Common misconceptions about cults

Cults are easy to recognize, they wear strange clothes and live in communes.
Hmm .. some of them yes. But most of them are ordinary people like you and me. They live in houses, wear the same clothes, eat the same food. The leader of the cult does not want you to know that you are being recruited into a cult, because they give the command of their recruits how to dress, speak and act in a way that you can relax. One cult has even invented a phrase to describe it, they call it "plausible relationship". ("established relationship "," to be connectable ")

Cults are full of weak, weird and emotionally unstable people.
Not true. Many cult members are very intelligent, attractive and skillful. The reality is that all types of people are involved in cults. One of several common denominator is that they were recruited when they were young - more on that later.

Cults are just a bunch of religious patients.
This is a common mistake that people make when they think that cults are purely religious groups only. The modern definition of a cult that controls the mind applies to all groups that use mind control and the cunning techniques of recruitment in this article reveals. Religious system is often distorted to become the basis for these techniques, but techniques are the ones who make a cult of it. In a free society people can believe what they want, but most people will agree that it is wrong that someone wants to deceive and control people.

Christians call all other groups cults.
Essentially, Christians are told that if a group claims to be Christian, and teaches something that is fundamentally different from what the Bible teaches then they are a cult. A Buddhist group that claims to be Buddhist is not a cult but Buddhist group that pretends to be a Christian is.

The Cathars: Religion And Spirituality

The Cathars, also known as the Albigensians were a Christian religious group who appeared in western Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries. Their origin has been traced to the Bogomils and the Gnostics, with whom they shared a similar philosophy. The term Cathars originates from the Greek, catharos, which means the purified ones. Christian theologians debated with themselves for centuries whether Cathars were Christian heretics or whether they were not Christians at all. Cathars believed in two principles, a good creator god and his evil adversary. The evil god Satan or Lucifer ruled the material world which is evil and that humans must renounce the world to free their spirits. They believed that a man who died without such a spiritual rebirth would face reincarnation again and again, in human or animal form.

Opus Dei: Fact and fiction

Opus Dei (Latin for "the work of God") is an organization within the Catholic Church that emphasizes the Catholic belief that everyone is called to holiness and that ordinary life is a path to sanctity. The order was founded in Spain, 1928 by a Catholic priest Josemaría Escrivá with the approval of Pope Pius XII. All the members follow the so called "plan of life," made up of spiritual practices such as daily Mass, rosary, spiritual reading, and mental prayer, as well as Opus Dei prayers and customs. Opus Dei has often been described as the most controversial force within the Catholic Church. Contraversies about Opus Dei have been centered around of its alleged secretiveness, its recruiting methods, and the alleged right leaning politics of its members. Dan Brown calls Opus Dei a sect and a cult. He claimed in his book Da Vinci Code that Opus Dei was a secret organization aim was to defeat the Priory of Sion and those who seek to uncover the truth about Christianity and Jesus Christ. According to Brown, Opus Dei covers up Christ’s alleged marriage to Mary Magdalene. There has been also a great deal of controversy over Opus Dei because of the strictness of its religious structure.
Opus Dei has more than 80,000 members worldwide in more than 90 different countries, they are wealthy and influential in politics and business.