Today let’s talk about religion, but not how you are thinking about talking about religion, let’s talk about the “other” religions out there, the off the beaten path religions, the religions that have the odd origins, the odd practices, and the roots that some of us, well me, find just a little bit out there. For those of y’all in practice of one or more religions that I mention, just remember the following information is public as far as I know and is not a leak from inside your particular cult and/or religion. The information, as it would be, was passed along to me by a member of The Scorpion Army, the information was originally collected to write a college sociology paper to discuss the relationships between people and the religious leaders they follow. A paper I could never have written, seems the term sheeple is not an acceptable term to describe a religious organization’s flock of followers. So, without further ado, lets look at religions which might seem a little bizarre or weird to the main stream public of the world. By the way, I’ve fired my proof reader, so if there are duplicates or misspellings y’all just need to suck it up.
One will notice that there will be a handful of religions not discussed, that should be discussed, but I’m not setting out to bust anybody’s balls today or to ruffle any feathers. This post is for entertainment purposes, maybe even a little educational, and perhaps might even open our eyes to the different things, people, idols, places, ideas, concepts, objects, or times we worship to get through our days and nights. The order of this list is in no particular order, nor does the order of the list mean anything specific. Religion can be understood largely as an attempt of a group of individuals to understand existential questions based on a set of cultural practices specific to that group. Sometimes these practices may not seemingly conform to our normal expectations from a ‘religion’. But they succeed in fulfilling what is expected of a religion- uniting people because of the belief that they may share. However, there is one condition that all religions must comply. They must not hinder the lives of others.
The Church of Scientology is a cult created by L Ron Hubbard (Elron) in 1952 as an outgrowth of his earlier self-help system called Dianetics. The Church of Scientology holds that at the higher levels of initiation (OT levels) mystical teachings are imparted that may be harmful to unprepared readers. These teachings are kept secret from members who have not reached these levels. In the OT levels, Hubbard explains how to reverse the effects of past-life trauma patterns that supposedly extend millions of years into the past. Among these advanced teachings is the story of Xenu (sometimes Xemu), introduced as an alien ruler of the “Galactic Confederacy.” According to this story, 75 million years ago Xenu brought billions of people to Earth in spacecraft resembling Douglas DC-8 airliners, stacked them around volcanoes and detonated hydrogen bombs in the volcanoes. The thetans then clustered together, stuck to the bodies of the living, and continue to do this today. Scientologists at advanced levels place considerable emphasis on isolating body thetans and neutralizing their ill effects.
Nuwaubianism is an umbrella term used to refer to the doctrines and teachings of the followers of Dwight York. The Nuwaubians originated as a Black Muslim group in New York in the 1970s, and have gone through many changes since. Eventually, the group established a headquarters in Putnam County, Georgia in 1993, which they have since abandoned. York is now in prison after having been convicted on money laundering and child molestation charges, but Nuwaubianism endures. York developed Nuwaubianism by drawing on a wide range of sources which include Theosophy-derived New Age movements such as Astara as well as the Rosicrucians, Freemasonry, the Shriners, the Moorish Science Temple of America, the revisionist Christianity & Islam and the Qadiani cult of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the numerology of Rashad Khalifa, and the ancient astronaut theories of Zecharia Sitchin. White people are said in one Nuwaubian myth to have been originally created as a race of killers to serve blacks as a slave army, but this plan went awry. Here is a list of some of the more unusual Nuwaubian beliefs:
1. It is important to bury the afterbirth so that Satan does not use it to make a duplicate of the recently-born child
2. Furthermore, some aborted fetuses survive their abortion to live in the sewers, where they are being gathered and organized to take over the world
3. People were once perfectly symmetrical and ambidextrous, but then a meteorite struck Earth and tilted its axis causing handedness and shifting the heart off-center in the chest
4. Each of us has seven clones living in different parts of the world
5. Women existed for many generations before they invented men through genetic manipulation
6. Homo sapiens is the result of cloning experiments that were done on Mars using Homo erectus
7. Nikola Tesla came from the planet Venus
8. The Illuminati have nurtured a child, Satan’s son, who was born on 6 June 1966 at the Dakota House on 72nd Street in New York to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis of the Rothschild/Kennedy families. The Pope was present at the birth and performed necromantic ceremonies. The child was raised by former U.S. president Richard Nixon and now lives in Belgium, where it is hooked up bodily to a computer called “The Beast 3M” or “3666.”
The Church of Euthanasia (CoE), is a political organization started by the Reverend Chris Korda (pictured above) in the Boston, Massachusetts area of the United States. According to the church’s website, it is “a non-profit educational foundation devoted to restoring balance between Humans and the remaining species on Earth.” The CoE uses sermons, music, culture jamming, publicity stunts and direct action combined with an underlying sense of satire and black humor to highlight Earth’s unsustainable population. The CoE is notorious for its conflicts with Pro-life Christian activists. According to the church’s website, the one commandment is “Thou shalt not procreate”. The CoE further asserts four principal pillars: suicide, abortion, cannibalism (“strictly limited to consumption of the already dead”), and sodomy (“any sexual act not intended for procreation”). Slogans employed by the group include “Save the Planet, Kill Yourself”, “Six Billion Humans Can’t Be Wrong”, and “Eat a Queer Fetus for Jesus”, all of which are intended to mix inflammatory issues to unnerve those who oppose abortion and homosexuality.
The Prince Philip Movement is a cargo cult of the Yaohnanen tribe on the southern island of Tanna in Vanuatu. The Yaohnanen believe that Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, the consort to Queen Elizabeth II, is a divine being, the pale-skinned son of a mountain spirit and brother of John Frum. According to ancient tales the son travelled over the seas to a distant land, married a powerful lady and would in time return. The villagers had observed the respect accorded to Queen Elizabeth II by colonial officials and came to the conclusion that her husband, Prince Philip, must be the son from their legends. When the cult formed is unclear, but it is likely that it was sometime in the 1950s or 1960s. Their beliefs were strengthened by the royal couple’s official visit to Vanuatu in 1974 when a few villagers had the opportunity to observe the prince from afar. Prince Philip was made aware of the religion and has exchanged gifts with its leaders and even visited them.
The Creativity Movement (formerly known as World Church Of The Creator), is a white separatist organization that advocates the whites-only religion, Creativity. It was also a descriptive phrase used by Ben Klassen, that included all adherents of the religion. The use of the term creator does not refer to a deity, but rather to themselves (white people). Despite the former use of the word Church in its name, the movement is atheistic. Creativity is a White Separatist religion that was founded by Ben Klassen in early 1973 under the name Church of the Creator. After Klassen’s death in 1993, Creativity almost died out as a religion until the New Church of the Creator was established three years later by Matthew F. Hale as its Pontifex Maximus (high priest), until his incarceration in January 2003 for plotting with the movement’s head of security, Anthony Evola (an FBI informant), to murder a federal judge.
Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth (TOPY) was founded in 1981 by members of Psychic TV, Coil, Current 93, and a number of other individuals. The ever-evolving network is a loosely federated group of people operating as a unique blend of artistic collective, and practitioners of magic. TOPY is dedicated to the manifestation of magical concepts lacking mysticism or the worship of gods. The group focuses on the psychic and magical aspects of the human brain linked with “guiltless sexuality”. Throughout its existence, TOPY has been an influential group in the underground Chaos magic scene and in the wider western occult tradition. TOPY’s research has covered both Left-hand path and Right-hand path magick, various elements of psychology, art, music, and a variety of other media. Some of the influences on the network have been Aleister Crowley, Austin Osman Spare, and Brion Gysin.
The Church of the SubGenius is a parody religion that promotes slack, while in a meta-commentarial way, satirizes religion, conspiracy theories, UFOs, and popular culture. The church claims to have been founded in the 1950s by the “world’s greatest salesman” J. R. “Bob” Dobbs. “Bob” Dobbs is depicted as a cartoon of a Ward Cleaver-like man smoking a pipe. The church really started with the publication of SubGenius Pamphlet #1 in 1979. It found acceptance in underground pop-culture circles and has been embraced on college campuses, in the underground music scene, and on the Internet. An important SubGenius event occurred on July 5, 1998: X-Day. The Church had been predicting that on this day the world would be destroyed by invading alien armies known as the X-ists (which is short for “Men from Planet X”). When the event didn’t come to pass, the church administrator who predicted it was tarred and feathered – but allowed to continue on as administrator. Paul Reubens (Pee-wee Herman) is a SubGenius minister. Patrick Volkerding, the founder and maintainer of Slackware Linux, is also a SubGenius affiliate, and he has confirmed the Church and “Bob” inspired the name for Slackware.
Universe people or Cosmic people of light powers (Czech: Vesmírní lidé sil sv?tla) is a Czech religious movement centered around Ivo A. Benda. Its belief system is based upon the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations communicating with Benda and other “contacters” since October 1997 telepathically and later even by direct personal contact. According to Benda those civilizations operate a fleet of spaceships, led by Ashtar Sheran, orbiting the Earth. They closely watch and help the good and are waiting to transport their followers into another dimension. The Universe People’s teachings incorporate various elements from ufology (some foreign “contacters” are credited, though often also renounced after a time as misguided or deceptive), Christianity (Jesus was a “fine-vibrations” being) and conspiracy theories (forces of evil are supposed to plan compulsory chipping of the population).
The Nation of Yahweh is a predominantly African-American religious group that is the most controversial offshoot of the Black Hebrew Israelites line of thought. They were founded in 1979 in Miami by Hulon Mitchell, Jr., who went by the name Yahweh ben Yahweh. Their goal is to return African Americans, whom they see as the original Israelites, to Israel. The group departs from mainstream Christianity and Judaism by accepting Yahweh ben Yahweh as the Son of God. In this way, their beliefs are unique and distinct from that of other known Black Hebrew Israelite groups. The group has engendered controversy due to legal issues of its founder and has also faced accusations of being a black supremacist cult by the Southern Poverty Law Center and The Miami Herald. The SPLC has criticized the beliefs of the Nation of Yahweh as racist, stating that the group believed blacks are “the true Jews” and that whites were “white devils.” They also claim the group believed Yahweh ben Yahweh had a Messianic mission to vanquish whites and that they held views similar to the Christian Identity movement.
The Church of All Worlds is a neo-pagan religion founded in 1962 by Oberon Zell-Ravenheart and his wife Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart. The religion evolved from a group of friends and lovers who were in part inspired by a fictional religion of the same name in the science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein; the church’s mythology includes science fiction to this day. They recognize “Gaea,” the Earth Mother Goddess and the Father God, as well as the realm of Faeries and the deities of many other pantheons. Many of their ritual celebrations are centered on the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece. Following the tradition of using fiction as a basis for his ideas, Zell-Ravenheart recently founded The Grey School of Wizardry inspired in part by Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the school in the Harry Potter novels.
Cheondoism is a 20th-century Korean religious movement that has its origins in a peasant rebellion in 1812. Cheondoist theology is basically monotheistic, pantheistic and panentheistic. Cheondoism is rooted in Korean shamanism and Korean Buddhism, with elements drawn from Christianity. It has become so popular in Communist North Korea that it is now the leading religion there. The religion believes that God exists in each of us and that we should all strive to make earth a paradise. It attempts to transform the believers into intelligent moral beings with a high social consciousness.
Mazdakism is a religion founded by Mazdak, a socialist Persian (Iranian) reformer in the 6th century BC. He claimed to be a prophet (similar to Mohammed 1,200 years later) and instituted communal possessions and social welfare programs. The two distinguishing factors of Mazdak’s teaching were the reduction of the importance of religious formalities — the true religious person being the one who understood and related correctly to the principles of the universe — and a criticism of the strong position of Zoroastrian clergy, who, he believed, had oppressed the Persian population and caused much poverty. Despite the concepts of good conduct and Pacifism, the followers of Mazdak raided the palaces and harems of the rich, removing the valuables to which they believed they had equal rights.
Builders of the Adytum (or BOTA for short) is a religion created in California by Dr. Paul Foster Case. The religion teachs its adherants by correspondence but also has bases around the world where people meet and perform religious ceremonies. Most of the beliefs and teachings are based on esoteric psychology, occult tarot, Hermetic Qabalah, Astrology, and meditation techniques. BOTA is not a strictly Christian organization, nor is it Jewish. B.O.T.A believes that the Qabalah is the mystical root of both ancient Judaism and the original Christianity, but people of all faiths are accepted if they are mystically inclined.
Asatru is a revival of ancient Nordic religion based upon polythesitc faith and mythic tales. According to the religion, there are four key deities and several minor gods. Adherents usually live in communities called Kindreds. They ascribe to the “Nine Noble Virtues” as a model for their lives. While the original Norse would have participated in animal sacrifice, modern worshipers offer mead, a honey-wine, to the gods. Major holidays revolve around the changing seasons with Yule being the most important. It is celebrated in late December and continues for twelve days.
Eckankar was established by American John Paul Twitchell in 1965. It is a monotheistic faith, which worships the divine spirit “Eck.” Eckankar is similar to some Eastern religions in its belief that the soul is constantly reincarnated until it achieves spiritual liberation. The religion teaches that spiritual growth is only possible through special meditative exercises similar to yoga. Through these practices, the soul can escape the physical form and enter the Sugmad, or spiritual realm. Successful completion of one’s spiritual journey results in a reunification with Eck.
Jainism was founded in India over 2500 years ago. It survives today with approximately four million believers, called J. This polytheistic faith preaches that many gods exist alongside humans in a complex hierarchy. The Jain gods are symbolic of common human ideas. Similar to Buddhism, the goal of “Jain Life” is to achieve spiritual perfection and free the soul from the cycle of rebirth. Those who succeed in this endeavor are called jinas. Jain worship centers on icons and numerous Jain temples in India contain images of the 24 tirthankaras, revered spiritual leaders. Offerings are frequently made to these images as part of Jain ritual. Meditation and monasticism are also key features of Jainism.
Founded in the early 20th century, this religion is based around so-called “Prophet Healing” churches in Africa. It claims around one million adherents, mostly in Nigeria. Aladura is directly related to the Anglican movement of Christianity. It was founded as a response to missionary movements in Africa. The religion emphasizes divine healing and a strict moral code. Its practices mix Anglican traditions with African rituals. Many ritual objects are involved in the practice, and the faiths leaders are known as prophets who are entrusted with healing believers through rituals and prayer.
This Vietnamese religion combines elements of Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Catholicism. It was founded in 1926 and claims up to 6 million adherents. Believers worship a vast array of saints, which includes such notable figures as Julius Caesar and Pericles. The ecclectic nature of Cao Dai complements its idealistic mission to create a more tolerant world. Adherents see all humans as sharing a divine heritage. The practicies of this faith are somewhat occult and derived from Taoist traditions. Believers hold seances in addition to group prayer and elaborate ritual ceremonies.
Falun Gong is a recent religious movement with roughly three million practitioners. It was founded in China in 1992 by Li Hongzhi. It combines elements of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism with traditional Chinese folklore. Falun Gong aims to obtain mental and spiritual renewal through meditation. Adherents practice special exercises to awaken their center of spiritual energy and rid themselves of physical and spiritual ailments. The faith has received extensive criticism from the Chinese government, which initially saw the new cult as a threat. Outsiders also tend to ridicule Falun Gong’s contention that antagonistic space aliens are manipulating world leaders.
With nearly two billion professed adherents worldwide, Christianity is currently the largest religion in the world. It has dominated western culture for centuries and remains the majority religion of Europe and the Americas. Christian belief centers on the life of Jesus of Nazareth, a teacher and healer of first-century Palestine. The primary source of information about the life of Jesus are the Gospels, four books written by different authors 30-100 years after Jesus’ death. The Gospels eventually became the first four books of the New Testament. Christian practices vary by denomination, but common elements include a Sunday worship service, private and corporate prayer, study and reading of the Scriptures, and participation in rites such as baptism and communion. Distinctive Catholic practices include recognition of seven total sacraments, Sunday mass, devotion to the Virgin Mary and the saints, and veneration of relics and places associated with holy figures. Eastern Orthodoxy holds many practices in common with Catholicism, but is especially distinguished by the central role of icons: ornate images of Christ and the saints believed to provide a connection to the spiritual world.
Wicca is a highly spiritual religion based on the ancient pre-christian pagan religions. Not all pagans are wiccans! Wiccans believe in divine forces as the source of all. It is both immanent and transcendent while encompassing the whole universe. Therefore the world and all aspects within the world, “nature” and “life itself” in particular, are considered sacred. Wiccans use ancient and modern ceremonies, rituals and shamanic practices to attune themselves to the natural rhythms of nature, the world, and the universe in their efforts to commune with this divine force. To communicate with the force, wiccans believe it to be manifest in the form of a goddess and god. As they emanate from the same source, both retain equal power, hence equal status. By manifesting the power in two deities (goddess and god), the natural balance of opposites, cause and effect are retained, e.g. Summer/winter, light/ dark, life and death etc. Each opposite is essential to maintaining the balance and rhythm of life on earth.
Islam is one of the largest religions in the world, with over 1 billion followers. It is a monotheistic faith based on revelations received by the Prophet Muhammad in 7th-century Saudi Arabia. The Arabic word islam means “submission,” reflecting the faith’s central tenet of submitting to the will of God. Followers of Islam are called Muslims. According to Islamic tradition, the angel Gabriel appeared to the Prophet over the course of 20 years, revealing to him many messages from God. Muslims recognize some earlier Judeo-Christian prophets—including Moses and Jesus—as messengers of of the same true God. But in Islam, but Muhammad is the last and greatest of the prophets, whose revelations alone are pure and uncorrupted. The Prophet dedicated the remainder of his life to spreading a message of monotheism in a polytheistic world. In 622, he fled north to the city of Medina to escape growing persecution. This event marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar. Eight years later, Muhammad returned to Mecca with an army and conquered the city for Islam. By Muhammad’s death, 50 years later, the entire Arabian Peninsula had come under Muslim control. The sacred text of Islam, the Qur’an, was written in Arabic within 30 years of Muhammad’s death. Muslims believe it contains the literal word of God. Also important is the tradition of the sayings and actions of Muhammad and his companions, collected in the Hadith.
Worshippers of Satan can broadly be categorised as spiritualists for whom Satan is an actual deity and atheists for whom Satan is a figure symbolising crisis of faith, individualism and free will. Certain sects are notorious for their activities. Like the ‘Beasts of Satan’ committed murders in Italy between 1998-2004. The ‘Order of Nine Angels’ affirmed human sacrifice (1960s). The public practice began with the establishment of the Church of Satan in 1966.
The Rastafari believe that the Ethiopian King Haile Selassie is the God of All. The aim of the religious movement is to restore pride in African identity which suffered because of the forces of colonialism. They proclaim Zion as the original birthplace of mankind and reject ‘Babylon’ or the world of materialism. Bob Marley is one famous Rastafari who followed the principles of Rastafarian lifestyle including ritual use of marijuana, avoiding alcohol and wearing one’s hair in dreadlocks.
Claude Vorilhon formed the religion in 1974 as a U.F.O. religion. Raëlians believe that a humanoid species of extraterrestrials, Elohim are responsible for the genesis of the human race. They believe that the Elohim misinformed humans that they were angels and that Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed and others are Prophets of Elohim. They believe that the Elohim will come back to meet us when we are peaceful and ready. They believe in awakening of the mind through awakening of the body. The usage of the Swastika as a religious symbol has caused the religious group some problems in Israel.
Diego Maradona is a legend to say the least. His fans started a religion for him in the year 1998 and has more than a million followers in more than sixty countries. The supporters of the Maradonian Church count the years since the football legend Maradona’s birth in 1960. The use of the neo-Tetragrammaton, D10S as one of the names of Maradona is popular with this group. D10S is a portmanteau word which fuses 10 (diez in Spanish) which is Maradona’s t-shirt number, and dios which is the Spanish word for God.
Influenced by “Born in Zion,” by Carol Balizet, this group denounces the ”seven systems” of mainstream society which include education, government, banking and religion. But also, medicine, science and entertainment. In 2002, the pastor of The Body of Christ sect -Robidoux and his wife Karen E. Robidoux, were charged with murder along with her husband for starving their child. They said that they were waiting for God’s sign to feed the baby. This pseudo-Christian cult believes in the power of faith healing.
The Christian Science Church, founded in 1879 by Mary Baker Eddy who survived an accident which could have been fatal by praying to God and reading her Bible. She wrote books like ‘Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures’. The Church runs on the belief that “Anyone can find God to be a very present help in trouble”. The followers believe that pain does not exist. “The only reality of sin, sickness, or death is the awful fact that unrealities seem real to human, erring belief, until God strips off their disguise”. Though the Church propagates faith healing, healthcare is a matter of individual choice.
A religion inspired by George Lucas’s ‘Star Wars’, Jediism was founded by Daniel Jones and his brother Barney in 2008. There have been incidents when Jedis have been evicted from public places for refusing to take off their hood including the founder,Daniel which led to the beginning of a campaign for Jedi rights. The Jedis believe that the ‘Force’ is a reality and that morality is an innate quality of human beings. The religion asks followers to beware of the dark side of this force which leads to fear which leads to hate and which in turn leads to suffering. There is no scripture as such. But there are guidelines for Jedi marriages.
The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (Pastafarianism) has only one dogma- No dogma! Bobby Henderson’s open letter to the Kansas School Board marked the official beginning of this ‘religion’. The letter demanded that the theory of Intelligent Design and more specifically the theory of the Flying Spaghetti Monster should be taught to students along with theories of Evolution. He reasoned that this must be done to appease the monster and usedgraphs showing relation between pirate population and national disasters to prove this. Seen by some as a satire against religion, the adherents claim that satire is intrinsic to religion.
Frisbeetarianism is the universal belief that when you die your soul goes up onto the roof and stays there for eternity as described by the comedian George Carlin and that “the soul stays stuck up there until someone knocks it down with a long pole and your new life begins”. Some people think it is a rouse of sorts to honor Carlin, a Catholic who was educated at New York City parochial schools and thought organized religion was “the biggest bullshit story ever told.”
Though people are mostly skeptic about the identity of Vampirism as a religion, the adherents believe it is. Vampirism is derived largely from the depiction of vampires in popular culture especially Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ (1897). Vampires can be described as active vampires-who indulge in feeding on blood from a human or an animal and psychic vampires- who indulge in feeding on another person’s aura. Sexuality and its representation have a big role to play.
Undoubtedly I will have left out one or three religions of the world which one of y’all will get particularly bent out of shape for, well, don’t. There’s no need to get bent out of shape, this is just a blanket list of many of the religions of the world. If you weren’t mentioned, sorry, maybe next time. Don’t fuck with me or I will dedicate the next ten posts to the cult of The Westboro Baptist Church. No matter what, we can see that there are what each of us could consider different or strange religions out in the world, and of course, the human design is to judge others, but in the end we were all born to eventually die, to live a meager existence within a population of other people who are just as lost as we are. Eventhough this post was not intended to offend anyone in particular, it will offend someone for some reason or another. Just take the generic information for what it is, go read up on it if you please, I am just the passer of information at this point in time in history. For the rest of y’all, the ones with the common sense, I hope you enjoyed this little exploratory trip into the minds and missions of people the world over.
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