Weirdest cults in history

So I just learned about the Skoptsy and was wondering what other bizarre groups this board has encountered. For the sake of avoiding the really esoteric and the really obvious religion jokes shall we say groups with more than 500 but less than 500,000 members at one time?

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcellions
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult
youtube.com/watch?v=zKn_XCamjC0
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

Posadism is brilliant - Trotskyism driven by UFOs, and viewing nuclear holocaust as pretty darn nifty.

Nicolaism. A very early Christian heresy that supposedly revolved around orgies and fucking. Nicolaites practiced polygamy and shared their women amongst themselves. Its founder Nicolas allegedly said "Unless one copulates every day, he cannot have eternal life." John of Patmos mentioned them in the Book of Revelation.

Most likely 90% things about them is just made up slander but who knows.

communism

There's one from around 400AD in North Africa I forget the name of but they were basically rules-lawyering themselves into heaven via martyrdom.

So what they did was make themselves these gigantic wooden clubs and go around trying to beat up travelers in the hopes that the traveler would fight back and kill them, earning them a direct ticket to the kingdom of god.

There was one account of a traveler having this happen to him and going "okay I'll kill you all but you've gotta let me tie you up first so I know your buddies won't attack me after I kill the first guy", the cultists agreed and then after they were tied up the traveler beat them up and left.

They would also do stuff like the usual mass suicides in rivers and from cliffs, and also burning themselves at the stake, and running into a courthouse and disrupting the proceedings so that the judge would order them killed for contempt of court.

Eventually they were banned by the church for being obnoxious assholes, and just turned to regular banditry befor dying out by 500AD.

Sounds like 500 AD /pol/acks

>men cutting their cocks off
So, transgenders?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcellions

That's literally what the Children of God/Family International cult preaches.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult

nice to know never heard of that

>So I just learned about the Skoptsy and was wondering what other bizarre groups this board has encountered. For the sake of avoiding the really esoteric and the really obvious religion jokes shall we say groups with more than 500 but less than 500,000 members at one time?

Mono"theism."

"It's a god! I'll prove it by murdering you if you disagree!"

"Everyone except Pharaoh has a license from God to kill people."

This is one of my favorite - if there's a TRUE prophet that doesn't worship the law of Moses - it must be executed:

> If prophets or those who divine by dreams appear among you and promise you omens or portents, and the omens or the portents declared by them take place, and they say, “Let us follow other gods” (whom you have not known) “and let us serve them,” you must not heed the words of those prophets or those who divine by dreams. ... But those prophets or those who divine by dreams shall be put to death for having spoken treason against the Lord your God - Deuteronomy 13:1-3,5

youtube.com/watch?v=zKn_XCamjC0

There were also the early 19th century communists in the USA who were a "Christian" group that did a combination of free love and eugenics. They practiced total gender equality and slew of similar wild experiments. Everybody in the commune was married to everybody else, while anybody who wanted to reproduce had to go before the committee and get approved. Children born in the commune separated from their parents at birth to be raised communally, while being carefully monitored so that they wouldn't form family relationships exclusive from the commune.

They ended up failing when nearly all of the kids raised in the commune didn't want to be free love communists.

>and then after they were tied up the traveler beat them up and left.
/ourguy/

>They ended up failing when nearly all of the kids raised in the commune didn't want to be free love communists.
Everytime

wasnt that basically what John of Leiden preached

Why did I think of SS13 when I saw that link.

The Donatists.

So it's basically Plato's Republic?

This is great

...

part of the series “real life shitposting”

>In 1874 the sect numbered at least 5444, including 1465 women. Of these 703 men and 100 women had partaken in bodily mutilation.
Call me naive but I'm very dissapointed. The percentage of dudes doing the castration thing is super small.

>In 1993, 7,000 of TFI's 10,000 members were under 18 years of age.

Russians mocked them by forcing them to dress as women so clearly not.

>Weirdest cults in history
LGBT and /pol/

I would understand this if it happened during muslim or pagan times, but how the fuck does being killed by fellow christian romans count as martyrium?

spooky shit