My Cultish Devotion to Cults

I’m too skeptical and stubborn to join, but still I can’t look away

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and his followers in Paris, 1979. Photo by Bernard Charlon /Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

One subject I’ve returned to time and time again is cults. The first one I wrote about was EST for the Boston Phoenix; then I wrote about Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh for the Village Voice. There was hardly a cult I didn’t want to learn about and try to decipher. I am glued to documentaries about NXIVM and…