Cult leaders

I am playing the role of cult leader of a fringe religious sect in a short play by John Casey, on at The Wayward Gallery, Bethnal Green, on 31st October - Halloween night! Doors open from 7.30 pm. It all happened quite fast, I originally applied to audition for a different role but the director thought I'd be right as cult leader, so I agreed to do it. I could tell you about my anxiety about learning lines and all that, but this is not so important in the larger scheme of things. What I am really concerned with is how to portray a cult leader without indulging in histrionics. This begs the question: who is a cult leader? How do people become cult leaders? what are the qualities exhibited by a cult leader?
"My" cult leader is scholarly. When describing her, John said "The character is a very spiritual academic so to some degree has transcended gender, I'd imagine her very controlled and serious, though also passionate about her research and spiritual endeavours, a comparable person from recent history might be Marlene Dobkin De Rios ".  He then added: "Dr V. (the character) was originally a research psychopharmacist for a major corporation, but founded the cult in the 1960s after the mythical alchemist, Hermes Trimagus, visited her in a dream and revealed to her the formula for Nigredo, the primal essence of the universe. She left her mainstream work and started a radical therapy group to treat certain supposedly incurable mental patients with Nigredo and other alchemic elixirs, from these medical/therapeutic origins, the cult formed as the various members of the group became spiritually attached by their experiences. Niam (another character, a priestess) is the Dr's star patient as she can become One with the symbolic deity Nyx (who is significant in a semi-mystical psychoanalytical process for accepting the vast coldness of the void and the inevitable destruction of the universe, and exalting in it with laughter and a sense of spiritual affirmation)."

This is quite a brief, Dr V. still eludes me, all that Dr V. and myself have in common for now is a mane of long white hair and an inquisitive mind.
Two films about cult leaders, quite different, spring to mind:  The Master (2012) loosely based on  Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, and Sound of My Voice (2012), about a mysterious woman claiming to be from the future and gathering followers around her through her charisma and seductiveness.
From my reading, the power of seduction seems to be an important and essential quality of cult leaders.  Cults, especially modern day ones, seem to be  based around their personality and they need to be able to fascinate you, intrigue you, stimulate you, for you to be willing to suspend your disbelief and follow them wherever they take you. It is not the case that only troubled people and people with poor judgment may get involved in cults, it could really happen to anyone. As John Stacey writes, no one joins a cult, cult members are recruited. It follows that the effectiveness of recruitment techniques is what makes a cult.
Some research on the topic led me to a 1993  article by James T. Richardson in the Review of Religious Research in which he sheds some light on the sociological meaning of the term. 'Cult' has negative associations today, but in the past it was a more neutral term, denoting developments within religious and spiritual traditions. However, one cannot deny the tendency to associate cultic developments to messianic messages and to specific personalities.  In ancient Greece the cult of Dionysus, God of wine and sensual pleasures, was prominent, later exported to Rome and becoming the cult of Bacchus, with the word bacchanalia becoming associated with it (i.e celebrations of Bacchus, lasting several days and involving excesses of all kinds. Interestingly,  the early bacchanalia were celebrated in secret in the grove of Simila by women only). They were not personality led, but clearly there were cult leaders, members of the serving sacerdotal class that led these events and who were  endowed with the  power to 'commune' with the deity and receive the deity's  theophany.
All this makes interesting background to my character. I am still working on her...


(Photos by Ama Saru modelled by Alex B)