Cults

For practical purposes “cult” only has meaning in relation to the Abrahamic trio, and designates any spiritual practice which does not accept, at the very least, a few of the basic tenets of the triad, or any spiritual practice and belief remaining unpopular, on a level of popularity the triad exemplify.
This excludes Buddhism and Hinduism and many other spiritual approaches that cannot be called religions but fail to accept the basic tenets of Abrahamism, but remain at par, if not exceed in popularity the nihilistic trio.
From a naturalistic perspective – Paganism that is – cult might be defined in conflict with this established belief, leading to a sense of irony befitting this contradiction: cult is a spiritual practice that worships concepts in conflict with experienced reality, forcing the believers/followers to rely on “blind faith” (irrational criteria), or on deferring to authorities (proxies), which is a redirection of reference from the world to the man (establishment man), or from perceptible phenomenon to noetic construct with no external references.
This would expose the Abrahamic trio as satisfying the criteria for cult membership, with only their popularity remaining to taunt us with a question: why?
This question not that difficult to answer if you understand the appeal of cults.

We can understand the agreement of conscious organisms on a particular belief – conception of probability – and the usage of metaphors to deal with what remains unresolved (mysterious), for here we have a common world, experienced empirically, through the senses, so an agreement here, a convergence of perspectives here, is logical, even predictable, what baffles the rational mind, if it does not take into consideration human fallibility, cowardice, stupidity, is how two, or more, individuals can come to a mutual conclusion on things none of them perceive, can point to, can prove, and/or justify.
This is where knowledge of what a cult is, comes in handy.
Exploitation of emotional, charismatic authority figures, a positive message even if totally divorced from reality, in fact more so if it is, all participate in creating these delusional beliefs, that begins as cults, and then develop kin what we now call religions.
The only spiritual beliefs that can be called “religions” are the trio of Abraham.
All the other spiritual practices, describing common relationships of man and nature, cannot be called religions, unless the Abrahamic trio does so to reduce them to its own level of Nihilism.
Because, if we simply believe that a “cult” is a group of people who hold as most probable what contradicts popular beliefs, and is controversial among the many then we’ve established stupidity, throughout historical time, as the standard for measuring possibility, and we’ve made intelligence bow before popular stupidity.
The honest definition of a ‘cult” would be any belief not founded no a common standard, other than human psychology and human mental fabrications, the world outside the mind.
This is where the irrational, manipulating cowardice, feeble mindedness, and ignorance, depends on maintaining the masses on that level, because if they rise above it the belief vanishes in air, having no other foundation but in the minds of imbeciles.
Being part of a majority fails to meet rational criteria for evaluating what is more probable than not.
Throughout history, Moderns of their time and place, believed in all kinds of absurdities; later debunked and replaced with new, “better” delusions.
This is not a method for measuring probability, it is a method of escaping the responsibility of your own judgment, and a method of overcoming your personal inherited genetic limitations.

With no external standard to unite minds in agreement, the cult relies on constructing an abstraction, so appealing, so soothing, and so attractive, as to draw the feeble and the needy.
Usually is comes in the form of some charismatic “leader”, with a nice face, a smile, and inspiring words/symbols emanating from him, or her.
But, in these times of American “individualism”, and cynicism, this can no longer have the effect it once did.
In a modern age modern methods are effective, which means that the form, the anthropic principle has to be replaced with a metaphor, an abstraction, a symbol, a word: an idol promising salvation, vibrating with positive energy, something to compensate for the lack of substance with numbers, with words, with warm bodies, converging upon the idol, that is not there, creating a corporeal layer that makes it “real”.