Start Your Own Cult

A Field Guide to Shedding Mimetic Desires and Finally Becoming the Leader You Were Born to Worship.

Apr 08, 2025

-River Berumen, Organize

If you’re going to be in a cult anyway — and you are — it might as well be one where the Kool-Aid is organic, the Nikes are thrifted, and the branding is metaphorical. Minimal interaction with charismatic men named Jim. Ixnay the castration. (Looking at you, Heaven’s Gate.)

Cult City, Population: You.

Cults are everywhere. I bet you’re already in a few. Not to fear, this is a totally normal, maybe even evolutionarily necessary part of being human. In fact, I’d argue the few people who aren’t ascribed to any cult are the ones screaming at rocks outside your local 7/11. Labeled unwell — or maybe just early adopters of freedom…

Cultmaxing

The word “cult” comes from the Latin cultus, meaning to tend, to cultivate. See? Not that sinister. Actually sounds kinda sweet. <3

At its root, any group oriented around a shared myth, hierarchy, or symbolic act could qualify. Some cults got a bad rap but started with compelling origin stories (Findhorn Foundation, Synanon, SoulCycle, etc.) Add a pinch of control, a splash of isolation, a charismatic figurehead — and things start to get spicy! (As an aside, please remind me to write about my deep mistrust of our culture’s obsession with charisma.) Sure, ~~most~~ some devolve into UFO worship, federal investigations, and *cough* mild financial or physical entanglements. But that’s not required in the recipe. Just one flavor of the form.

My point here is that we’re all entangled in a network of cultlets. Think of your personal cults like those mercurial Apple subscriptions robbing you on a monthly basis. Or streaming services. Some of us choose Hulu, others HBO Max, most Netflix. Micro-cults Trojan Horse their way in: friend groups, fandoms, corporate culture, astrology meme pages, Substack creators…

#NotAllCults Are Cursed

Some had solid branding (NXIVM), killer fits (Rajneeshpuram very swag), or compelling beginnings (Jonestown’s jungle utopia — cool until it wasn’t?). But as we’ve seen, the vibe can switch up.

Not all cults end in group transcendence or FBI standoffs. Some just build underground temples in Italy and make art together. Others become the foundation of world religions (hi, early Christianity). The Kibbutz movement in Israel? Not technically cults, but definitely ideological micro-communities. Twelve-step groups like A.A.? The sacred texts, shared language, and layered initiations give culty overtones, and changed millions of lives.

Some call it structure. Others call it salvation.

The problem isn’t that we’re in cults, it’s that we rarely realize which ones we’ve joined, or why. We inherit ideologies like hand-me-downs: mismatched, ill-fitting, but too familiar to question.

Call it devotional irreverence.

Let’s have a play at how you can begin to create your own cult.

Step 1: Shedding Mimetic Desires

René Girard (patron saint of mimetic theory) posited that we don’t desire objects but what others desire. Our wants are contagious. Modeled, absorbed, not chosen. Copy-pasta’d, not felt. Thus most of us sign our cult membership contracts blind.

Do you have a good grasp on your true desires versus the ones you’ve borrowed?

Not to worry — you didn’t take a blood oath with the Devil. You can leave most of these clubs of your own volition. All it takes is awareness and a little discernment.

Time to Marie Kondo your internal programming: pick up each belief and ask, “Does this spark joy?” Or at the very least, do I want to keep paying membership fees? Maybe joy isn’t the litmus test here but determine your own. If it fails, chuck it. Unsubscribe. There should be an app for this.

Maybe your inner compass isn’t yours at all. Maybe it’s just been calibrated by someone hotter with better lighting. Or a curated algorithmic hallucination whispering that if you just align your aesthetic with enough lifestyle influencers, salvation awaits!!! Spoiler: it doesn’t.

“We are the hollow men / We are the stuffed men.” — T.S. Eliot

Full of ideas, longings, identities we never chose. Stuffed with suggestion. Hollowed by imitation. And, still, aching for meaning that actually fits.

(Don’t worship the metaphor. Use it to point you towards truth, then let it go.)

Step 2: Creating Your Own Mythos (On Purpose)

We’re all incessantly subconsciously self-mythologizing. Every human has deep lore, origin stories of despair and repair. And is anyone a better expert at discerning your desires, living your life than you? (You might read that rhetorically, but it’s a genuine question I’m always grappling with). Might as well make it conscious.

Why not design your internal paradigm like a patchwork quilt — stitched from memories, patterns, archetypes, and values that free you? And if we’re inevitably going to mythologize, ritualize, and organize meaning, why not do it with intention?

Creating your own cult isn’t about delusion, it’s about integration. Jung called this process individuation, bringing the unconscious into conscious form, integrating your inner archetypes and becoming whole. "Man needs a symbolic life... but we have no symbolic life. We are all badly nourished.”

-Minoan Lillies fresco, 1700 BC

Step 3: Start Your Inner Cult

Your spidey senses might be tingling at the contradiction here. Creating your own cult to escape cults is much like trying to break free from jail by building your own prison.

Maybe self-cultivation is still a cult. The difference is who's holding the remote. Welcome to the land of paradox, baby.

Clarice Lispector wrote, “I only achieve simplicity with enormous effort.”
Your cult might be simple — three candles, one mantra, a refusal to lie to yourself — but it will take devotion.

Now it gets fun.

Declare your dogma. Forge sacred artifacts. Conjure a baptism rite. Make it weird. Make it yours.

Remember: systems are scaffolds, not the thing itself.
Again, don’t worship the metaphor. Use it to point you towards truth, then let it go. Commandment #1: No outsourcing your authority

Your cult can be:

a container for inner cohesion
a sandbox for symbolic play
a joke that becomes sacred

Nietzsche said, “A joke is an epitaph on the death of a feeling.” Even if your cult begins as a joke, maybe that’s the soul getting dressed in humor before walking into meaning.

And hey, if you start one cooler than mine, pitch me. I’m in the market for new memberships and highly impressionable.

-Hermann Hendrich, Forest Pond, 1854-1931

Don’t hate me caveat!

This isn’t a hot take for contrarian’s sake. I’m not anti-cult. I’m not even saying you should opt out of every mimetic desire. Some desires might be serving you.

There’s a time and place to turn on cruise control, vibe with the collective, and let the osmosis wave lull you into sleep.
I love being a lemming. I love being a sheep. It’s cozy. Just make sure you know when you’re following — and why.

Keep calm and cult on, wherever it works.

Toward a Conclusion (Kind Of)

Hakim Bey coined the concept of Temporary Autonomous Zones — fleeting pockets of resistance and freedom where new meanings could emerge, just outside the surveillance of dominant systems.

Maybe your cult is a TAZ. Impermanent. Playful. Subversive. Just enough structure to dance in.

Religion works because it offers story, meaning, community, and continuity. When those systems start to crack, we don’t need to abandon the scaffolding, but simply rewrite the source code. Instead of pointing fingers at faltering institutions, build your own constitution.

Reconstructing your own belief system, even playfully, is a practice in discernment. It forces you to get clear about what you actually value versus what you were fed, sold, or shamed into adopting. Critical thinking in drag. You don’t need to buy every idea, but trying it on is how you learn what fits.

-Katayama Bokuyo, Mori, 1928

TL;DR:

Question what you’ve inherited.
Get playful with your beliefs. Choose with your eyes open in a mimetic world.
Opting in/out with intention is a radical act.
Elude formal frameworks of control, foster experimentation and new ways of being.

You need not renounce all mimicry or live as an aesthetic monk on a mountaintop.
Asking “Is this mine?” is a form of freedom.
You’re allowed to evolve. You’re allowed to edit the myth.

You were always the cult leader. You just forgot to write your own commandments.