches'.
- - - - -
John Keel writes on UFO's and other phenomena, and see his writing on the Mothman for ideas about people's fears or expectations affecting their experience
'Unseen Beings: Unseen Worlds' by Tom Dongo gets into a variety of scenarios, some of which you may find far-fetched
See quantum physics relating to observer effects on experiments
See 'Natural Symbols' by Mary Douglas, an anthropologist
See 'Daimonic Reality: Understanding Otherworld Encounters' by Patrick Harpur
As far as I recall the author suggests people tend to see or experience things in terms of their frame of reference and expectation. There's a similar concept in a book by some psychic researchers who experienced entities appearing along the lines of what they'd been seeking in the first place. Some crop circle researchers have tried to influence future designs or make contact with other levels in this way.
- - - - -
To return to the INTRODUCTION where I mentioned photography and phenomena that appear on some photos or only to people with heightened abilities, I think the old plate-type method of capturing images was advantageous, but digital methods along with enhancement techniques in readily available software probably work well.
What ran through my mind was that areas of the spectrum like ultra-violet or infra-red might show things that most of us can't see. Having known a number of people who seemed consistently psychically sensitive, I realise they don't all get similar impressions or symbols, unless there is something like a group-mind phenomenon, or something is perhaps closer to the physical realm, or there is some other variable.
It seems certain symbols, constructs or psychological constellations, occur idiosyncratically to people, and their train of thought takes them towards something they interpret in ways that may be meaningful to others. Some people can be accurate for a significant percentage, then go off on some sidetrack which proves meaningless or just wrong.
The reason for listing some books written by those who are better writers than I am and experienced in their field, is so that you can follow up anything mentioned. I do not have the time or inclination to attempt explaining all sides of arguments, or to claim to be doing so then coming to roost on one side of some fence. I don't ask people to believe everything here but I do feel some of the points are valid.
Years ago I got hold of books written by Dion Fortune and was fascinated by her claim that sensitives can see or pick up complexes or aspects that people shut off from themselves. She said these dissociated parts could take on independent life of their own. To see or sense those would be a lovely time-saving way to carry out counselling or therapy, I thought, and what if you could photograph them? (This subject is mentioned in 'Healing Approaches' towards the end of the Blog, more specifically in connection with Pranic Healing and Pranic Psychotherapy.)
Another concept is that of auras or chakras, and we may be picking up on those in some way even though not seeing or believing in them. They may be the mechanics of how we become affected by others, how we affect other people, and even how we could be affecting ourselves. It's complex so here is a link to a talk by Phoebe Bendit at the Theosophical Society in London in 1953: http://www.theosophical.ca/SacredFlame.htm She was married to Dr L.J. Bendit a psychiatrist with knowledge of Jungian and depth psychology. In her talk she comments on unrecognised parts of ourselves with an autonomous life of their own.
You may prefer a different framework such as Chinese or Ayurvedic Medicine, but there are many common themes.
Although I became somewhat disenchanted with some of her approach, Dion Fortune wrote a classic book about psychic attack and methods of defence, which caught my attention because of experiences I had while moving around different work-places and environments, particularly where another person was not acknowledging a problem for them. I am not psychic but quite empathic. She describes problem areas, or attack, as taking the line of least resistance, the more sensitive people being first to be affected. It's like a circuit: remove the most sensitive person or the 'weakest link' and the next most sensitive is likely to suffer. Make of it what you will or find useful, but basically if you feel someone is putting psychological or psychic pressure on you, find a mental strategy to fend it off. Or wear leather round your waist, or on the feet, hands etc.
Before I close I'd like to mention a point relating to Asperger's Syndrome which is often described as being at the less extreme end of a continuum of Autism. I don't know, and don't wish to offend anyone here but it may help someone. I knew someone with Asperger's for a long time till it became apparent she suffers problems with psychic flashes or visions when meeting people. When I followed this up it seems this sometimes goes along with other aspects of Asperger's. I feel this type of experience of my friend has quite a lot to do with psychic sensitivity, or not being able to filter out as much as most of us do naturally.
Dr Arthur Guirdham wrote similarly about his own psychic sensitivity and many of the other things he writes on seem to fit. There will be more on these areas under 'Possession approaches', 'Influence approaches', 'Spiritual approaches'.
- - - - -
John Keel writes on UFO's and other phenomena, and see his writing on the Mothman for ideas about people's fears or expectations affecting their experience
'Unseen Beings: Unseen Worlds' by Tom Dongo gets into a variety of scenarios, some of which you may find far-fetched
See quantum physics relating to observer effects on experiments
See 'Natural Symbols' by Mary Douglas, an anthropologist
See 'Daimonic Reality: Understanding Otherworld Encounters' by Patrick Harpur
As far as I recall the author suggests people tend to see or experience things in terms of their frame of reference and expectation. There's a similar concept in a book by some psychic researchers who experienced entities appearing along the lines of what they'd been seeking in the first place. Some crop circle researchers have tried to influence future designs or make contact with other levels in this way.
- - - - -
Shamanism
Nowadays people are more familiar with this concept which was used in the field of psychic research or Anthropology but was not so much in general usage.
In the so-called Western world we tend to think in linear fashion for want of a better description. Something either is or it is not. It either did or did not happen. That makes for scrutiny and analysis but not any 'space-between', the different ways things get experienced where it's hard to tell any more than that. If we say something happened and someone else says 'It can't have because ...' they may make a valid point. The danger of an overly analytic or sceptical approach is it can generalise to a claim that something never happens at all if there is any doubt or an alternative explanation. Truth can be relative, in the eye of the beholder or experiencer. Psychological experiments testing people's observations are well-known for showing how inaccurate the process is, and people in a group setting often experience a group event very differently.
A divide or split in arguments can happen around any subject, and people may use this to distance themselves or deny something they prefer not to think possible. Therefore they claim it could not happen, or it does but only in specific situations, or only if people aren't smart enough to avoid them. And so on.
So there tend to be beliefs and counter-beliefs with maybe a few 'space-between' theories. It also depends on whom one wants to be accepted by, a reference person or group, or a mental construct of such. If the reference person or group is not accepting, there may be counter-claims of beliefs or a backlash, for instance my reality against yours or vice versa. These can also be orchestrated by someone with a vested interest, or just happen naturally.
To get back to Shamanism as a general concept, more has been learned about psychoactive substances taken as part of ritual or practice to expand awareness, see visions, contact other types of being, or experience different planes or realities. It's 'acceptable' now because many people have heard of it, tried it for themselves, or know of someone who has, and it is written up in plenty of research.
There's a concept similar to astral projection or astral travel where people may be able to commune with others in some way although their physical body doesn't budge. This is what witches in medieval times were said to achieve by smearing on fly agaric or ingesting something. And there's a word 'entheogen' describing the 'space-between' realities that people may be aiming for in seeking experiences.
On the next page (click Older Posts to the right at the bottom) are a couple of sections I'll briefly mention so you know what to expect. They deal with ritual abuse which is a difficult subject in more ways than one. The first section is entitled 'Ritual abuse' and has a trigger warning. The second section is entitled 'Urban legend and ritual abuse' which should not be taken to imply that I think ritual abuse is just a myth or urban legend. Read either or both of those sections if you want to. I feel they link to this post on the subject of 'Shamanism' and also to the one on 'Symbols, realities, the unseen'.
Other postings about Ritual Abuse or SRA, and Cults have been inserted further on.
In the so-called Western world we tend to think in linear fashion for want of a better description. Something either is or it is not. It either did or did not happen. That makes for scrutiny and analysis but not any 'space-between', the different ways things get experienced where it's hard to tell any more than that. If we say something happened and someone else says 'It can't have because ...' they may make a valid point. The danger of an overly analytic or sceptical approach is it can generalise to a claim that something never happens at all if there is any doubt or an alternative explanation. Truth can be relative, in the eye of the beholder or experiencer. Psychological experiments testing people's observations are well-known for showing how inaccurate the process is, and people in a group setting often experience a group event very differently.
A divide or split in arguments can happen around any subject, and people may use this to distance themselves or deny something they prefer not to think possible. Therefore they claim it could not happen, or it does but only in specific situations, or only if people aren't smart enough to avoid them. And so on.
So there tend to be beliefs and counter-beliefs with maybe a few 'space-between' theories. It also depends on whom one wants to be accepted by, a reference person or group, or a mental construct of such. If the reference person or group is not accepting, there may be counter-claims of beliefs or a backlash, for instance my reality against yours or vice versa. These can also be orchestrated by someone with a vested interest, or just happen naturally.
To get back to Shamanism as a general concept, more has been learned about psychoactive substances taken as part of ritual or practice to expand awareness, see visions, contact other types of being, or experience different planes or realities. It's 'acceptable' now because many people have heard of it, tried it for themselves, or know of someone who has, and it is written up in plenty of research.
There's a concept similar to astral projection or astral travel where people may be able to commune with others in some way although their physical body doesn't budge. This is what witches in medieval times were said to achieve by smearing on fly agaric or ingesting something. And there's a word 'entheogen' describing the 'space-between' realities that people may be aiming for in seeking experiences.
On the next page (click Older Posts to the right at the bottom) are a couple of sections I'll briefly mention so you know what to expect. They deal with ritual abuse which is a difficult subject in more ways than one. The first section is entitled 'Ritual abuse' and has a trigger warning. The second section is entitled 'Urban legend and ritual abuse' which should not be taken to imply that I think ritual abuse is just a myth or urban legend. Read either or both of those sections if you want to. I feel they link to this post on the subject of 'Shamanism' and also to the one on 'Symbols, realities, the unseen'.
Other postings about Ritual Abuse or SRA, and Cults have been inserted further on.
Ritual abuse - see the trigger warning
Trigger warning for the subject of ritual abuse and rituals mentioned below on this page and in articles on the following two whole pages.
This is not intended to upset anyone, it is not comprehensive, and you may not agree with what is written. It continues into the next sections and pages.
If you feel uncomfortable with the material, there is a list of other articles at the top righthand side of each page, or you can go to another website that you like.
...
With experiencers of ritual abuse, sometimes they may actually attend rituals but it's too hard to prove to anyone. Other times they could be being accessed to attend in a mental or astral sense, and are not likely to be believed anyway.
Other times they could be hypnotised in the usual way, or maybe they go somewhere following a post-hypnotic suggestion given earlier. They might act on a psychological trigger or association from an email or phone call, which sends them into an altered state of consciousness like floating and which sounds like descriptions of astral projection. The person might just leave their home and get collected and taken somewhere. There are various possibilities, again hard to prove.
There's a similarity between the term 'altered state' and 'alter state', the latter term being used in connection with different ego states, alter personalities, dissociation, DID (dissociative identity disorder), MPD (multiple personality disorder). See also Dissociation or DID which has now been posted on this blogsite as well as at Toukanalia.
Clearly it is difficult to pin things down but these are important concepts with far-reaching implications, i.e. that someone with knowledge of triggers and association can switch people in and out of alter/altered states, or into dissociation. Some of those alter states or ego's may be religious in an orthodox sense, some may be quite the opposite, some are likely to remember certain things while others are unaware or in denial. One of the issues concerning ritual abuse relates to whether people are actually remembering from the past, or some other process is paramount. As implied above, people may still be attending rituals in one persona or state, while the rest remain unaware or know a little about it. And if this is happening to them, it isn't memories from way back that we're talking about.
All or any of these aspects can be used to confuse not only those involved, but also people working to understand and help. If you're not happy with concepts like astral projection, they are just a way of describing things that are meaningful to some people but not to others. Sometimes an experiencer of ritual abuse describes an event in some detail, subsequently saying it was a dream (this could be a natural defence mechanism or one instilled into them). Other times they get a waking-dream or vision, which could be a form of psychological access, or something suggested beforehand which now comes into play.
You may not consider remote psychological or psychic access possible and I won't go into it here: There are plenty of books and references on remote viewing or mental influencing. An interesting book from over thirty years ago 'Experiments in Distant Influence' by L.L. Vasiliev describes hypnosis at a distance. See also experiments conducted by Dr Rupert Sheldrake on the phenomenon of sensing that one is being stared at, and on morphogenetic fields.
The point about Shamanism is that people tend to accept that shamans 'visit' or experience in other ways from mundane consensus or conscious reality, whether due to ingestion of plant substances, the trauma of initiation, or a different basic way of life.
You may not feel comfortable that people might act on triggers or associations, because that would imply an unknown or scarey area. There is some consensus that hypnosis is a meaningful term, and that post-hypnotic suggestion works sometimes. Ask hypnotists about rapid induction techniques - they probably know a few even if they don't use them. Or ask about 'convincers' which can be an actual physical object, or something they say to convince people that something is true or likely, which then can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. And remember that advertising is probably used so much because it works.
All of the comments on this Blog, and particularly in this section and the next one below on 'Urban Legend and Ritual Abuse' are intended to open up discussion on things that a lot of people don't believe in. They may not have come across it, or it is too hard or confusing, or maybe they read something by someone that persuaded them against it or encouraged scepticism or disbelief.
I feel we should be taking the stance that 'If this phenomenon happens, surely we should take note'. One of the inherent problems is that someone may be accused rightly or wrongly, taking things into a different arena.
- - - - -
'May 33rd'
Pasted below is text from a BBC press release about a drama shown in Spring 2004 called 'May 33rd' by Guy Hibbert
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2004/02_february/19/may_33rd.shtml
19.02.04
TV DRAMA
May 33rd - a film by Guy Hibbert for BBC ONE
In Guy Hibbert's film May 33rd, Lia Williams stars as Ella, a young woman whose disturbing and tortured upbringing forces her into a living nightmare.
The film is an exploration of the consequences of repeated ritual abuse as seen through the eyes of a young woman whose personality has fragmented into five different people.
A fictional drama based on extensive research, May 33rd follows Guy Hibbert's previous film No Child Of Mine, a true story about child prostitution and abuse, supported by child protection agencies, which caused much controversy when it was screened in 1996.
It is directed by David Attwood (Fidel!) and produced by Hilary Bevan Jones (State of Play) for BBC ONE.
While trying to escape her family - a small group of relatives and their friends who have abused her since childhood - Ella visits an osteopath to relieve the pains in her body.
When Edward (Soren Byder) applies pressure to certain parts of Ella's body, it triggers her into different personalities.
Through Ella and her other identities the drama explores the chilling and shocking condition Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder, which is a condition associated with ritual abuse.
Writer Guy Hibbert says: "Five years after writing No Child Of Mine, I learnt of the condition of Dissociative Identity Disorder and the real life cases of young women from all over the UK who had suffered from it as a result of ritual abuse.
"The research led me to professionals working in this field and the victims of this horrific cruelty."
He continues: "One of my reasons for writing this drama is to encourage a greater understanding of both the condition of Dissociative Identity Disorder and its causes.
"Through my research I discovered that because these causes are so cruel, society prefers to disbelieve the victims because it cannot cope with the truth."
Producer Hilary Bevan Jones says: "This story describes a personal nightmare. As Ella herself says, 'It's like living in a world that doesn't exist in anyone else's world, like it's May 33rd or something and everyone else is in the real day'."
Jane Tranter, Controller of Drama Commissioning, says: "May 33rd is a bold and subtle exploration of a condition that affects many women in the UK yet remains shrouded in mystery and fear.
"It follows dramas such as Care, Out Of Control and England Expects – risky films which examine contemporary issues in an uncompromising way."
May 33rd is an Endor production for BBC ONE. The executive producers are Guy Hibbert and Julie Gardner, Head of Drama, BBC Wales.
Notes to Editors
Dissociation is a mental process, which produces a lack of connection in a person's thoughts, memories, feelings, actions, or sense of identity.
Dissociative disorders are often referred to as a highly creative survival technique because they allow individuals enduring 'hopeless' circumstances to preserve some areas of healthy functioning.
Over time, however, with a child who has been repeatedly physically and sexually assaulted, defensive dissociation becomes reinforced and conditioned.
Repeated dissociation may result in a series of separate entities, or mental states, which may eventually take on identities of their own. These entities may become the internal 'personality states' of a DID system.
For more information about dissociative disorders, visit the Sidran Foundation website - www.sidran.org.
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites
. . . . .
End quote
. . . . .
This is not intended to upset anyone, it is not comprehensive, and you may not agree with what is written. It continues into the next sections and pages.
If you feel uncomfortable with the material, there is a list of other articles at the top righthand side of each page, or you can go to another website that you like.
...
With experiencers of ritual abuse, sometimes they may actually attend rituals but it's too hard to prove to anyone. Other times they could be being accessed to attend in a mental or astral sense, and are not likely to be believed anyway.
Other times they could be hypnotised in the usual way, or maybe they go somewhere following a post-hypnotic suggestion given earlier. They might act on a psychological trigger or association from an email or phone call, which sends them into an altered state of consciousness like floating and which sounds like descriptions of astral projection. The person might just leave their home and get collected and taken somewhere. There are various possibilities, again hard to prove.
There's a similarity between the term 'altered state' and 'alter state', the latter term being used in connection with different ego states, alter personalities, dissociation, DID (dissociative identity disorder), MPD (multiple personality disorder). See also Dissociation or DID which has now been posted on this blogsite as well as at Toukanalia.
Clearly it is difficult to pin things down but these are important concepts with far-reaching implications, i.e. that someone with knowledge of triggers and association can switch people in and out of alter/altered states, or into dissociation. Some of those alter states or ego's may be religious in an orthodox sense, some may be quite the opposite, some are likely to remember certain things while others are unaware or in denial. One of the issues concerning ritual abuse relates to whether people are actually remembering from the past, or some other process is paramount. As implied above, people may still be attending rituals in one persona or state, while the rest remain unaware or know a little about it. And if this is happening to them, it isn't memories from way back that we're talking about.
All or any of these aspects can be used to confuse not only those involved, but also people working to understand and help. If you're not happy with concepts like astral projection, they are just a way of describing things that are meaningful to some people but not to others. Sometimes an experiencer of ritual abuse describes an event in some detail, subsequently saying it was a dream (this could be a natural defence mechanism or one instilled into them). Other times they get a waking-dream or vision, which could be a form of psychological access, or something suggested beforehand which now comes into play.
You may not consider remote psychological or psychic access possible and I won't go into it here: There are plenty of books and references on remote viewing or mental influencing. An interesting book from over thirty years ago 'Experiments in Distant Influence' by L.L. Vasiliev describes hypnosis at a distance. See also experiments conducted by Dr Rupert Sheldrake on the phenomenon of sensing that one is being stared at, and on morphogenetic fields.
The point about Shamanism is that people tend to accept that shamans 'visit' or experience in other ways from mundane consensus or conscious reality, whether due to ingestion of plant substances, the trauma of initiation, or a different basic way of life.
You may not feel comfortable that people might act on triggers or associations, because that would imply an unknown or scarey area. There is some consensus that hypnosis is a meaningful term, and that post-hypnotic suggestion works sometimes. Ask hypnotists about rapid induction techniques - they probably know a few even if they don't use them. Or ask about 'convincers' which can be an actual physical object, or something they say to convince people that something is true or likely, which then can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. And remember that advertising is probably used so much because it works.
All of the comments on this Blog, and particularly in this section and the next one below on 'Urban Legend and Ritual Abuse' are intended to open up discussion on things that a lot of people don't believe in. They may not have come across it, or it is too hard or confusing, or maybe they read something by someone that persuaded them against it or encouraged scepticism or disbelief.
I feel we should be taking the stance that 'If this phenomenon happens, surely we should take note'. One of the inherent problems is that someone may be accused rightly or wrongly, taking things into a different arena.
- - - - -
'May 33rd'
Pasted below is text from a BBC press release about a drama shown in Spring 2004 called 'May 33rd' by Guy Hibbert
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2004/02_february/19/may_33rd.shtml
19.02.04
TV DRAMA
May 33rd - a film by Guy Hibbert for BBC ONE
In Guy Hibbert's film May 33rd, Lia Williams stars as Ella, a young woman whose disturbing and tortured upbringing forces her into a living nightmare.
The film is an exploration of the consequences of repeated ritual abuse as seen through the eyes of a young woman whose personality has fragmented into five different people.
A fictional drama based on extensive research, May 33rd follows Guy Hibbert's previous film No Child Of Mine, a true story about child prostitution and abuse, supported by child protection agencies, which caused much controversy when it was screened in 1996.
It is directed by David Attwood (Fidel!) and produced by Hilary Bevan Jones (State of Play) for BBC ONE.
While trying to escape her family - a small group of relatives and their friends who have abused her since childhood - Ella visits an osteopath to relieve the pains in her body.
When Edward (Soren Byder) applies pressure to certain parts of Ella's body, it triggers her into different personalities.
Through Ella and her other identities the drama explores the chilling and shocking condition Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder, which is a condition associated with ritual abuse.
Writer Guy Hibbert says: "Five years after writing No Child Of Mine, I learnt of the condition of Dissociative Identity Disorder and the real life cases of young women from all over the UK who had suffered from it as a result of ritual abuse.
"The research led me to professionals working in this field and the victims of this horrific cruelty."
He continues: "One of my reasons for writing this drama is to encourage a greater understanding of both the condition of Dissociative Identity Disorder and its causes.
"Through my research I discovered that because these causes are so cruel, society prefers to disbelieve the victims because it cannot cope with the truth."
Producer Hilary Bevan Jones says: "This story describes a personal nightmare. As Ella herself says, 'It's like living in a world that doesn't exist in anyone else's world, like it's May 33rd or something and everyone else is in the real day'."
Jane Tranter, Controller of Drama Commissioning, says: "May 33rd is a bold and subtle exploration of a condition that affects many women in the UK yet remains shrouded in mystery and fear.
"It follows dramas such as Care, Out Of Control and England Expects – risky films which examine contemporary issues in an uncompromising way."
May 33rd is an Endor production for BBC ONE. The executive producers are Guy Hibbert and Julie Gardner, Head of Drama, BBC Wales.
Notes to Editors
Dissociation is a mental process, which produces a lack of connection in a person's thoughts, memories, feelings, actions, or sense of identity.
Dissociative disorders are often referred to as a highly creative survival technique because they allow individuals enduring 'hopeless' circumstances to preserve some areas of healthy functioning.
Over time, however, with a child who has been repeatedly physically and sexually assaulted, defensive dissociation becomes reinforced and conditioned.
Repeated dissociation may result in a series of separate entities, or mental states, which may eventually take on identities of their own. These entities may become the internal 'personality states' of a DID system.
For more information about dissociative disorders, visit the Sidran Foundation website - www.sidran.org.
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites
. . . . .
End quote
. . . . .
Urban legend and ritual abuse
As well as the concept of urban myth or legends you may have come across the notion of folk devils or moral panics, where analysis and research appear to indicate that what people accept as reality or the cause of something, is due to other factors of a sociological or anthropological kind. This work is clearly important because it's easy to fall into a belief system that we actually know something whereas it is something we have come to believe.
Some people attempt to track the path of beliefs or trends in a similar way to the approach of aetiology in ascertaining the development and spread of disease, and it can make fascinating reading! But like any 'scientific' method, much depends on the information being processed and what is not taken into sufficient consideration. Again this can be a natural process, or it can be engineered by people with a vested interest, financial or otherwise, or it can be part of a denial system - perhaps because it is simply too hard to believe, or it's inconvenient to try to fit it into other parts of our belief. There is a dissonance and we'd have to change other beliefs we hold dear.
Then there's 'splitting' which is a concept used in psychoanalysis to describe a developmental stage, or it can describe a process where for instance a group splits in its opinions or behaviour. This can be a natural process as part of the group's development or process, or it seems that one or more individuals act as a catalyst and set things off. Here's a tip from a group course I did where I raised this issue because it was on my mind: To get the situation into a non-splitting one, move things into a more introspective ('depressive') mode so that people accept more responsibility for themselves and take others into consideration; then you can get people really angry at you - and move things on.
The point of mentioning this is also to draw in the fact that our political and legal systems are largely adversarial with expertise and rhetoric, propaganda and denials along the way. What can happen then is a split on a large scale.
What we believe will naturally hinge on the sort of people we are, the sort of individual experiences, and the setting or situation now. We also need to take into consideration beliefs that are around at the time, and beliefs that are being projected. This can happen with literally anything.
Here I am touching on urban legends or myths and what are sometimes called moral panics, and more particularly on ritual abuse and what is said about it. I'm not going to call it satanic ritual abuse or SRA. To my mind it's XRA for extreme ritual abuse. For whatever reason, a belief system, an addictive need, a paraphilia, sadism, a fetish or what-have-you, some people engage in practices designed for their own needs. That means other people get induced or forced into activities they either don't want or can't avoid. And that means there's a power-thing going on.
More problems arise with a wider airing, and people tend to take up positions to try to fit everything into one category or another:
It did happen (because I believe the survivor or expert)
It didn't happen in case 'A' so throw out all cases (i.e. a claim that it never happens)
It happens but only as part of pornography, sadism, paraphilia
And so on. You get the drift.
I have a 'what if' kind of mind and take that into consideration when making up my mind, because I know how easy it is to follow a train of thought up blind alleys. I'll mention some useful books in passing here and continue below:
'Out of Darkness: Exploring Satanism & Ritual Abuse' by David K. Sakheim & Susan E. Devine
'Spiritual Warfare: The Politics of the Christian Right' by Sara Diamond
'Ritual Abuse in the Twenty-First Century: Psychological, Forensic, Social & Political Considerations' editors Randy Noblitt & Pamela Perskin Noblitt
'The Secret World of Cults: Inside the Sects that Take Over Lives' by Jean Ritchie (Chapter 12)
'The Politics and Experience of Ritual Abuse Beyond Disbelief' by Sara Scott
- - - - -
Continuing here:
Writing in 1991 around the beginning of the 'satanism scare' Jean Ritchie, mentioned above, gave an excellent outline of the rise of interest in the phenomenon - and the ensuing likely backlash of disbelief.
'Out of Darkness' contains a selection of writings looking at various aspects of this phenomenon, and you could read the first two chapers 'The History of Satanic Religions' by Martin Katchen, and 'Satanic Beliefs and Practices' by Martin Katchen & David Sakheim.
Chapter 3 is' Alternative Hypotheses Regarding Claims of Satanic Cult Activity: A Critical Analysis' by George B. Greaves
Also by Martin Katchen is a chapter in 'Ritual Abuse in the Twenty-First Century' entitled 'Interrelated Moral Panics & Counter-panics: the Cult Brainwashing Panic and the False Memory/Ritual Abuse Moral Panic' which is a summary of social history and movements, beliefs and systems.
See too a book by Benjamin Zablocki and Thomas Robbins 'Misunderstanding Cults' dealing with differing attitudes towards the phenomenon of cults or new religious movements/NRM's, and hypnosis, brainwashing etc.
Go to the section of this Blog entitled 'Groups, cults, indoctrination, exiting' for some links on cults and groups in general.
Some people attempt to track the path of beliefs or trends in a similar way to the approach of aetiology in ascertaining the development and spread of disease, and it can make fascinating reading! But like any 'scientific' method, much depends on the information being processed and what is not taken into sufficient consideration. Again this can be a natural process, or it can be engineered by people with a vested interest, financial or otherwise, or it can be part of a denial system - perhaps because it is simply too hard to believe, or it's inconvenient to try to fit it into other parts of our belief. There is a dissonance and we'd have to change other beliefs we hold dear.
Then there's 'splitting' which is a concept used in psychoanalysis to describe a developmental stage, or it can describe a process where for instance a group splits in its opinions or behaviour. This can be a natural process as part of the group's development or process, or it seems that one or more individuals act as a catalyst and set things off. Here's a tip from a group course I did where I raised this issue because it was on my mind: To get the situation into a non-splitting one, move things into a more introspective ('depressive') mode so that people accept more responsibility for themselves and take others into consideration; then you can get people really angry at you - and move things on.
The point of mentioning this is also to draw in the fact that our political and legal systems are largely adversarial with expertise and rhetoric, propaganda and denials along the way. What can happen then is a split on a large scale.
What we believe will naturally hinge on the sort of people we are, the sort of individual experiences, and the setting or situation now. We also need to take into consideration beliefs that are around at the time, and beliefs that are being projected. This can happen with literally anything.
Here I am touching on urban legends or myths and what are sometimes called moral panics, and more particularly on ritual abuse and what is said about it. I'm not going to call it satanic ritual abuse or SRA. To my mind it's XRA for extreme ritual abuse. For whatever reason, a belief system, an addictive need, a paraphilia, sadism, a fetish or what-have-you, some people engage in practices designed for their own needs. That means other people get induced or forced into activities they either don't want or can't avoid. And that means there's a power-thing going on.
More problems arise with a wider airing, and people tend to take up positions to try to fit everything into one category or another:
It did happen (because I believe the survivor or expert)
It didn't happen in case 'A' so throw out all cases (i.e. a claim that it never happens)
It happens but only as part of pornography, sadism, paraphilia
And so on. You get the drift.
I have a 'what if' kind of mind and take that into consideration when making up my mind, because I know how easy it is to follow a train of thought up blind alleys. I'll mention some useful books in passing here and continue below:
'Out of Darkness: Exploring Satanism & Ritual Abuse' by David K. Sakheim & Susan E. Devine
'Spiritual Warfare: The Politics of the Christian Right' by Sara Diamond
'Ritual Abuse in the Twenty-First Century: Psychological, Forensic, Social & Political Considerations' editors Randy Noblitt & Pamela Perskin Noblitt
'The Secret World of Cults: Inside the Sects that Take Over Lives' by Jean Ritchie (Chapter 12)
'The Politics and Experience of Ritual Abuse Beyond Disbelief' by Sara Scott
- - - - -
Continuing here:
Writing in 1991 around the beginning of the 'satanism scare' Jean Ritchie, mentioned above, gave an excellent outline of the rise of interest in the phenomenon - and the ensuing likely backlash of disbelief.
'Out of Darkness' contains a selection of writings looking at various aspects of this phenomenon, and you could read the first two chapers 'The History of Satanic Religions' by Martin Katchen, and 'Satanic Beliefs and Practices' by Martin Katchen & David Sakheim.
Chapter 3 is' Alternative Hypotheses Regarding Claims of Satanic Cult Activity: A Critical Analysis' by George B. Greaves
Also by Martin Katchen is a chapter in 'Ritual Abuse in the Twenty-First Century' entitled 'Interrelated Moral Panics & Counter-panics: the Cult Brainwashing Panic and the False Memory/Ritual Abuse Moral Panic' which is a summary of social history and movements, beliefs and systems.
See too a book by Benjamin Zablocki and Thomas Robbins 'Misunderstanding Cults' dealing with differing attitudes towards the phenomenon of cults or new religious movements/NRM's, and hypnosis, brainwashing etc.
Go to the section of this Blog entitled 'Groups, cults, indoctrination, exiting' for some links on cults and groups in general.
Booklist
Some concepts mentioned in the Blog or that are closely allied are mentioned in the following books. Many subjects are not covered or are just briefly mentioned, more specifically on chakras, healing, shamanism, soul rescue, possession, exorcism, western magic or magick, earth energies, astrology, paranormal/psychic research, and much more. Depending on one’s viewpoint they seem to fit in, but the aim is to simplify without protracted discourse on subjects and approaches which vary widely but with some common threads which may be of use.
‘World of the Spirits’ by David Burnett
‘Folk Devils & Moral Panics’ by Stanley Cohen
‘Subtle Energy’ by Dr William Collinge
‘Subtle Energy’ by John Davidson
‘Out of Darkness’ by David K. Sakheim & Susan E. Devine
‘Unseen Beings – Unseen Worlds’ by Tom Dongo
‘Space, Time & Medicine’ by Larry Dossey
‘BodyMind’ by Ken Dychtwald
‘Hungry Ghosts’ by Joe Fisher
‘Archaeology of the Mind’ by George Frankl
‘The Psychic in Medicine’ by Dr Arthur Guirdham
‘Daimonic Reality’ by Patrick Harpur
‘Portals’ by Lynne Hume
‘The Healing of the Gods’ by Peter Lemesurier
‘Sinister Forces by Peter Levenda
‘Never be Lied to Again’ by David J. Lieberman
‘Body Time’ by Gay Gaer Luce
‘Not All in the Mind’ by Dr Richard Mackarness
‘Secrets of Stage Mindreading’ by Ormond McGill
‘Mysteries of the Hopewell’ by William F. Romain
‘Between the Gates’ by Mark Stavish
‘Shaman, Healer, Sage’ by Alberto Villoldo
More books are listed throughout the Blog, and also under 'Booklist for Healing approaches' near to the end
‘World of the Spirits’ by David Burnett
‘Folk Devils & Moral Panics’ by Stanley Cohen
‘Subtle Energy’ by Dr William Collinge
‘Subtle Energy’ by John Davidson
‘Out of Darkness’ by David K. Sakheim & Susan E. Devine
‘Unseen Beings – Unseen Worlds’ by Tom Dongo
‘Space, Time & Medicine’ by Larry Dossey
‘BodyMind’ by Ken Dychtwald
‘Hungry Ghosts’ by Joe Fisher
‘Archaeology of the Mind’ by George Frankl
‘The Psychic in Medicine’ by Dr Arthur Guirdham
‘Daimonic Reality’ by Patrick Harpur
‘Portals’ by Lynne Hume
‘The Healing of the Gods’ by Peter Lemesurier
‘Sinister Forces by Peter Levenda
‘Never be Lied to Again’ by David J. Lieberman
‘Body Time’ by Gay Gaer Luce
‘Not All in the Mind’ by Dr Richard Mackarness
‘Secrets of Stage Mindreading’ by Ormond McGill
‘Mysteries of the Hopewell’ by William F. Romain
‘Between the Gates’ by Mark Stavish
‘Shaman, Healer, Sage’ by Alberto Villoldo
More books are listed throughout the Blog, and also under 'Booklist for Healing approaches' near to the end
Groups, cults, indoctrination, exiting
Please scroll down this page for further articles including -
'Supporting a survivor of cult ritual abuse'
'Dissociation or DID'
'A garden analogy of personality'
'Dissociation or DID'
'A garden analogy of personality'
More articles appear on previous and following pages
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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Groups, cults, indoctrination, exiting
Post by Kaytrin
During life we go through periods of being a part of some grouping, in a family, at work, in the neighbourhood. Sometimes it works well, sometimes not! But we gain knowledge about ourselves and others, and have a tendency to seek situations which offer us something meaningful. Perhaps that is a role we can play, or a general feeling of being accepted.
Without that, we can feel alone in the world, and some groups take advantage of that. They may home in on people, offering what they want to hear, that they will be liked or taken care of, that the group provides answers of a philosophical or religious nature. We won’t be just zizzing around without a clue or a base, because there’ll be someone to act as friend or family.
This can work to mutual advantage. I recently ordered a book written by someone who spent 20 years living in different communal settings, and await that with interest. However, books and advisory centres range in their attitude about particular groups, or on the phenomenon of cults as a general principle and how harmful they are likely to be.
I think it’s good to have an enquiring approach, but recently I came across a book in an Oxfam shop where the author had joined some groups or cults that he found strange, amusing, stupid, awful. He seemingly implied that neither he nor anyone else actually got hurt in the process. How can he know that? That is an interesting phenomenon in itself. It would be interesting to undertake research into how groups such as juries come to a consensus opinion - or not.
If we are on our own in the world, to some extent we can make up our own minds and not get swayed into something different by another person, or in a group setting of a natural or contrived kind. Once we are involved with other people, there has to be some give-and-take or negotiation, and there are likely to be subtle changes that can be built on or further altered, becoming quite profound. Some businesses work on this in terms of team-work, company ethos and so on. It always used to be like that up to a point, but I can’t help thinking it has become more deliberate and invasive. One may find oneself not fitting in – and not being able to do much about it!
Bullying in the workplace (and elsewhere besides) has become an issue to the extent that both the Samaritans and Joseph Rowntree Foundation have prepared information on it. Without harping on about ‘the old days’, perhaps we had more respect for each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and the boundaries surrounding another person’s job, and personal or working space. Perhaps the decrease in physical area around someone’s workstation plays a part in how things have changed. In many places there isn’t even a personal desk with a little drawer one can lock or that no-one would think of going through!
A couple of other observations and I will aim to wrap this up. Firstly, if you’re in a supermarket and there are say 20 other shoppers and trolleys, maybe you don’t cross paths too closely too often. Increase the number to 40 and maybe it’s a bit harder. Increase it to 60 and the shopping process doesn’t work so well. Walk around a small town during a weekday and you might not meet many people. You may recognise some faces and even greet a few. Walk around a large town or city when people are heading to work or leaving, or racing around in their lunch break, and people are much less likely to stand back and smile. It becomes a survival situation – they need their job or to catch a train, and pit their survival against anyone else’s.
So we tend to think we’d rather be in a group than on our own, in this maelstrom of humanity, because there’s safety in numbers plus we’d like some personal recognition. Personal recognition can indeed still come with a job situation, but perhaps less than years ago, and less when job security is so decreased. Perhaps this is why workplace bullying increases, but it seems to have spread wider through society and neighbourhoods. It’s not as cosy and supportive as ‘Coronation Street’, although there’s plenty of that around.
I caught a comment by a psychiatrist on a radio show some years ago. He was of the opinion that his work would be reduced by 80 per cent, if people had another person they could confide in. The fact that Samaritans and other organisations have helped so many people through difficult times in their lives seems to bear this out. Sometimes people ‘go it alone’ either because they need to or have to, but at other times they need contact. They may seek it in a close personal relationship or in more of a group setting.
One of the things about groups is that we like to identify with certain things about them, or some of the people in them, at the same time as needing to retain some of our individuality. Unless that can be negotiated there can be difficulties.
In a cult-type setting, people may find their days mapped out and may be told what to believe, how to behave with their partner – even if that is allowed, children may be cared for by others, and contact with the outside world is restricted. If someone tries to buck the system and do their own thing, pressures are brought to bear on them to conform. If they want to leave, some cults will allow this and some don’t. However one of the main problems is that, living in a situation which is isolating in some way, members may not see the invisible walls around them, and that they even could still access the outside world.
This is why it is important, if you can, to maintain some form of contact with someone you know who has joined a group or cult, so that a part of their reality is that there is someone who knows them and will talk to them. And if the person manages to leave, depending on how they have been affected, it can take several years for their thinking to gradually get back onto other tracks. That process may never completely ‘undo’ all the changes, so one does need to be realistic and do what one can.
Sometimes people have attempted to 'rescue' someone from a cult and forcibly change their attitude and beliefs back. This was called deprogramming and it fell into disrepute, sometimes involving legal battles for kidnap. The term now used is exiting a cult with perhaps the facility of some exit counselling. As is often the way of things though, this has also been called into disrepute by those who say it's just a euphemism for the deprogramming of the past that could be quite a violent process.
Find out what form the exit counselling will take and see what options there may be. It is tempting sometimes to want to extract someone from a group which seems harmful, but it may not be possible or advisable.
Something you could perhaps explore is the concept of what is termed intervention, and this approach sometimes gets used with an addiction or other problem. Family or friends arrange to meet in a neutral setting like a hotel room, and invite the individual to join them, along with a professional who takes control of the interaction. The dynamic seems to be that the individual with the problem is faced with an irrevocable choice: to give up their problematic behaviour, or never to see their family and friends again.
It can be highly emotional, but the tug of family and friends and their promise of continuing support can just swing the balance.
Intervention can also be taken more generally to describe anything which breaks, or might break, into a cycle, pattern, or mode of thought or behaviour. It may be a matter of waiting until the person starts to question for themselves.
Certainly battering your own reality up against theirs is unlikely to be productive, and they have rights about leading their lives as they feel they want. The problems are more that we have known the person when they were very different, or we believe what has happened to them is wrong. 'Someone else' has entered the scene and had a devastating effect so the individual does not seem in control - and may in fact not be in control because 'someone else' or some other 'reality of belief' is.
Some links leading to further information can be found HERE.
Supporting a survivor of cult ritual abuse
Posted here with permission
Some of the information below may be triggering for survivors of abuse - Perhaps you can get someone to read through it with you
NOTE: These guidelines are simply an attempt to outline some of the issues involved in offering support, so that people can consider them in relation to their own situation involving a survivor of some form of ‘cult ritual abuse’ or ‘mind control’. They are not categoric or comprehensive, and the author/s will accept no claim of any kind regarding them. Each person is deemed to be responsible for themselves and their actions.
For anyone supporting in some way a survivor of ‘cult ritual abuse’ or some form of ‘mind control’, whether or not there is an apparent ‘satanic’ element, only you can tell where/how to draw the line over difficult, changeable, demanding circumstances and behaviour.
If one tends to believe in the validity or possibility of just one-quarter of what the survivor is going through, one may give of oneself until there is hardly anything left. Be careful, because that may be what the perpetrators want, or what the survivor has been conditioned to do - to you or to anyone who tries to help. That conditioning could go back many, many years, or it may be actively encouraged now if the survivor is thought to be revealing ‘cult secrets’.
It is always difficult to know whether or not to involve the Police or other agency in situations which appear to threaten someone’s safety, or would be downright illegal. It seems one of the problems is that people with a tendency to dissociate may find they simply do not remember something when it’s required of them. They may actively deny that something like this could possibly have happened to them, or that they know anything about a particular issue, even when you have their written account or they said they wanted to expose it. They may prefer to categorise a bad experience as if it were really a nightmare or bad dream.
A survivor, who has been somehow traumatised and confused throughout much of their lives may even turn against you, or allege that you are the person who put such ideas into their head in the first place. Another possibility is that the survivor is still, knowingly or unknowingly, in contact with key perpetrator/s, and being given instructions to find your ‘weakest link’ or anything that could be used to denigrate you, or to stop you helping this person or anyone else in need. While desperately needing help and support, some seem also to have an innate information-gathering agenda, about one’s personal life, one’s contacts, organisations one may be involved with, or simply any support person or organisation which could then become a target for cult attention or harassment. They may test the support system, with a view to bringing it – or you – down in some way. They play people and concepts against each other in any way they can, leading to a ‘Heads they win, tails you lose’ situation, or call it a double-bind where you think there’s no crack or cranny even to peep through.
Some survivors have an extremely complex system of sub-personalities or alters, with many and varied needs. This can be very difficult to understand or to deal with. You may find yourself being pulled from pillar to post helping out day after day, only to be told that you have been unavailable to help for days or weeks.
Please bear in mind that survivors, or certain alter parts, may need time away from you, however helpful you have been or could be to them in future. They may even have an overwhelming need at times, to return to the cult or to abusive circumstances or perpetrators. This may feel a much easier option for them. The part of the personality whom you have grown to know, like, and respect for themselves, is not likely to be the only active part of the personality all of the time. (Most human beings are like this to some extent, so it is not exclusive to people who dissociate.) See if you can engage with other parts of the personality of the survivor, however difficult you may find that. You may be able to negotiate to a degree, or to learn information otherwise not available to you. However, I do not suggest that you manipulate the personalities too much. This is what the cults and perpetrators do.
For the most part, the survivor has his/her/their own ways of dealing with things and getting through to live another day. This does not mean you have to put up with any and every behaviour, and you can be quite firm at times; in fact you may need to be. You can ask if certain alters are available or wanting to talk, and you can stipulate that you personally prefer to engage with the survivor or any parts on certain conditions. You can make it up as you go along, negotiating between you where that seems advisable or is possible. The survivor needs to maintain and expand survival skills in the general world, as well as their own.
Cults may encourage self-harm or suicide in members or ex-members. This means that the survivor is not necessarily acting of their own free-will if they feel the need to harm themselves, but more as a response to some social or specific psychological conditioning. Cults seem to want the survivor to solve things for them, by ‘dropping out of life’ altogether (which one could actually look at as a remote form of murder). An alternative is for the survivor to be institutionalised in a mental hospital, or involved in some way in the mental health system. In that way, the cult can claim that the person is mentally unstable, probably always has been, and that therefore (by inference) anything the survivor says is due to his/her instability or ‘psychosis’. If people take this line with you over anyone, watch out for possible hidden agendas.
Bear in mind that situations are very fluid, and cults or perpetrators can change their plan of action, so that whatever theory or basis one is working on may become invalidated overnight. They may be in contact with part/s of your survivor’s psychological system, giving them instructions to do something such as harming themselves, or they may instruct the survivor that whenever a supporter says ‘No’ to them, it will feel like a physical stab to their heart. Instructions can be induced or reinforced via a complex triggering system of association of ideas, often appearing in emails or via ordinary mail, or a brief telephone message with perhaps just a tone or some clicks.
If you sense any kind of threat to yourself personally, make sure that someone else knows about it, and convey to the survivor that you are no real threat to the cult or any individuals involved. If you are contacted by cult members, keep all copies of communications between you, plus a note of dates and circumstances. This will help you to keep track of the dynamics and work on options to follow. Some cult members may even try to flatter or befriend you, or else behave as if they are a member of some support organisation for survivors.
Cult organisers or perpetrators can and do make mistakes, and you may be able to demonstrate this with a little thought and note-taking. At least you will know what happened - for your own peace of mind, and for how best to proceed with or on behalf of a survivor of such types of experience.
. . . . .
Note: You may have arrived on this part of the Blog from another site so the following may help to find your way around. There are 10 pages here, each with 4 articles. The first 4 pages consist of an Introduction and lead-in to subjects relating to ritual abuse on the next 3 pages:
. . . . .
Some of the information below may be triggering for survivors of abuse - Perhaps you can get someone to read through it with you
NOTE: These guidelines are simply an attempt to outline some of the issues involved in offering support, so that people can consider them in relation to their own situation involving a survivor of some form of ‘cult ritual abuse’ or ‘mind control’. They are not categoric or comprehensive, and the author/s will accept no claim of any kind regarding them. Each person is deemed to be responsible for themselves and their actions.
For anyone supporting in some way a survivor of ‘cult ritual abuse’ or some form of ‘mind control’, whether or not there is an apparent ‘satanic’ element, only you can tell where/how to draw the line over difficult, changeable, demanding circumstances and behaviour.
If one tends to believe in the validity or possibility of just one-quarter of what the survivor is going through, one may give of oneself until there is hardly anything left. Be careful, because that may be what the perpetrators want, or what the survivor has been conditioned to do - to you or to anyone who tries to help. That conditioning could go back many, many years, or it may be actively encouraged now if the survivor is thought to be revealing ‘cult secrets’.
It is always difficult to know whether or not to involve the Police or other agency in situations which appear to threaten someone’s safety, or would be downright illegal. It seems one of the problems is that people with a tendency to dissociate may find they simply do not remember something when it’s required of them. They may actively deny that something like this could possibly have happened to them, or that they know anything about a particular issue, even when you have their written account or they said they wanted to expose it. They may prefer to categorise a bad experience as if it were really a nightmare or bad dream.
A survivor, who has been somehow traumatised and confused throughout much of their lives may even turn against you, or allege that you are the person who put such ideas into their head in the first place. Another possibility is that the survivor is still, knowingly or unknowingly, in contact with key perpetrator/s, and being given instructions to find your ‘weakest link’ or anything that could be used to denigrate you, or to stop you helping this person or anyone else in need. While desperately needing help and support, some seem also to have an innate information-gathering agenda, about one’s personal life, one’s contacts, organisations one may be involved with, or simply any support person or organisation which could then become a target for cult attention or harassment. They may test the support system, with a view to bringing it – or you – down in some way. They play people and concepts against each other in any way they can, leading to a ‘Heads they win, tails you lose’ situation, or call it a double-bind where you think there’s no crack or cranny even to peep through.
Some survivors have an extremely complex system of sub-personalities or alters, with many and varied needs. This can be very difficult to understand or to deal with. You may find yourself being pulled from pillar to post helping out day after day, only to be told that you have been unavailable to help for days or weeks.
Please bear in mind that survivors, or certain alter parts, may need time away from you, however helpful you have been or could be to them in future. They may even have an overwhelming need at times, to return to the cult or to abusive circumstances or perpetrators. This may feel a much easier option for them. The part of the personality whom you have grown to know, like, and respect for themselves, is not likely to be the only active part of the personality all of the time. (Most human beings are like this to some extent, so it is not exclusive to people who dissociate.) See if you can engage with other parts of the personality of the survivor, however difficult you may find that. You may be able to negotiate to a degree, or to learn information otherwise not available to you. However, I do not suggest that you manipulate the personalities too much. This is what the cults and perpetrators do.
For the most part, the survivor has his/her/their own ways of dealing with things and getting through to live another day. This does not mean you have to put up with any and every behaviour, and you can be quite firm at times; in fact you may need to be. You can ask if certain alters are available or wanting to talk, and you can stipulate that you personally prefer to engage with the survivor or any parts on certain conditions. You can make it up as you go along, negotiating between you where that seems advisable or is possible. The survivor needs to maintain and expand survival skills in the general world, as well as their own.
Cults may encourage self-harm or suicide in members or ex-members. This means that the survivor is not necessarily acting of their own free-will if they feel the need to harm themselves, but more as a response to some social or specific psychological conditioning. Cults seem to want the survivor to solve things for them, by ‘dropping out of life’ altogether (which one could actually look at as a remote form of murder). An alternative is for the survivor to be institutionalised in a mental hospital, or involved in some way in the mental health system. In that way, the cult can claim that the person is mentally unstable, probably always has been, and that therefore (by inference) anything the survivor says is due to his/her instability or ‘psychosis’. If people take this line with you over anyone, watch out for possible hidden agendas.
Bear in mind that situations are very fluid, and cults or perpetrators can change their plan of action, so that whatever theory or basis one is working on may become invalidated overnight. They may be in contact with part/s of your survivor’s psychological system, giving them instructions to do something such as harming themselves, or they may instruct the survivor that whenever a supporter says ‘No’ to them, it will feel like a physical stab to their heart. Instructions can be induced or reinforced via a complex triggering system of association of ideas, often appearing in emails or via ordinary mail, or a brief telephone message with perhaps just a tone or some clicks.
If you sense any kind of threat to yourself personally, make sure that someone else knows about it, and convey to the survivor that you are no real threat to the cult or any individuals involved. If you are contacted by cult members, keep all copies of communications between you, plus a note of dates and circumstances. This will help you to keep track of the dynamics and work on options to follow. Some cult members may even try to flatter or befriend you, or else behave as if they are a member of some support organisation for survivors.
Cult organisers or perpetrators can and do make mistakes, and you may be able to demonstrate this with a little thought and note-taking. At least you will know what happened - for your own peace of mind, and for how best to proceed with or on behalf of a survivor of such types of experience.
. . . . .
Note: You may have arrived on this part of the Blog from another site so the following may help to find your way around. There are 10 pages here, each with 4 articles. The first 4 pages consist of an Introduction and lead-in to subjects relating to ritual abuse on the next 3 pages:
- INTRODUCTION
- Beliefs that come and go
- Symbols, realities, the unseen
- Shamanism
- Ritual abuse - see the trigger warning
- Urban legend and ritual abuse
- Booklist
- Other postings and links
- Groups, cults, indoctrination, exiting
- Supporting a survivor of cult ritual abuse
- Dissociation or DID
- A garden analogy of personality
- Social dynamics of cult or satanic ritual abuse
- More dynamics, by Magentine
- Other or better models for DID, MPD?
- Fantasy role-playing
. . . . .
Dissociation or DID
Post by Kaytrin
I wanted to add a few ideas in here because they seem relevant. Norman who writes on 'Out-of Character Behaviour' here, mentions a book by Adam Crabtree entitled 'Multiple Man' which I won't go into in detail but the full title is 'Multiple Man: Explorations in Possession and Multiple Personality'. It was published in paperback in 1988 by Grafton Books but you may be able to pick up a copy.
Whether one feels there is any validity to the concept of possession, or of multiple personality (which now gets called DID indicating dissociation) the author makes an interesting point about his experiences taking groups through a technique called Psychodrama where people act out different roles in a scene. He found that, not only did people with little acting ability or inclination often do well at it, but they managed with little information on the personality and role they were asked to play.
He says (p.337) 'There seems to be within people a natural ability to take on a personality other than their own and to act from within that assumed personality. They appear to actually become that personality and to some extent, leave their own personality behind. The English word which most closely expresses this phenomenon is 'personation'. My experience with psychodrama shows me that human beings may be said to have the innate capacity to 'personate', to take on full-blown personalities and act from within them.'
He goes on to describe personality as a tool (p.339) concluding 'I think there is reason to believe that the whole of man's emotional life is centred around the invention and utilization of those tools that we call 'personalities'.'
Psychosynthesis and various broadly similar approaches use working with parts of the personality, or subpersonalities, perhaps giving each one a name and looking at how useful or otherwise they are for our overall functioning.
Another theme which could have relevance is the concept of the 'shadow', or darker side of ourselves which we may be disinclined to acknowledge - but which others can sometimes see perhaps because of their own acknowledged or unacknowledged parts. It's a strange old world and that includes humans!
I think it's fair to say though that most of us, much of the time, have some idea what happened in our lives this week, last week, this year, last year, going further back with some chain of connection. For people who tend to dissociate to a significant degree as part of their psychological make-up, it doesn't happen that way, and they may literally be unaware of things which happened while they were in quite a different state of mind.
I've known people who are naturally like that anyway, but it can happen too if they have been through bad experiences that they need to keep mostly shut away, or if someone encouraged or forced them to be like that. It can make it hard to plan things properly if they don't remember a bad outcome to something and take steps to avoid it again. And it can be hard for those around them if they don't know enough of the circumstances to understand.
It would be inappropriate of me not to say that I have doubts about some of the therapeutic approaches used with people who have been severely traumatised. No-one can know all the answers for each situation, and care needs to be taken so that a process which is aimed at helping someone does not cause unnecessary problems - for them, for you, for others close to the situation. If we take on board Adam Crabtree's work mentioned above on Psychodrama, and work undertaken on 'confabulation' we need to be careful that expectations or some other factors don't come into play as being factual, which doesn't mean people are deliberate liars either!
Often we can only get nearer to the truth without having a bias, and it does damage to vulnerable people to impose a bias on them in any direction, and whether it is subconsciously passing from us to them, or is somehow more tangible.
On this Blog you can also read 'Supporting a survivor of cult ritual abuse' if you feel that is relevant. On a similar theme is 'A garden analogy of personality' which I feel has relevance for the way ordinary people we know can change, or appear to change. Certainly I have known people who became quite different over the years, as if some parts or modes fell away for a time and others came to the fore. Perhaps that is due to specific events or circumstances, perhaps due to chemical changes in the brain, or perhaps we do indeed use personality modes as vital 'tools' to get us through.
- - - - -
Note: You may have arrived on this part of the Blog from another site so the following may help to find your way around. There are 10 pages here, each with 4 articles. The first 4 pages consist of an Introduction and lead-in to subjects relating to ritual abuse on the next 3 pages:
. . . . .
I wanted to add a few ideas in here because they seem relevant. Norman who writes on 'Out-of Character Behaviour' here, mentions a book by Adam Crabtree entitled 'Multiple Man' which I won't go into in detail but the full title is 'Multiple Man: Explorations in Possession and Multiple Personality'. It was published in paperback in 1988 by Grafton Books but you may be able to pick up a copy.
Whether one feels there is any validity to the concept of possession, or of multiple personality (which now gets called DID indicating dissociation) the author makes an interesting point about his experiences taking groups through a technique called Psychodrama where people act out different roles in a scene. He found that, not only did people with little acting ability or inclination often do well at it, but they managed with little information on the personality and role they were asked to play.
He says (p.337) 'There seems to be within people a natural ability to take on a personality other than their own and to act from within that assumed personality. They appear to actually become that personality and to some extent, leave their own personality behind. The English word which most closely expresses this phenomenon is 'personation'. My experience with psychodrama shows me that human beings may be said to have the innate capacity to 'personate', to take on full-blown personalities and act from within them.'
He goes on to describe personality as a tool (p.339) concluding 'I think there is reason to believe that the whole of man's emotional life is centred around the invention and utilization of those tools that we call 'personalities'.'
Psychosynthesis and various broadly similar approaches use working with parts of the personality, or subpersonalities, perhaps giving each one a name and looking at how useful or otherwise they are for our overall functioning.
Another theme which could have relevance is the concept of the 'shadow', or darker side of ourselves which we may be disinclined to acknowledge - but which others can sometimes see perhaps because of their own acknowledged or unacknowledged parts. It's a strange old world and that includes humans!
I think it's fair to say though that most of us, much of the time, have some idea what happened in our lives this week, last week, this year, last year, going further back with some chain of connection. For people who tend to dissociate to a significant degree as part of their psychological make-up, it doesn't happen that way, and they may literally be unaware of things which happened while they were in quite a different state of mind.
I've known people who are naturally like that anyway, but it can happen too if they have been through bad experiences that they need to keep mostly shut away, or if someone encouraged or forced them to be like that. It can make it hard to plan things properly if they don't remember a bad outcome to something and take steps to avoid it again. And it can be hard for those around them if they don't know enough of the circumstances to understand.
It would be inappropriate of me not to say that I have doubts about some of the therapeutic approaches used with people who have been severely traumatised. No-one can know all the answers for each situation, and care needs to be taken so that a process which is aimed at helping someone does not cause unnecessary problems - for them, for you, for others close to the situation. If we take on board Adam Crabtree's work mentioned above on Psychodrama, and work undertaken on 'confabulation' we need to be careful that expectations or some other factors don't come into play as being factual, which doesn't mean people are deliberate liars either!
Often we can only get nearer to the truth without having a bias, and it does damage to vulnerable people to impose a bias on them in any direction, and whether it is subconsciously passing from us to them, or is somehow more tangible.
On this Blog you can also read 'Supporting a survivor of cult ritual abuse' if you feel that is relevant. On a similar theme is 'A garden analogy of personality' which I feel has relevance for the way ordinary people we know can change, or appear to change. Certainly I have known people who became quite different over the years, as if some parts or modes fell away for a time and others came to the fore. Perhaps that is due to specific events or circumstances, perhaps due to chemical changes in the brain, or perhaps we do indeed use personality modes as vital 'tools' to get us through.
- - - - -
Note: You may have arrived on this part of the Blog from another site so the following may help to find your way around. There are 10 pages here, each with 4 articles. The first 4 pages consist of an Introduction and lead-in to subjects relating to ritual abuse on the next 3 pages:
- INTRODUCTION
- Beliefs that come and go
- Symbols, realities, the unseen
- Shamanism
- Ritual abuse - see the trigger warning
- Urban legend and ritual abuse
- Booklist
- Other postings and links
- Groups, cults, indoctrination, exiting
- Supporting a survivor of cult ritual abuse
- Dissociation or DID
- A garden analogy of personality
- Social dynamics of cult or satanic ritual abuse
- More dynamics, by Magentine
- Other or better models for DID, MPD?
- Fantasy role-playing
. . . . .
A garden analogy of personality
Posted here with the author's permission
It seems to me that higher cult members regard the cult as their territory, and each cult member as a small garden for them to manipulate or harvest in some way according to some overall plan. Picture a garden with some indigenous plants, personae, of one person. Decide which ones you want to nurture, cut back, dig up, and which ones you actually want to implant. You have an overall garden plan, which needs to be adaptable to how plants develop, and outside circumstances such as the weather, the neighbouring gardens and their influence. In any garden, some plants tend to grow and obscure or kill other plants. You work with what you have according to what you want to achieve. It becomes ‘yours’.
One could also use an analogy of a house. It was built in a certain way, different inhabitants altering it, with the concept that they own it and it is an extension of themselves with some character of its own. The colours and shapes and utilities in the rooms are set to complement the owner and purpose of the room, and how the owner wants to present to themselves, and to others who may visit.
Another useful concept is that of the family or tribe or nation. Fred West said that he owned his children so he could do what he wanted with them. Many cultures have a strong sense of extended family and behave in an adaptive and congenial way towards each other’s needs. I believe in Ireland the culture exists that one not only belongs to a family but is owned by it. Nations have certain national identities and traits which may come into conflict with other nations for any real or inferred reason. The English system of manors and farm-workers meant that during the First World War, the lord of the manor could feel he had the right to enlist the men ‘under him’ to war because they were his to command. The concept of the feudal system is also relevant here.
According to theories of Jung, psychosynthesis, parts therapy and others, we all have several personae or alters, partly influenced by the social or other circumstances at the time, how we feel, or which someone else can evoke in us. Cults build on all these to suit their own purposes, also using psycho-analytic theory, not to help people, but to control them, and behavioural techniques such as positive and negative reinforcement.
To return to the garden concept, imagine it has a wall around it with a gate, although probably places where someone can enter the garden and have their way with it. This is how most of us are, with a general concept of personal boundaries and free will where possible. Cults have a very different notion, that the person belongs more to them than to themselves as individuals, and that members must follow the cult’s will both overall, and of the specific moment. One could also use the analogy of communist culture where the individual is said to exist for the purpose of the state, rather than the state being there to assist them.
Being in contact with a cult member can be like any other interaction up to a point. One forms a relationship with a particular part or parts of the personality, and regards them as being the main ‘owners’ there. When other parts surface with different ways and needs, we do what we can with those too, but obviously there can be conflicts where it is hard to know what is appropriate overall. Cults induce and encourage conflicts to suit their purposes.
So the garden gets modified, certain personae come and go or remain dormant, some are cut back perhaps to allow others to grow or spread, or because there is too much of them to suit the purpose. Some plants will seed themselves naturally, and some will be deliberately planted. Some get weeded out although may re-seed themselves somewhere. Some personae may be grafted onto others. Some get totally extinguished. If the cult decide to extinguish the main persona or personae, eventually there is nothing substantial left of the original person, i.e. it is totally theirs, the cult’s.
I think the cult get into difficulties when links are forged with people who are not cult-oriented, such as in therapy or a friendship or partnership. The cult does all it can to break that link, and it may be that they cannot use the ‘garden’ as their own and actually harvest it, or whatever it is that they do.
Note
The following page contains some further posts on Cults and Ritual Abuse/ SRA - click on Older Posts
It seems to me that higher cult members regard the cult as their territory, and each cult member as a small garden for them to manipulate or harvest in some way according to some overall plan. Picture a garden with some indigenous plants, personae, of one person. Decide which ones you want to nurture, cut back, dig up, and which ones you actually want to implant. You have an overall garden plan, which needs to be adaptable to how plants develop, and outside circumstances such as the weather, the neighbouring gardens and their influence. In any garden, some plants tend to grow and obscure or kill other plants. You work with what you have according to what you want to achieve. It becomes ‘yours’.
One could also use an analogy of a house. It was built in a certain way, different inhabitants altering it, with the concept that they own it and it is an extension of themselves with some character of its own. The colours and shapes and utilities in the rooms are set to complement the owner and purpose of the room, and how the owner wants to present to themselves, and to others who may visit.
Another useful concept is that of the family or tribe or nation. Fred West said that he owned his children so he could do what he wanted with them. Many cultures have a strong sense of extended family and behave in an adaptive and congenial way towards each other’s needs. I believe in Ireland the culture exists that one not only belongs to a family but is owned by it. Nations have certain national identities and traits which may come into conflict with other nations for any real or inferred reason. The English system of manors and farm-workers meant that during the First World War, the lord of the manor could feel he had the right to enlist the men ‘under him’ to war because they were his to command. The concept of the feudal system is also relevant here.
According to theories of Jung, psychosynthesis, parts therapy and others, we all have several personae or alters, partly influenced by the social or other circumstances at the time, how we feel, or which someone else can evoke in us. Cults build on all these to suit their own purposes, also using psycho-analytic theory, not to help people, but to control them, and behavioural techniques such as positive and negative reinforcement.
To return to the garden concept, imagine it has a wall around it with a gate, although probably places where someone can enter the garden and have their way with it. This is how most of us are, with a general concept of personal boundaries and free will where possible. Cults have a very different notion, that the person belongs more to them than to themselves as individuals, and that members must follow the cult’s will both overall, and of the specific moment. One could also use the analogy of communist culture where the individual is said to exist for the purpose of the state, rather than the state being there to assist them.
Being in contact with a cult member can be like any other interaction up to a point. One forms a relationship with a particular part or parts of the personality, and regards them as being the main ‘owners’ there. When other parts surface with different ways and needs, we do what we can with those too, but obviously there can be conflicts where it is hard to know what is appropriate overall. Cults induce and encourage conflicts to suit their purposes.
So the garden gets modified, certain personae come and go or remain dormant, some are cut back perhaps to allow others to grow or spread, or because there is too much of them to suit the purpose. Some plants will seed themselves naturally, and some will be deliberately planted. Some get weeded out although may re-seed themselves somewhere. Some personae may be grafted onto others. Some get totally extinguished. If the cult decide to extinguish the main persona or personae, eventually there is nothing substantial left of the original person, i.e. it is totally theirs, the cult’s.
I think the cult get into difficulties when links are forged with people who are not cult-oriented, such as in therapy or a friendship or partnership. The cult does all it can to break that link, and it may be that they cannot use the ‘garden’ as their own and actually harvest it, or whatever it is that they do.
Note
The following page contains some further posts on Cults and Ritual Abuse/ SRA - click on Older Posts
Social dynamics of cult or satanic ritual abuse
On this page are some personal observations about experiences of some people involved in ‘satanic’ cults. Some comments may apply to cults or groups more generally. There are other posts on here around this general subject.
If you have followed a link from another site the home page for the Introduction etc. is http://unseenaspects.blogspot.com
A different path
Posted here with the author's permission
I tried to get glimpses of the thinking behind cult ritual abuse and ‘satanism’ as well as other cult-like groups, where these seem to impinge/take over the life of those involved. If one chooses a so-called left-hand-path of development in a selfish way, that is one thing. To cause pain to others, emotional suffering and confusion, ruination and even death, was altogether something else. I looked at sadism and narcissism, Voodoo and anything else, and joined email groups of people proudly calling themselves satanists and joking about their attitude and practices.
For whatever reason, I like to satisfy myself that someone really does have a choice in their decisions and actions. Because, if someone else is calling the shots through bullying, intimidation, violence, seduction, involvement in drug-taking, then something needs doing. That is what our basic legal system and human rights are about, the right to freewill and action, at least in theory.
People who have trouble controlling themselves and their lives, may seek to control others via any means whatever. If they don’t believe in reincarnation, spirits of ancestors, or the concept of returning to our source, they may be out for anything they can get in this lifetime at the expense of other people. They could be robbing people of their worldly goods and living off the proceeds. Or they could be syphoning off their physical time and energies in some way, not so much to obliterate, but more to use.
I hope nothing like this ever happens to you, but if it does, there are also books on how to protect yourself psychically, just as you would put locks on your doors and windows to keep people out of your house, or at least deter them. Just because you don’t believe these things happen, that no-one would do them or it wouldn’t work if they tried, doesn’t mean that other people don’t believe, or would put their intentions or their very souls into giving you a bumpy ride.
Most of us are similar in that once we were children and not so strong as the adults around us, and not having awareness of options for later in our lives. Perhaps this is one reason why children gang together in the playground, or as adults we join things or get drawn into things, either with friends or by seeking out people to be with in a pairing relationship or group. Safety in numbers, no longer small, alone and not being listened to or able to fight back.
Suppose now, if you will, a society or subculture which makes it their business in some way to control their own children, children of others, weaker members, and gain continuity of their beliefs and practices in that way. There’s nothing unusual about this when it happens naturally via families and their practices, culture and belief systems, or on a wider scale in a region or whole country. Writers such as George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, B.F. Skinner have written about different ways of controlling society in a wider sense.
Suppose you really do think the end of the world is coming, except certain people only will survive such as you and your descendants or fellow-travellers, and you want to ensure your survival over and above any others. Or suppose that you think you are stuck with this world, and will do your damnedest to maintain your position, economically, socially, or in terms of control. Then one might opt for a system of social and mental control, creating an under-class of vulnerable people who would be expendable or transferable.
The possibilities are endless and I don’t have the whole picture. You only have to witness a stage hypnotism act with genuine post-hypnotic suggestion being acted upon by subjects, to see these things are possible, not just with years of conditioning but just a little, acting on the subconscious of those who are susceptible. Increase the length of time and the indoctrination process, and the more of us could become susceptible very easily!
All these things and more, make me suspicious of those detractors who deny, sometimes vehemently, that there ever can be any kind of ‘satanic’ or cult ritual abuse. We all like to think we are discerning and can winkle out the possible from the impossible, the likely from the unlikely, the appropriate from the inappropriate.
I believe the use of the word ‘satanic’ or ‘satanism’ is a bit of a red herring. There are plenty of satanists who are not involved in cult ritual abuse. Quite why they feel bound to insist that, because they don’t do it, no-one else does, I have no idea. Maybe it’s their idea of an in-joke. I would respect them and their beliefs more if they looked into it properly and were not so emphatic.
Other writers whom I admire for their critical thinking and approach sometimes dismiss this whole subject in a brief paragraph in an otherwise excellent book. That is on their conscience not mine, but it seems a pity they even mentioned the subject. We can surely look further than that.
Themes and underlay – Cults and SRA
Posted here with the author's permission
A common theme in fairy tales is for people to be given the chance of a wish, but there may be a price for it. Aesop’s Fables have a ‘moral of the story’ and literary censorship used to require the baddies suffered for their actions. People have always been fascinated by the tale of Faust who gave up his personal autonomy in exchange for rewards and safeguards, the price he paid!
Many of us watch films about the darker side of human nature, reality TV, soaps or self-revelations, without getting involved in committing those acts, perhaps like a release valve. We may both sympathise and distance ourselves, compartmentalising and filing parts away. Dissociation can work for all of us. Some people use it to help their own mental functioning. Some people utilise it in others - in order to get and to maintain control over them.
We are all mortal, feeling physical or emotional pain, fear, or insecurity about losing our home, income or loved ones. Those in supportive families reinforce each other, or there may be a good community spirit. We may believe or not that we live in an ethical universe, making recompense for our actions in this lifetime or a future one.
A modern writer on esoteric subjects, Dr. Douglas Baker, recommends people do the best they can in this lifetime in their dealings with other people, as a route to improving things for this life – or future lives if one believes in them. Caroline Myss writes about contracts we may have made, and there is a current trend in psychotherapy, after examining our hurts, to take an attitude of forgiveness towards those around us or now departed.
Some people work with ‘higher energies’ in clearing up troublesome areas. If you are interested in this area, there is a book entitled ‘Spirit Releasement Therapy’ by William J. Baldwin giving the underlying principles. There are also books by people termed shamanic healers along broadly similar lines of soul rescue and extraction, and some methods have been adapted for Western readers. If these concepts make you uneasy, just learn about what feels all right for you and take time to heal more naturally.
People in a geographical area may join together for psychological and cultural convenience, believing the cult practices would provide business contacts as well as extra powers. Concepts of group minds, thoughtforms and egregores may come in here, how they can form naturally or by design, and can be manipulated by those with knowledge and intent. Whatever we or ‘they’ believe about angels, demons, rituals and special powers, it is what ‘they’ do that has an effect on others. Just because we do not believe something, does not mean it is impossible or it can’t be experienced somehow. We take in situational cues, and people who engage in ritual put themselves into a certain setting and frame of mind, an altered or ‘alter’ state in which anchors or reinforcement play a part.
A disturbing trend is when people group together against someone who stands out through being older or weaker or just on their own. Some people join something to lessen risk as a kind of insurance or guarantee. The group can sink to a low common denominator, doing things ‘because they can’, i.e. they are strong and likely to reap benefits with no risk. As I wrote this, a newspaper reported on a woman with deformed fingers due to Thalidomide, whose co-workers coerced her into a bowls match - then ridiculed her. This is child playground behaviour at its worst, and children often behave better towards their less fortunate peers, accepting them as they are. A business culture of competition and deception does not foster acceptance and co-operation. Many people are bullied in a work setting beyond what can be described as teasing. See Tim Field’s book ‘Bully in Sight’ or check out website www.bullyoffline.org
People involved in a cult may think they can make themselves immune to responsibility. I believe there is a social structure in place to maintain control. There is research into situational or social psychology, and into cultural reasons for behaviour. Perhaps someone with relevant interest and expertise can study the phenomenon of cult ritual abuse just like they would undertake other social or anthropological studies, but from the outside rather than from within.
There is also the aspect of denial about these subjects, and the fact that people often use alternative reasons or labels does not mean they are not actually happening or that someone else could be behind them.
Each one of us probably has some degree of dark-side, which is what makes us human and able to understand and empathise with others. Some people have more of the dark and less of the light. We are all different, and people have different individual beliefs and purposes in their lives. Societies and cultures develop their own ways to view or handle this. The margin or dividing line may be put in different places on a continuum, or simply considered differently.
Many people watch films or go to the theatre, and deal with deep or dark issues of human nature in that way. Some people are loners in their lives. Some people collect together and act out some of their dark-side or their fantasies ‘for real’. When that involves other people who get hurt or killed, it becomes a human rights issue. Like everything else, we can chose to ignore it, to listen and learn, or try to do something about it.
If most people do not believe something can happen, whether it actually does or not, how would anything get changed? That is what ‘they’, the people involved in perpetrating cult ritual abuse on those further down their pecking order, hope for. If ‘they’ put out enough denial or dis-information in an attempt to brush it under the carpet of awareness, to make anyone feel foolish for speaking out, threaten them in covert or overt ways, or simply make it impossible for them to change things, then ’they’ will do. It’s as old as time itself.
Cult or ‘satanic’ ritual abuse is merely an extreme form of hierarchy or feudal system – not one of physical ownership, but more psychological. One only has to look at the ‘frat’ system in some US colleges, to see how important belonging to a specific group is, and adhering to their ways above all other, and sometimes secretly and subversively. There are sanctions against transgressors.
It could be that human beings, much as animals do, have a system of psychological survival of the fittest. There are those who will naturally (or unnaturally) take a leadership role, and those who are not suited to that, or are not allowed to by ‘the system‘ – whatever system is prevailing or enforced. It is my belief that cult ritual abuse simply takes what works, to keep people in an ‘us and them’ situation, either being at the top end and commanding those lower down, or in terms of in-groups and out-groups. Somewhere deep down, each one of us has needs to belong, and also to remain separate in some way from the rest of society, even from the rest of their group.
In cult ritual abuse there are no options. That is what has been taken away. But why? Perhaps to create a structured society like ‘Brave New World’, 'Nineteen-Eighty-Four', ‘Beyond Freedom & Dignity’, 'Opening Skinner's Box', or ‘Stepford Wives’. The name of the game seems to be compliance by any means that can be fathomed such as conditioning or force, or large components of drugs and hypnosis, so that people’s wills and lives are not their own any more. Some kind of a territorial or moral take-over bid.
I suggest looking in whatever directions you as an individual find suitable in seeking out some useful explanations, because hopefully we are free enough to do that. I found it useful to think in terms of psychological manipulation and control, including societal or cultic influence, voodoo, or whatever other elements seemed to be present. The rewards would be at the top of the tree and punishments at the bottom, with many, many people playing a witting or unwitting part in between, perhaps caught because of a basic need to feed, clothe and house themselves.
We all have ways of trying to maintain some kind of ‘status quo’ in our lives, some of which we may not be too proud of or even accept. If someone were to offer us sufficient real or imagined benefits in terms of money, security, prestige, power/s, legal immunity or whatever, any one of us may get drawn in via something smaller than the tip of an iceberg. And that can lead to a multitude of issues.
One of the problems with cultic situations, is that people are often not able to leave if they wish, or are not even able to see that perhaps they can or should consider it. It takes a very long time to talk things through with people, so that they can realise for themselves, without forcing or lies, what has been happening, how and why.
Most people have faculties in their brains to help with co-ordinating memories and thinking things through. Someone cunning can obliterate or obfuscate awareness or memory so that the subject is unable to avoid other dangerous or fraught situations. For readers who think mental obliteration strategies to get people to forget or be unaware would not work, try books written by stage hypnotists of any repute or look at confusional techniques of NLP or ‘street hypnosis’. Add the dissociation induced by ‘perpetrators of the game’ so that other alters are effectively in place and operational, and perpetrators really think they have it made and can carry out their will with no backlash.
Professionals involved in a situation may not be part of some cult or cover-up, but might be following what they are told or feel is best for a situation. They might close ranks to save a ‘split’ or manipulation, or else they find what someone tells them too far-fetched and assume they are saying them because they are mentally ill.
I learned that vehicles for ‘rounding’ on cult nights went round the neighbourhood collecting people for meetings. Another word was ‘harvesting’ but that could also be used in a different sense regarding gaining energies etc. from them. Survivors may use phrases about ‘getting hurt’ or ‘getting taken’ which obviously can be used in a more usual sense but can be pointers to someone’s continuing involvement.
There are various spiels of denial which get swallowed by intelligent and otherwise discerning audiences. I have the tee-shirt for sitting through them. It is not enough for people to cite similar allegations from down the ages as proof that people are being duped by those who believe they endured or still endure horrific experiences.
I persisted with trying to find out anything I could about the ideology of cults of a ‘satanic’ nature, and how it is that so many people find it impossible to credit their existence. It is a double con-trick because:
1. People belong to the cults often without knowing it, and without being able to do anything about it;
2. Society in general and academics in particular are led to disbelieve it can or does go on.
3. There must be a reason or a belief system behind putting people through the experiences; a reason or reasons for the denials and denigration of those who speak out; and reason/s why the denials have effect.
Clearly there is some ideology, but why the brutality? Why do cult members usually not recall any of these things? Why do they have no choice? Do people with power in the cult have a choice, or what happens if they refuse to play their role? Where in their spiritual development do people make these decisions and vows, and with what consequences for other people?
Cult rituals can happen around any particular saint’s day or other day, concepts taken from Buddhism, Voodoo, or anything that they, the cult, choose, including angels and white light, channelling and any New Age or spiritual philosophy, and members may attend orthodox churches.
Cult meetings vary in size, timing and purpose. Some may happen in smaller more private settings, Drugs, pornography, rape and sadism seem to be the glue binding much of it together, but some people in the cult surely believe in the cult philosophy and practices. I do not think the main reason is to cover for paedophilic groups but it can be relevant, including filming of the sadism, to sell on and for blackmail and control.
No-one has to believe any of this. Not all of these things happen to people involved in ‘satanic’ or other cult ritual activity. I am trying:
* To de-mystify the otherwise unbelievable
* To show these things can happen
* That they are basically an extension of other aspects of human behaviour, however inhuman, crass, ridiculous, stupid, unnecessary, and unbelievable, it may all seem
In many cultures there are practices and beliefs that people outside those cultures write off as different or irrelevant for themselves. Recent TV programmes have shown how strongly people can believe in ideologies and get drawn into practices that, in another frame of mind, they might consider stupid or damaging. For some reason/s we humans often have an innate need to believe in something, or to carry out various types of ritual, mundane or otherwise. Or there is a need to deny what is strange, incomprehensible or abhorrent. We all have our different mind-sets, and polarisation or splitting can happen easily.
Alongside books and websites dealing with cult-like behaviour, social psychology, anthropology and religion, I looked at profiling of violent and sadistic behaviours. The writings of Lacan and Melanie Klein could be useful. Perhaps we are looking at splitting, idealisation and denigration/demonisation, intertwined with complex behavioural conditioning. It might be worth looking at psychodynamics of the Mafia or of extremists where people can be family-oriented, caring and religious, as well as acting aggressively and destructively.
A book recently coming to my attention is ‘Inner Alchemy’ by Taylor Ellwood (publ. 2007 by Megalithica Books). You might draw other conclusions than my swift appraisal, but it seems relevant to some practices and principles involved – which is not to say he is describing ‘satanic’ ritual abuse. People have their own views on whether magic is feasible at all, but many people find the concept meaningful. If ‘it’ works, Ellwood describes some of the ‘how’, the psychodynamics. If we can do that, there would not be such blanket denial that organised ritual abuse cannot happen and that 'it' must be something else altogether.
You are free to consider anything that may be useful - and to discard the rest
Not falling for the tagline
Posted here with the author's permission
Many cultures and societies place great emphasis on family history, the ancestors, the family values of parent being passed down to their children in myriad ways both seen and unseen. People often take a pride in these things, but like anything else they can be taken to extremes.
I believe that people should have free will and choices as far possible within normal constraints of general life. People who are at the top end of cults think oppositely. Often people at the bottom end have no idea about the purported ideology at the top, or of hidden agendas belying any public face presented. The main problem is double standards, made more dubious when drugs, hypnosis, altered states of consciousness, chanting practices or indoctrination methods, are utilised to render people unaware of basic things in their lives.
Just because people do not believe in a particular theology or they have no experience of it, does not mean other people do not believe sufficiently to carry out practices you personally cannot envisage existing. You only have to read relevant historical or anthropological accounts to know they have been done and, in some places, still are being carried out.
The line gets drawn for me when people draw the lines for other people’s lives, providing ‘answers’ or ‘rules’, reducing choices, extinguishing the ability to see what choices have been made for them, to be adhered to under threat of punishment, ridicule or death.
People may cite examples of attempts to examine some ritual abuse cases and the tagline is usually that ‘there is no evidence’. Cases may be chosen quite selectively, and there are things we may never get to hear about or have a chance of examining for ourselves.
Please, don’t just fall for the tagline. More is at stake than palpable, universally acceptable evidence. What evidence is totally acceptable to both sides in a court of law, plus to everyone else whose lives are touched by the case?
Someone can usually come up with a different tale to account for things, and that could be a person with a vested interest in standing on a public soapbox of denial, or with a personal need not to believe that something as awful as this could happen, which is a perfectly natural reaction.
Most of us like to feel in some control over our own lives, even if that is a feeling rather than actual reality. It’s like driving a car to a destination, where we may take in various places en route, but are heading somewhere in particular. So if we have various parts of our personality not in accord with that destination, the ride may not be so straightforward, or other parts or alters may have to take a back seat for that trip. Another day, one of those alters may be in more of a real or moral position to take the wheel.
With people who tend to dissociate as a way of handling their lives and its different situations, it can become difficult when there is conflict or confusion. An outside person becoming involved may find it hard to work out what is going on. Our own ‘rules’ for behaviour don’t apply. Some people believe in the concept of integration, but many survivors or people who dissociate, find this inappropriate or even harmful.
How can someone control their own life if someone else is blotting out large chunks deliberately, sometimes adding in other parts which are simply not true, manipulating to portray the insidious purpose that fits the bill? How can people thus manipulated manage to explain to police, other authorities or individuals, what has happened so that it is ‘provable’?
. . . .
Note by Cilla
The following is copied in here with the original author's permission because it makes some useful practical points.
. . . .
Regarding what follows
Anonymous reader
Not all of these things happen to all Survivors
Some of the material may be triggering. It is not meant to upset you
The aim is to show how easy it is for some people to manipulate other people
It is not your fault if things happened to you
If it happened to someone you know, it may help to read about it
Search on the Internet and find books or sites that suit you
Be careful when following up on information or help for yourself or someone you know
My friend whom I will call Lindsey, had not had a carefree childhood playing with children her own age. She always seemed to have been looking after someone else, which transferred to her present situation as a mother to two young children.
She was an apparently ordinary and good mother. But her life was far from ordinary. If I had not been around when she needed to talk, I would not have realised the full extent of what she was trying to cope with.
Lindsey felt she did not cope well at all. I think you will see why she felt like that. None of what happened was her fault. She did everything she could to help her children and anyone else who needed help.
When things got too much for Lindsey, a young part of her personality chatted to me, and I call her Maisie. She was a lively and intelligent young person, and I could imagine her stamping in frustration when I could not understand her.
Lindsey did not have many alters. She dissociated into different alters sometimes, or simply withdrew from our chats for a while. Maisie was the alter who fronted for Lindsey when it was too hard to talk, or she was not sure if I would still help.
An older alter often came through, saying she was just an interpreter of Lindsey's feelings, or if Maisie couldn't explain something. I call her Jasmine. She was rather quaint and formal, and said she didn't know what it was like to be 'human', but when she was stressed she did express her needs.
Then there was a Robot alter. He was a complete opposite to Lindsey and we used to get into arguments during which he revealed some of the cult's secrets. So I got him angry deliberately!
Lindsey herself often did not know what was going on in her life. This was a naturally occurring protective mechanism - that she dissociated away from her difficulties. We are all a bit like it, but not so clearly defined.
When I wondered why Lindsey was not around when we'd arranged, or she could not explain something, it helped having input from young Maisie, interpretations from Jasmine, or the Robot who swore at me and made awful jokes. Robot's function was to make me give up trying to support Lindsey. One day he simply vanished, being replaced by others of his type.
Who was putting these Robot types in place? I believe it was cult-related, an attempt to infiltrate Lindsey's small DID system with a control mechanism to report back to the cult. Robots could send emails to the cult or to other people. They handled straightforward tasks, sometimes involving being very devious. When challenged by argument or logic or a new situation, they couldn't handle it and a new updated version would appear.
Apart from Lindsey, young Maisie, Jasmine and some Robots, there would be occasional adult alters who appeared to carry out a specific role almost like a temporary office worker, cook or cleaner.
There were also some teenage and younger alters who filled in gaps about Lindsey's past. Lindsey did not remember whole areas of her past, some of which seemed relevant to the present. It helped when the cult tried to scare Lindsey or to get her to go somewhere, because the teenagers were not a part of that situation and they could carry on chatting so Lindsay was safe.
Sometimes I encouraged Lindsey or Maisie to take an active step to avoid cult meetings and was told 'It's not Lindsey who goes'. Sometimes it seemed to be the Robot who attended as he played a specific role in what took place.
There were times when Lindsey would visit a friend, or she tried to sleep through attempts to get her to attend meetings such as various sounds being played, triggering emails, or direct threats shouted through her door.
On occasion I believe the cult would have let Lindsey leave it, but other factors came into play, other people involved in the drama and lifestyle who said that she couldn't do that.
The Robots were cult alters, the term Robot or Bot coming from computer jargon.
There was another cult-compliant alter who opened the door to go to meetings. Maisie said that person was like a doormat because she did what she was told. 'Doormat' wanted to know what I was offering because in some strange way the cult offered a feeling of security, despite everything.
Lindsey lived in the same general area most of her life. She knew there was a cult and that it involved ritual abuse. She sensed things about some of the people involved or could recall a detail like a ring someone wore. The cult met well away from habitation. Local people told Lindsey they knew there was a cult but that nothing could be done about it.
She knew little about the cult's ideology so we could not discuss it. It seemed she would have nothing to do with them unless coerced or tricked. Sometimes they tricked her that there was a full moon when there wasn't and she began to check it out for herself.
People like Lindsey have no say in their lives. The fly in the ointment is people like you or me. Cult people can't do entirely what they want if we persist; they may have to change some of their ways. They fear exposure.
They blocked my emails and told me that Lindsey was in hospital, and they told Lindsey I was going to live abroad. A constant theme was that no-one would believe Lindsey because she was confused. I was told that some of the people that we both knew were in the cult were merely part of Lindsey's DID system, created by her.
Young Maisie was tricked into spying on Lindsey and manipulating her in some double-game. But Maisie saw through it and changed allegiance. Lindsey herself could often see through the double-binds imposed, and avoided them without my intervention or with just a little back-up.
The cult can only work with what they have. They don't hold all the cards, however much they cheat and deceive. A number of people in the locality were emotionally supportive towards Lindsey, and she to them. Other things can also work in favour of a survivor.
Lindsey had a period of being relatively cult-free and she gained strength and confidence. The cult then 'reclaimed' her as if she had no rights herself. People like Lindsey are told they don't have any rights, and it is hard for them to believe otherwise.
They are told that bad things happen to them 'because they are bad'. Lindsey and those like her are not 'bad' or 'weak'. Support from others is helpful.
These cults are like an outdated feudal system designed to maintain the 'status quo' of their society. Drugs, blackmail and threats go a long way towards helping them maintain control, as well as providing an income and contact with people who are useful to them.
What is described on these pages is an attempt made by many people to control Lindsey and other vulnerable people. Their aim is to get other people to believe they aren't doing any of it, and make it all seem too ridiculous or impossible.
So it will help if it is discussed more openly and people can see it for what it is, a manipulative system.
If you are reading this and doing your best to keep clear of a similar cult or helping someone else, it may help to see how things happen in everyday terms.
The following are some examples:
Lindsey would not know how she ended up at cult meetings. She would be shopping or at an evening class, and not remember further.
Something might frighten Lindsey, and she was conditioned to go to hospital or to the police. The cult arranged for police cars to drive past her house, upsetting and scaring her.
If Lindsey went to hospital some of the staff there contacted someone from the cult, who came and whispered to her, or took her away for hours despite hospital regulations against it, and which she remembered little about.
The employment Lindsey obtained seemed to be arranged via the cult, leaving her free on cult afternoons or evenings. I might assume she was cult-free, only to hear how she was tired out, with bad bruises and torn clothing.
Much of the conditioning on Lindsey was carried out using hypnosis. It was hard to offset that by talking to her normally. That worked eventually but took some time. I did not feel it appropriate to use hypnosis in return.
Lindsey's children spent part of the week with her husband who was not cult-involved, but this was an arrangement that suited the cult. Sometimes custody days were changed and the cult were not always up-to-date and would turn up when the children were there and leave quickly.
The cult relied on keeping each other informed, dovetailing things so that Lindsey was not clear in her mind. Her clocks and computer date were often changed and she missed appointments. People entered her home and changed her medication so she became confused or hyperactive. Credit cards were applied for in her name with limits too high to manage. Other people spent on those cards and withdrew cash from her bank.
If Lindsey took items to a pawnbroker for cash or because they triggered her, they turned up in her home soon after. When she attended school meetings, her car was entered and triggering material was left inside by someone who knew the effect it would have, someone who had known her a very long time.
Lindsey went through periods of anger towards me or would only give one-word answers. I felt the cult had conditioned her into this. Sometimes an alter explained that it was intended to break our contact.
When Lindsey told hospital staff there was a local cult (something which other women said too) she was told her belief was 'psychotic' and she must retract it or she would not be allowed back home. This is a revealing dynamic with the inference that no-one would believe other things she said either.
The cult went from actively discouraging my involvement, to pressuring Lindsey into contacting me again. Lindsey would then make unrealistic demands on my time and what she wanted. I am satisfied it was not Lindsey making the demands but that they were implanted to throw a spanner in the works. Lindsey was neither demanding nor vindictive, no matter what happened. But she did take things literally.
A main factor in control is inducing fear. Cult members were told their lives were due to end, or the world would end but they would be safe if they went along with the cult. These strategies are used in other cults too, not just ritual or 'satanic' ones..
If someone says they will speak about the cult they are told 'You shall not talk about the cult and live'. If they do speak out, someone tries to ensure they are thought psychotic or too flaky to take seriously.
When I suggested to Lindsey that the cult would make an obvious mistake, she replied 'People who make mistakes pay other people to cover up those mistakes'. I find that lucid, not flaky.
The cult works via power and dis-information, with strategies for every occasion, playing things 'ends to the middle' - what we now call 'spin'. Those lower down are not involved in decisions and strategies. When they attend meetings they cannot see people's faces, or they are in an altered state, unaware of any other 'reality' than that.
Perhaps viewed in that light we can understand it more.
Often there are counter-allegations that such ritual abuse does not happen or is only minimal, and that the ideas must have been planted in people's minds, or they came to believe them when feeling vulnerable.
Such denial or dismissal makes it harder to bear; a double-dose of hardship instead of an atmosphere that helps people to heal and move on in their lives. This all upsets the lives of vulnerable people like Lindsey, making them more confused and vulnerable.
Cult-people probably have their reasons for doing what they do, but it takes up a very great deal of their time, and it also holds them in thrall to something or to someone else. How, for instance, would they break away themselves, or tell someone? They don't have much choice either then!
Perhaps some of those people are acting so inhumanly and in-humanely in the hope that they won't end up at the tail-end of a social or power system. Cults or other groupings can also undertake their 'control' machinations as a form of bullying, which is not to deny its effectiveness, or that other factors may be involved too.
Perhaps they were brought up and conditioned so that they can function in certain ways, while being largely unaware what they do and what sometimes happens to them. Two books which I feel bring this out are:
'Satan's High Priest' by Judith Spencer - based on a true story
'Morning Come Quickly' by Wanda Karriker- a novel which incorporates a number of themes
If you have followed a link from another site the home page for the Introduction etc. is http://unseenaspects.blogspot.com
A different path
Posted here with the author's permission
I tried to get glimpses of the thinking behind cult ritual abuse and ‘satanism’ as well as other cult-like groups, where these seem to impinge/take over the life of those involved. If one chooses a so-called left-hand-path of development in a selfish way, that is one thing. To cause pain to others, emotional suffering and confusion, ruination and even death, was altogether something else. I looked at sadism and narcissism, Voodoo and anything else, and joined email groups of people proudly calling themselves satanists and joking about their attitude and practices.
For whatever reason, I like to satisfy myself that someone really does have a choice in their decisions and actions. Because, if someone else is calling the shots through bullying, intimidation, violence, seduction, involvement in drug-taking, then something needs doing. That is what our basic legal system and human rights are about, the right to freewill and action, at least in theory.
People who have trouble controlling themselves and their lives, may seek to control others via any means whatever. If they don’t believe in reincarnation, spirits of ancestors, or the concept of returning to our source, they may be out for anything they can get in this lifetime at the expense of other people. They could be robbing people of their worldly goods and living off the proceeds. Or they could be syphoning off their physical time and energies in some way, not so much to obliterate, but more to use.
I hope nothing like this ever happens to you, but if it does, there are also books on how to protect yourself psychically, just as you would put locks on your doors and windows to keep people out of your house, or at least deter them. Just because you don’t believe these things happen, that no-one would do them or it wouldn’t work if they tried, doesn’t mean that other people don’t believe, or would put their intentions or their very souls into giving you a bumpy ride.
Most of us are similar in that once we were children and not so strong as the adults around us, and not having awareness of options for later in our lives. Perhaps this is one reason why children gang together in the playground, or as adults we join things or get drawn into things, either with friends or by seeking out people to be with in a pairing relationship or group. Safety in numbers, no longer small, alone and not being listened to or able to fight back.
Suppose now, if you will, a society or subculture which makes it their business in some way to control their own children, children of others, weaker members, and gain continuity of their beliefs and practices in that way. There’s nothing unusual about this when it happens naturally via families and their practices, culture and belief systems, or on a wider scale in a region or whole country. Writers such as George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, B.F. Skinner have written about different ways of controlling society in a wider sense.
Suppose you really do think the end of the world is coming, except certain people only will survive such as you and your descendants or fellow-travellers, and you want to ensure your survival over and above any others. Or suppose that you think you are stuck with this world, and will do your damnedest to maintain your position, economically, socially, or in terms of control. Then one might opt for a system of social and mental control, creating an under-class of vulnerable people who would be expendable or transferable.
The possibilities are endless and I don’t have the whole picture. You only have to witness a stage hypnotism act with genuine post-hypnotic suggestion being acted upon by subjects, to see these things are possible, not just with years of conditioning but just a little, acting on the subconscious of those who are susceptible. Increase the length of time and the indoctrination process, and the more of us could become susceptible very easily!
All these things and more, make me suspicious of those detractors who deny, sometimes vehemently, that there ever can be any kind of ‘satanic’ or cult ritual abuse. We all like to think we are discerning and can winkle out the possible from the impossible, the likely from the unlikely, the appropriate from the inappropriate.
I believe the use of the word ‘satanic’ or ‘satanism’ is a bit of a red herring. There are plenty of satanists who are not involved in cult ritual abuse. Quite why they feel bound to insist that, because they don’t do it, no-one else does, I have no idea. Maybe it’s their idea of an in-joke. I would respect them and their beliefs more if they looked into it properly and were not so emphatic.
Other writers whom I admire for their critical thinking and approach sometimes dismiss this whole subject in a brief paragraph in an otherwise excellent book. That is on their conscience not mine, but it seems a pity they even mentioned the subject. We can surely look further than that.
Themes and underlay – Cults and SRA
Posted here with the author's permission
A common theme in fairy tales is for people to be given the chance of a wish, but there may be a price for it. Aesop’s Fables have a ‘moral of the story’ and literary censorship used to require the baddies suffered for their actions. People have always been fascinated by the tale of Faust who gave up his personal autonomy in exchange for rewards and safeguards, the price he paid!
Many of us watch films about the darker side of human nature, reality TV, soaps or self-revelations, without getting involved in committing those acts, perhaps like a release valve. We may both sympathise and distance ourselves, compartmentalising and filing parts away. Dissociation can work for all of us. Some people use it to help their own mental functioning. Some people utilise it in others - in order to get and to maintain control over them.
We are all mortal, feeling physical or emotional pain, fear, or insecurity about losing our home, income or loved ones. Those in supportive families reinforce each other, or there may be a good community spirit. We may believe or not that we live in an ethical universe, making recompense for our actions in this lifetime or a future one.
A modern writer on esoteric subjects, Dr. Douglas Baker, recommends people do the best they can in this lifetime in their dealings with other people, as a route to improving things for this life – or future lives if one believes in them. Caroline Myss writes about contracts we may have made, and there is a current trend in psychotherapy, after examining our hurts, to take an attitude of forgiveness towards those around us or now departed.
Some people work with ‘higher energies’ in clearing up troublesome areas. If you are interested in this area, there is a book entitled ‘Spirit Releasement Therapy’ by William J. Baldwin giving the underlying principles. There are also books by people termed shamanic healers along broadly similar lines of soul rescue and extraction, and some methods have been adapted for Western readers. If these concepts make you uneasy, just learn about what feels all right for you and take time to heal more naturally.
People in a geographical area may join together for psychological and cultural convenience, believing the cult practices would provide business contacts as well as extra powers. Concepts of group minds, thoughtforms and egregores may come in here, how they can form naturally or by design, and can be manipulated by those with knowledge and intent. Whatever we or ‘they’ believe about angels, demons, rituals and special powers, it is what ‘they’ do that has an effect on others. Just because we do not believe something, does not mean it is impossible or it can’t be experienced somehow. We take in situational cues, and people who engage in ritual put themselves into a certain setting and frame of mind, an altered or ‘alter’ state in which anchors or reinforcement play a part.
A disturbing trend is when people group together against someone who stands out through being older or weaker or just on their own. Some people join something to lessen risk as a kind of insurance or guarantee. The group can sink to a low common denominator, doing things ‘because they can’, i.e. they are strong and likely to reap benefits with no risk. As I wrote this, a newspaper reported on a woman with deformed fingers due to Thalidomide, whose co-workers coerced her into a bowls match - then ridiculed her. This is child playground behaviour at its worst, and children often behave better towards their less fortunate peers, accepting them as they are. A business culture of competition and deception does not foster acceptance and co-operation. Many people are bullied in a work setting beyond what can be described as teasing. See Tim Field’s book ‘Bully in Sight’ or check out website www.bullyoffline.org
People involved in a cult may think they can make themselves immune to responsibility. I believe there is a social structure in place to maintain control. There is research into situational or social psychology, and into cultural reasons for behaviour. Perhaps someone with relevant interest and expertise can study the phenomenon of cult ritual abuse just like they would undertake other social or anthropological studies, but from the outside rather than from within.
There is also the aspect of denial about these subjects, and the fact that people often use alternative reasons or labels does not mean they are not actually happening or that someone else could be behind them.
Each one of us probably has some degree of dark-side, which is what makes us human and able to understand and empathise with others. Some people have more of the dark and less of the light. We are all different, and people have different individual beliefs and purposes in their lives. Societies and cultures develop their own ways to view or handle this. The margin or dividing line may be put in different places on a continuum, or simply considered differently.
Many people watch films or go to the theatre, and deal with deep or dark issues of human nature in that way. Some people are loners in their lives. Some people collect together and act out some of their dark-side or their fantasies ‘for real’. When that involves other people who get hurt or killed, it becomes a human rights issue. Like everything else, we can chose to ignore it, to listen and learn, or try to do something about it.
If most people do not believe something can happen, whether it actually does or not, how would anything get changed? That is what ‘they’, the people involved in perpetrating cult ritual abuse on those further down their pecking order, hope for. If ‘they’ put out enough denial or dis-information in an attempt to brush it under the carpet of awareness, to make anyone feel foolish for speaking out, threaten them in covert or overt ways, or simply make it impossible for them to change things, then ’they’ will do. It’s as old as time itself.
Cult or ‘satanic’ ritual abuse is merely an extreme form of hierarchy or feudal system – not one of physical ownership, but more psychological. One only has to look at the ‘frat’ system in some US colleges, to see how important belonging to a specific group is, and adhering to their ways above all other, and sometimes secretly and subversively. There are sanctions against transgressors.
It could be that human beings, much as animals do, have a system of psychological survival of the fittest. There are those who will naturally (or unnaturally) take a leadership role, and those who are not suited to that, or are not allowed to by ‘the system‘ – whatever system is prevailing or enforced. It is my belief that cult ritual abuse simply takes what works, to keep people in an ‘us and them’ situation, either being at the top end and commanding those lower down, or in terms of in-groups and out-groups. Somewhere deep down, each one of us has needs to belong, and also to remain separate in some way from the rest of society, even from the rest of their group.
In cult ritual abuse there are no options. That is what has been taken away. But why? Perhaps to create a structured society like ‘Brave New World’, 'Nineteen-Eighty-Four', ‘Beyond Freedom & Dignity’, 'Opening Skinner's Box', or ‘Stepford Wives’. The name of the game seems to be compliance by any means that can be fathomed such as conditioning or force, or large components of drugs and hypnosis, so that people’s wills and lives are not their own any more. Some kind of a territorial or moral take-over bid.
I suggest looking in whatever directions you as an individual find suitable in seeking out some useful explanations, because hopefully we are free enough to do that. I found it useful to think in terms of psychological manipulation and control, including societal or cultic influence, voodoo, or whatever other elements seemed to be present. The rewards would be at the top of the tree and punishments at the bottom, with many, many people playing a witting or unwitting part in between, perhaps caught because of a basic need to feed, clothe and house themselves.
We all have ways of trying to maintain some kind of ‘status quo’ in our lives, some of which we may not be too proud of or even accept. If someone were to offer us sufficient real or imagined benefits in terms of money, security, prestige, power/s, legal immunity or whatever, any one of us may get drawn in via something smaller than the tip of an iceberg. And that can lead to a multitude of issues.
One of the problems with cultic situations, is that people are often not able to leave if they wish, or are not even able to see that perhaps they can or should consider it. It takes a very long time to talk things through with people, so that they can realise for themselves, without forcing or lies, what has been happening, how and why.
Most people have faculties in their brains to help with co-ordinating memories and thinking things through. Someone cunning can obliterate or obfuscate awareness or memory so that the subject is unable to avoid other dangerous or fraught situations. For readers who think mental obliteration strategies to get people to forget or be unaware would not work, try books written by stage hypnotists of any repute or look at confusional techniques of NLP or ‘street hypnosis’. Add the dissociation induced by ‘perpetrators of the game’ so that other alters are effectively in place and operational, and perpetrators really think they have it made and can carry out their will with no backlash.
Professionals involved in a situation may not be part of some cult or cover-up, but might be following what they are told or feel is best for a situation. They might close ranks to save a ‘split’ or manipulation, or else they find what someone tells them too far-fetched and assume they are saying them because they are mentally ill.
I learned that vehicles for ‘rounding’ on cult nights went round the neighbourhood collecting people for meetings. Another word was ‘harvesting’ but that could also be used in a different sense regarding gaining energies etc. from them. Survivors may use phrases about ‘getting hurt’ or ‘getting taken’ which obviously can be used in a more usual sense but can be pointers to someone’s continuing involvement.
There are various spiels of denial which get swallowed by intelligent and otherwise discerning audiences. I have the tee-shirt for sitting through them. It is not enough for people to cite similar allegations from down the ages as proof that people are being duped by those who believe they endured or still endure horrific experiences.
I persisted with trying to find out anything I could about the ideology of cults of a ‘satanic’ nature, and how it is that so many people find it impossible to credit their existence. It is a double con-trick because:
1. People belong to the cults often without knowing it, and without being able to do anything about it;
2. Society in general and academics in particular are led to disbelieve it can or does go on.
3. There must be a reason or a belief system behind putting people through the experiences; a reason or reasons for the denials and denigration of those who speak out; and reason/s why the denials have effect.
Clearly there is some ideology, but why the brutality? Why do cult members usually not recall any of these things? Why do they have no choice? Do people with power in the cult have a choice, or what happens if they refuse to play their role? Where in their spiritual development do people make these decisions and vows, and with what consequences for other people?
Cult rituals can happen around any particular saint’s day or other day, concepts taken from Buddhism, Voodoo, or anything that they, the cult, choose, including angels and white light, channelling and any New Age or spiritual philosophy, and members may attend orthodox churches.
Cult meetings vary in size, timing and purpose. Some may happen in smaller more private settings, Drugs, pornography, rape and sadism seem to be the glue binding much of it together, but some people in the cult surely believe in the cult philosophy and practices. I do not think the main reason is to cover for paedophilic groups but it can be relevant, including filming of the sadism, to sell on and for blackmail and control.
No-one has to believe any of this. Not all of these things happen to people involved in ‘satanic’ or other cult ritual activity. I am trying:
* To de-mystify the otherwise unbelievable
* To show these things can happen
* That they are basically an extension of other aspects of human behaviour, however inhuman, crass, ridiculous, stupid, unnecessary, and unbelievable, it may all seem
In many cultures there are practices and beliefs that people outside those cultures write off as different or irrelevant for themselves. Recent TV programmes have shown how strongly people can believe in ideologies and get drawn into practices that, in another frame of mind, they might consider stupid or damaging. For some reason/s we humans often have an innate need to believe in something, or to carry out various types of ritual, mundane or otherwise. Or there is a need to deny what is strange, incomprehensible or abhorrent. We all have our different mind-sets, and polarisation or splitting can happen easily.
Alongside books and websites dealing with cult-like behaviour, social psychology, anthropology and religion, I looked at profiling of violent and sadistic behaviours. The writings of Lacan and Melanie Klein could be useful. Perhaps we are looking at splitting, idealisation and denigration/demonisation, intertwined with complex behavioural conditioning. It might be worth looking at psychodynamics of the Mafia or of extremists where people can be family-oriented, caring and religious, as well as acting aggressively and destructively.
A book recently coming to my attention is ‘Inner Alchemy’ by Taylor Ellwood (publ. 2007 by Megalithica Books). You might draw other conclusions than my swift appraisal, but it seems relevant to some practices and principles involved – which is not to say he is describing ‘satanic’ ritual abuse. People have their own views on whether magic is feasible at all, but many people find the concept meaningful. If ‘it’ works, Ellwood describes some of the ‘how’, the psychodynamics. If we can do that, there would not be such blanket denial that organised ritual abuse cannot happen and that 'it' must be something else altogether.
You are free to consider anything that may be useful - and to discard the rest
Not falling for the tagline
Posted here with the author's permission
Many cultures and societies place great emphasis on family history, the ancestors, the family values of parent being passed down to their children in myriad ways both seen and unseen. People often take a pride in these things, but like anything else they can be taken to extremes.
I believe that people should have free will and choices as far possible within normal constraints of general life. People who are at the top end of cults think oppositely. Often people at the bottom end have no idea about the purported ideology at the top, or of hidden agendas belying any public face presented. The main problem is double standards, made more dubious when drugs, hypnosis, altered states of consciousness, chanting practices or indoctrination methods, are utilised to render people unaware of basic things in their lives.
Just because people do not believe in a particular theology or they have no experience of it, does not mean other people do not believe sufficiently to carry out practices you personally cannot envisage existing. You only have to read relevant historical or anthropological accounts to know they have been done and, in some places, still are being carried out.
The line gets drawn for me when people draw the lines for other people’s lives, providing ‘answers’ or ‘rules’, reducing choices, extinguishing the ability to see what choices have been made for them, to be adhered to under threat of punishment, ridicule or death.
People may cite examples of attempts to examine some ritual abuse cases and the tagline is usually that ‘there is no evidence’. Cases may be chosen quite selectively, and there are things we may never get to hear about or have a chance of examining for ourselves.
Please, don’t just fall for the tagline. More is at stake than palpable, universally acceptable evidence. What evidence is totally acceptable to both sides in a court of law, plus to everyone else whose lives are touched by the case?
Someone can usually come up with a different tale to account for things, and that could be a person with a vested interest in standing on a public soapbox of denial, or with a personal need not to believe that something as awful as this could happen, which is a perfectly natural reaction.
Most of us like to feel in some control over our own lives, even if that is a feeling rather than actual reality. It’s like driving a car to a destination, where we may take in various places en route, but are heading somewhere in particular. So if we have various parts of our personality not in accord with that destination, the ride may not be so straightforward, or other parts or alters may have to take a back seat for that trip. Another day, one of those alters may be in more of a real or moral position to take the wheel.
With people who tend to dissociate as a way of handling their lives and its different situations, it can become difficult when there is conflict or confusion. An outside person becoming involved may find it hard to work out what is going on. Our own ‘rules’ for behaviour don’t apply. Some people believe in the concept of integration, but many survivors or people who dissociate, find this inappropriate or even harmful.
How can someone control their own life if someone else is blotting out large chunks deliberately, sometimes adding in other parts which are simply not true, manipulating to portray the insidious purpose that fits the bill? How can people thus manipulated manage to explain to police, other authorities or individuals, what has happened so that it is ‘provable’?
. . . .
Note by Cilla
The following is copied in here with the original author's permission because it makes some useful practical points.
. . . .
Regarding what follows
Anonymous reader
Not all of these things happen to all Survivors
Some of the material may be triggering. It is not meant to upset you
The aim is to show how easy it is for some people to manipulate other people
It is not your fault if things happened to you
If it happened to someone you know, it may help to read about it
Search on the Internet and find books or sites that suit you
Be careful when following up on information or help for yourself or someone you know
. .
My friend whom I will call Lindsey, had not had a carefree childhood playing with children her own age. She always seemed to have been looking after someone else, which transferred to her present situation as a mother to two young children.
She was an apparently ordinary and good mother. But her life was far from ordinary. If I had not been around when she needed to talk, I would not have realised the full extent of what she was trying to cope with.
Lindsey felt she did not cope well at all. I think you will see why she felt like that. None of what happened was her fault. She did everything she could to help her children and anyone else who needed help.
When things got too much for Lindsey, a young part of her personality chatted to me, and I call her Maisie. She was a lively and intelligent young person, and I could imagine her stamping in frustration when I could not understand her.
Lindsey did not have many alters. She dissociated into different alters sometimes, or simply withdrew from our chats for a while. Maisie was the alter who fronted for Lindsey when it was too hard to talk, or she was not sure if I would still help.
An older alter often came through, saying she was just an interpreter of Lindsey's feelings, or if Maisie couldn't explain something. I call her Jasmine. She was rather quaint and formal, and said she didn't know what it was like to be 'human', but when she was stressed she did express her needs.
Then there was a Robot alter. He was a complete opposite to Lindsey and we used to get into arguments during which he revealed some of the cult's secrets. So I got him angry deliberately!
Lindsey herself often did not know what was going on in her life. This was a naturally occurring protective mechanism - that she dissociated away from her difficulties. We are all a bit like it, but not so clearly defined.
When I wondered why Lindsey was not around when we'd arranged, or she could not explain something, it helped having input from young Maisie, interpretations from Jasmine, or the Robot who swore at me and made awful jokes. Robot's function was to make me give up trying to support Lindsey. One day he simply vanished, being replaced by others of his type.
Who was putting these Robot types in place? I believe it was cult-related, an attempt to infiltrate Lindsey's small DID system with a control mechanism to report back to the cult. Robots could send emails to the cult or to other people. They handled straightforward tasks, sometimes involving being very devious. When challenged by argument or logic or a new situation, they couldn't handle it and a new updated version would appear.
Apart from Lindsey, young Maisie, Jasmine and some Robots, there would be occasional adult alters who appeared to carry out a specific role almost like a temporary office worker, cook or cleaner.
There were also some teenage and younger alters who filled in gaps about Lindsey's past. Lindsey did not remember whole areas of her past, some of which seemed relevant to the present. It helped when the cult tried to scare Lindsey or to get her to go somewhere, because the teenagers were not a part of that situation and they could carry on chatting so Lindsay was safe.
Sometimes I encouraged Lindsey or Maisie to take an active step to avoid cult meetings and was told 'It's not Lindsey who goes'. Sometimes it seemed to be the Robot who attended as he played a specific role in what took place.
There were times when Lindsey would visit a friend, or she tried to sleep through attempts to get her to attend meetings such as various sounds being played, triggering emails, or direct threats shouted through her door.
On occasion I believe the cult would have let Lindsey leave it, but other factors came into play, other people involved in the drama and lifestyle who said that she couldn't do that.
The Robots were cult alters, the term Robot or Bot coming from computer jargon.
There was another cult-compliant alter who opened the door to go to meetings. Maisie said that person was like a doormat because she did what she was told. 'Doormat' wanted to know what I was offering because in some strange way the cult offered a feeling of security, despite everything.
Lindsey lived in the same general area most of her life. She knew there was a cult and that it involved ritual abuse. She sensed things about some of the people involved or could recall a detail like a ring someone wore. The cult met well away from habitation. Local people told Lindsey they knew there was a cult but that nothing could be done about it.
She knew little about the cult's ideology so we could not discuss it. It seemed she would have nothing to do with them unless coerced or tricked. Sometimes they tricked her that there was a full moon when there wasn't and she began to check it out for herself.
People like Lindsey have no say in their lives. The fly in the ointment is people like you or me. Cult people can't do entirely what they want if we persist; they may have to change some of their ways. They fear exposure.
They blocked my emails and told me that Lindsey was in hospital, and they told Lindsey I was going to live abroad. A constant theme was that no-one would believe Lindsey because she was confused. I was told that some of the people that we both knew were in the cult were merely part of Lindsey's DID system, created by her.
Young Maisie was tricked into spying on Lindsey and manipulating her in some double-game. But Maisie saw through it and changed allegiance. Lindsey herself could often see through the double-binds imposed, and avoided them without my intervention or with just a little back-up.
The cult can only work with what they have. They don't hold all the cards, however much they cheat and deceive. A number of people in the locality were emotionally supportive towards Lindsey, and she to them. Other things can also work in favour of a survivor.
Lindsey had a period of being relatively cult-free and she gained strength and confidence. The cult then 'reclaimed' her as if she had no rights herself. People like Lindsey are told they don't have any rights, and it is hard for them to believe otherwise.
They are told that bad things happen to them 'because they are bad'. Lindsey and those like her are not 'bad' or 'weak'. Support from others is helpful.
These cults are like an outdated feudal system designed to maintain the 'status quo' of their society. Drugs, blackmail and threats go a long way towards helping them maintain control, as well as providing an income and contact with people who are useful to them.
What is described on these pages is an attempt made by many people to control Lindsey and other vulnerable people. Their aim is to get other people to believe they aren't doing any of it, and make it all seem too ridiculous or impossible.
So it will help if it is discussed more openly and people can see it for what it is, a manipulative system.
If you are reading this and doing your best to keep clear of a similar cult or helping someone else, it may help to see how things happen in everyday terms.
The following are some examples:
Lindsey would not know how she ended up at cult meetings. She would be shopping or at an evening class, and not remember further.
Something might frighten Lindsey, and she was conditioned to go to hospital or to the police. The cult arranged for police cars to drive past her house, upsetting and scaring her.
If Lindsey went to hospital some of the staff there contacted someone from the cult, who came and whispered to her, or took her away for hours despite hospital regulations against it, and which she remembered little about.
The employment Lindsey obtained seemed to be arranged via the cult, leaving her free on cult afternoons or evenings. I might assume she was cult-free, only to hear how she was tired out, with bad bruises and torn clothing.
Much of the conditioning on Lindsey was carried out using hypnosis. It was hard to offset that by talking to her normally. That worked eventually but took some time. I did not feel it appropriate to use hypnosis in return.
Lindsey's children spent part of the week with her husband who was not cult-involved, but this was an arrangement that suited the cult. Sometimes custody days were changed and the cult were not always up-to-date and would turn up when the children were there and leave quickly.
The cult relied on keeping each other informed, dovetailing things so that Lindsey was not clear in her mind. Her clocks and computer date were often changed and she missed appointments. People entered her home and changed her medication so she became confused or hyperactive. Credit cards were applied for in her name with limits too high to manage. Other people spent on those cards and withdrew cash from her bank.
If Lindsey took items to a pawnbroker for cash or because they triggered her, they turned up in her home soon after. When she attended school meetings, her car was entered and triggering material was left inside by someone who knew the effect it would have, someone who had known her a very long time.
Lindsey went through periods of anger towards me or would only give one-word answers. I felt the cult had conditioned her into this. Sometimes an alter explained that it was intended to break our contact.
When Lindsey told hospital staff there was a local cult (something which other women said too) she was told her belief was 'psychotic' and she must retract it or she would not be allowed back home. This is a revealing dynamic with the inference that no-one would believe other things she said either.
The cult went from actively discouraging my involvement, to pressuring Lindsey into contacting me again. Lindsey would then make unrealistic demands on my time and what she wanted. I am satisfied it was not Lindsey making the demands but that they were implanted to throw a spanner in the works. Lindsey was neither demanding nor vindictive, no matter what happened. But she did take things literally.
A main factor in control is inducing fear. Cult members were told their lives were due to end, or the world would end but they would be safe if they went along with the cult. These strategies are used in other cults too, not just ritual or 'satanic' ones..
If someone says they will speak about the cult they are told 'You shall not talk about the cult and live'. If they do speak out, someone tries to ensure they are thought psychotic or too flaky to take seriously.
When I suggested to Lindsey that the cult would make an obvious mistake, she replied 'People who make mistakes pay other people to cover up those mistakes'. I find that lucid, not flaky.
The cult works via power and dis-information, with strategies for every occasion, playing things 'ends to the middle' - what we now call 'spin'. Those lower down are not involved in decisions and strategies. When they attend meetings they cannot see people's faces, or they are in an altered state, unaware of any other 'reality' than that.
Perhaps viewed in that light we can understand it more.
Often there are counter-allegations that such ritual abuse does not happen or is only minimal, and that the ideas must have been planted in people's minds, or they came to believe them when feeling vulnerable.
Such denial or dismissal makes it harder to bear; a double-dose of hardship instead of an atmosphere that helps people to heal and move on in their lives. This all upsets the lives of vulnerable people like Lindsey, making them more confused and vulnerable.
Cult-people probably have their reasons for doing what they do, but it takes up a very great deal of their time, and it also holds them in thrall to something or to someone else. How, for instance, would they break away themselves, or tell someone? They don't have much choice either then!
Perhaps some of those people are acting so inhumanly and in-humanely in the hope that they won't end up at the tail-end of a social or power system. Cults or other groupings can also undertake their 'control' machinations as a form of bullying, which is not to deny its effectiveness, or that other factors may be involved too.
Perhaps they were brought up and conditioned so that they can function in certain ways, while being largely unaware what they do and what sometimes happens to them. Two books which I feel bring this out are:
'Satan's High Priest' by Judith Spencer - based on a true story
'Morning Come Quickly' by Wanda Karriker- a novel which incorporates a number of themes
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