CultNEWS101 Articles: 11/13/2025
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Patrick Ryan
Nov 13, 2025, 3:01:56 AMNov 13
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Cult Awareness Day, Church of Immortal Consciousness, Oneida, Mandaeans
International Cult Awareness Day: November 18th
Join us this International Cult Awareness Day, November 18th, as we raise awareness about the dangers of coercive control and the impact of cults on individuals, families, and society.
Cults can take many forms, from seemingly harmless groups to high-demand organizations that exert undue influence over their members. They often isolate individuals from their support networks, exploit their resources, and undermine their ability to think critically.
This year, we encourage everyone to:
- Educate yourselves: Learn about the warning signs of cults and how coercive control operates. Resources are available from organizations dedicated to cult awareness and recovery.
- Support survivors: If you know someone who has been affected by a cult, offer your non-judgmental support and help them connect with professional resources.
- Share information: Help us spread the word by sharing information about International Cult Awareness Day on social media and with your networks.
#CultAwarenessDay #CultAwareness #CoerciveControl #SupportSurvivors https://cultawarenessday.com/
"As a young boy, Danny Rensch dreamed of being a chess prodigy. It wasn’t just that he was obsessed with the game; chess seemed like an escape from the extreme circumstances of his childhood.
Rensch was born into the Church of Immortal Consciousness, a spiritual community based in Tonto Village, not far from Payson. Rensch said the group was a cult, and in his new memoir, “Dark Squares,” he told the story of how chess became a pathway out of the group’s clutches.
Rensch would go on to become one of the most celebrated chess players in the world — but not without some heartbreaking sacrifices along the way."
Men's Health: Death By Lightning Depicts Assassin Charles Guiteau In a Sex Cult. It Really Happened.
The Oneida community was a real thing, and Garfield's assassin really spent time there.
" ... During Death by Lightning, Charles Guiteau lives with the Oneida community—a group of people who don’t shy away from sex. The real-life Guiteau joined the religious sect in Oneida, New York in 1860, as his father had praised the group. The Oneida sect operated on the philosophy of “free love,” meaning they were very open in that regard.
Just like in the show’s portrayal, Charles struggled to fit in with the other members. He left the community twice. He tried to start The Daily Theocrat, a newspaper in New Jersey based on the Oneida religion, but failed. His second departure from Oneida resulted in him filing a lawsuit against the group’s founder, John Humphrey Noyes, due to failure of payment for work he supposedly performed. However, Charles’s father, Luther Wilson Guiteau, wrote letters in support of Noyes that deemed his son irresponsible and insane, as noted in The Trial of the Assassin Guiteau: Psychiatry and the Law in the Gilded Age.
Guiteau and Noyes didn’t always have a strained relationship, though. In an article from The Atlantic, Guiteau is cited as writing the following of the Oneida leader: "I have perfect, entire and absolute confidence in him in all things.” Granted, this was before the lawsuit and before Guiteau passed off Noyes’s writings as his own—but it proves that there was a point in time when he legitimately looked up to him.
How did the Oneida community begin?
Noyes started Oneida by gathering his followers in 1848. Their primary beliefs included that Jesus had already returned, the practice of communalism, group marriage, and more. Although there were smaller communities in cities like Newark, New Jersey and Cambridge, Vermont, the Oneida community predominantly lived at the New York compound. The group’s numbers grew to 306 members by 1878, and they dissolved around 1880, according to Syracuse University.
What happened to the Oneida?
After Noyes disbanded Oneida, it was converted into a joint-stock corporation, Oneida Community Ltd. to “control of their communally owned properties and businesses,” per the Oneida Mansion House website. The company later shortened their name to Oneida Ltd. in the early twentieth century and began producing tableware."
RNS: Members of the last surviving gnostic sect prepare for the 'Little Feast' in Texas
"Mandaeans, who believe they are descendants of the disciples of John the Baptist, have scattered around the globe, fleeing war and persecution in the Middle East.
As the morning sun of Central Texas burned off the lingering crispness of a recent autumnal Sunday, Valid Ebadfardzadeh, an older man with a long white beard who was dressed in a stark white cotton turban and robe, lifted his hands in prayer.
To his right stood a bespectacled man with a salt-and-pepper beard, dressed in identical attire, with a golden ring on his pinky and a wooden staff resting against his shoulder. He stooped slightly, silently reading ancient words from a tattered book.
The two men are priests belonging to an ancient Middle Eastern sect known as the Mandaeans, one of the world’s smallest and least known religious groups. Consisting of about 60,000 members worldwide, Mandaeans are considered by scholars to be practitioners of the last surviving gnostic religion, a faith that may contain pre-Christian origins and reflects the swirling influences of Greek and Middle Eastern thought in the first century A.D.
Mandaeans believe they are descendants of the disciples of John the Baptist, the ascetic preacher who baptized Jesus Christ, according to the Christian tradition, and baptism remains their faith’s central ritual. Unlike Christians, however, the Mandaean religion requires practitioners to perform baptism, called the masbuta, every Sunday, often rebaptizing the already baptized, in flowing, fresh water.
The two priests had come to the edge of the San Marcos River near Texas State University, about 30 miles south of Austin, to administer the rite separately to groups of men and women.
The Mandaean community in Texas is one of several that have fled religious persecution and the chaos of wars in the Middle East. Historically residents of Iraq and Iran, the Mandaeans have scattered around the globe. Those who found refuge in Texas’ Hill Country, between Austin and San Antonio, mostly fled discrimination in Iran. Some of the group say the Central Texas climate matches that of Ahvaz, the southwestern Iranian city in which many of Iran’s Mandaeans originate."
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