Cults and Sects

As an anthropologist/documentary filmmaker, I've always been interested in the way people interpret their religious books and inturn worship their God/Gods. And youtube has provided some graphic video into mostly hidden religious practices of different sect and cults

Here are some I find exceptionally interesting.



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I find this an exceptionally beautiful expression of faith

Brilliant! I was only thinking about these people this morning, I am reading about the Snake Goddess of the Ancient Minoans...and was reminded of watching a documentary that featured this group some years ago.

Thanks for posting it, a wonderfully helpful synchronicity.

This one should interest you then on Why the New Mass and New Rite of Ordination are Invalid. They show all kinds of different ones.

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Mind over pain in the worship of a deity completely boggles this western mind.

reply to post by whaaa


Didn't the Native Americans do something similar? I was thinking the other day about when I was giving birth to my son, it was a long birth and I had been awake for over 48 hours, and generally exhausted from hauling around an extra 4 stone in weight...anyway, for a time towards the end, I went somewhere completely else, asleep in my head, but still very much physically awake and participating. There was no pain there.

The Syrian branch of Goddess worship, generally closely associated with Neith, practiced a 'ritual' that involved women dancing to drums and pipe music, quite dischordant music from what I can gather. The dancers, like dervishes, would whip into a frenzy, and then seek to draw their own blood, through biting, scratching and gouging. The faithful would do likewise. The result would be an intense, groups spiritual experience. Similarly, in Homer's Odysessy, when Ulysses asks his crew to strap him, crucifixion style on the mast to enable him to communicate with the gods and indeed he has a vision. Women who had borne the pain of childbirth perhaps always knew of the ability to escape or shut off physical pain, to remove 'self' to another place. In the Phrygian branch of Goddess worship, males that wished to join the Priesthood, would follow a ritual that culminated in their castrating themselves. They would then spend the night in the sacred cave and have visions. Though not all survived of course.