The word cult derives from the French word, “culte” meaning “worship”. Which is exactly what cults offer members- a spiritual haven and belief system centered on total devotion to a leader and ideology.

Crazy as they sound, cults draw people in with their promises of reaching a higher spiritual plane and connecting with the divine. They offer people the chance to leave a painful, confusing world behind in favor of total bliss, free from decision-making and the pressures of life. A lot of these people just seek inner peace.

So why the deviant sexual element? Almost always, when a man starts claiming to be godlike and gains a following, it’s only a matter of time before he starts sleeping with his followers.

Contrary to what we think, cult members are not weak-minded, gullible fools. The majority of them are regular people- young, educated and from more affluent backgrounds. They’ve lived lives before they join and seen the world. So then how do they not see the writing on the wall when their leader starts abusing sexual boundaries? How are they tolerant, even complicit in often criminal sexual behavior?

It works out real nice for a cult leader when God commands him to have sex with everyone’s wives, but how do these people go along with it?

Of course, there is some hard-core brainwashing involved. But what really pulls cult members in is that they are searching- desperately.

Cult leaders know this. They know that there is a natural human need to connect deeply. They also know the power of sex and understand that it has a spiritual element. And what greater force of connection is there than sex? So they exploit both their followers and sex to serve their own megalomaniacal, perverse desires.

But cult members aren’t phased.

Sex has a long history of being merged with the spiritual- in religious rituals, pagan practices and the occult. Even the followers of darker spirituality felt that through sex they could reach sublime, subconscious realms and otherworldly intensity.

So despite the glaring sexual red flags, cult  followers keep following. Because sex paired with spirituality makes sense to them- the two are intertwined. The human need for sex and connection is powerful, so much so that its darker manifestations can grip and control people as well.

But these corruptions of sex only indicate how drawn people are to make sex spiritual. There is a gravitation towards sex with meaning and to believe it can be a path to reaching something higher. But the spiritual potential of sex goes both ways. And the profane, unkosher forms of sex make it all the more clear just how holy sex can be.