For the last three and a half years I’ve been in apart of a cult. I’ve always been religious, I was raised catholic and attended church for school and during holidays. During my teenage years I was drawn heavily to Buddhism. I was lucky enough to find a temple that wasn’t that far from me and I started volunteering there as often as I could. I cooked, I cleaned, I meditated for hours it was peaceful and accepting. I decided to leave Buddhism after the rise of the far-right in 2016-2017 when I also decided to start taking activism seriously. From 2018-2022 I Identified loosely as pagan, but I longed for religious structure, community and routine. Then i found out about Chaos Magick a system that one can follow that utilizes beliefs or practices from different religions and a “whatever works best for you” mindset. Chaos Magick in itself isn’t bad, and I’m not here to tell you how evil this cult was, I’m just here to share my experiences. I’m not going to name the cult that I was apart of not because I fear retaliation but because I don’t want people to get drawn into them like I did, they make that easy to do. Around August 2023 I first heard about chaos magick and it peaked my interest immediately. I quickly read the entire Wikipedia page on it and the historical context of it all. Aleister Crowley, Austin Osman Spare, Sigil magick, Banishment Rituals, Thelema, it was all very structured and appleling to me, like a world I’ve never heard of had opened and all I had to do was learn. I had found a belief system that I enjoyed and it aligned with my politics of anarchy and autonomy almost perfectly the only problem was I didn’t have a community. I finally heard about a group who had created their own modern belief system within chaos magick, their own gods and deities each having their own ritualistic summoning and purpose. I was hesitant but I eventually joined because I was isolated and I longed for community and connection. The group I’ll call them [Redacted] was a loosely defined Chaos Magick internet cult that spawned around 2007 or 2008 on early internet message boards about the occult. I read their manifesto that was riddled with cryptic messages as all their text is, and I was sucked into a “Assault on Reality” as they called it. I became infatuated with learning everything I could from understanding their sigils, to how to perform a banishment ritual, to summoning specific god forms. In the weeks that followed my arrival I fell into what i can only describe as a weeks long spiritual psychosis in which I was, or at least felt like I was, detached from reality. I spent the days interacting with other online cult members and nights reading texts and performing rituals and reporting my results. It had structure, routine and a social community to compare notes with or just talk about life. They had a open door policy where you can basically come and go as you please but they made it easy and intriguing to get sucked into the group and easier to stay. I was never pressured into doing anything and i never met another member in real life but that almost didn’t matter, and in some ways it made it worse. I know a lot of groups in the magick and spiritual circles had beef with the group but i never involved myself or investigated, it seemed interpersonal or drama from a decade ago. One thing about the alternative magick community is that there are nazis. I was thankful that [Redacted] had a very hard policy on racism, fascism and hate speech in general, they vetted almost everyone and were constantly kicking and banning people. Those who were higher up in the hierarchy give new people or almost anyone a cold shoulder if they don’t know you which makes sense in a chat of 600 random people, you had to earn social credit to move up. As of February 2026 I’ve left [Redacted], I left without warning or goodbye. I felt like I needed to move on and it had wasted at least some of my time and wasn’t affecting me positively. If you are close to me and are spiritual I’ve probably tried to get you interested in [Redacted] in the past few years and I apologize I’m glad no one actually took the bait besides me. At their best they are a group of internet anarchist dropping 20 grams of shrooms and meditating a lot. There was nothing left for me there and unless you wish to waste your time as well I advise keeping away. I won’t say I’ve closed myself off spiritually but I will be taking a long break.