Rob Cameron writes for The New Modality on the potentials of re-enchanting the optimistic Solarpunk and Afrofuturist genres: There is no greater or more fundamental technology than culture. It, and the ark of ideologies that arise from it, are more than just peer pressure from dead people. Culture is software. And more often than not, that includes … Read more“Promised Land: Religious Ideology and Solarpunk Science Fiction”
In my quite deeply considered opinion, I’d make a terrible cult leader. I doubt that this upcoming Netflix documentary will change my mind, but I’m looking forward to it anyway. The culty cult story runs like classic Scooby Doo; you know exactly what’s going to happen, but it can be fun checking out the little … Read more“How to Become a Cult Leader” (documentary, 2023)
Elizabeth Hand’s short story The Bacchae takes place in a near-future world of sky-shields and mutant fish, awakening to dark-red, cultic magics: A shadow sped across the ground. For an instant it blotted out the sun and Gordon looked up, startled. He had an impression of something immense, immense and dark and moving very quickly … Read more“The Bacchae” (1991)
Caitlin R. Kiernan’s short dark fantasy story Houses Under the Sea introduces the charismatic academic-turned-Lovecraftian-cult-leader Jacova Angevine: When I close my eyes, I see Jacova Angevine. I close my eyes, and there she is, standing alone at the end of the breakwater, standing with the foghorn as the choppy sea shatters itself to foam against … Read more“Houses Under the Sea” (2003)
Click here to read Carole Cusack’s history and analysis of the Church of All Worlds, an early neoPagan religion that drew significant inspiration from Robert A. Heinlein’s science fiction classic Stranger in a Strange Land: The process of secularization, which was assumed to be the dominant model of religion in Western culture, was supposed to … Read more“Science Fiction as Scripture: Robert A. Heinlein’s ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’ and the Church of All Worlds”
See this entry by the World Religions and Spirituality Project for more on the Phoenix Goddess Temple: At the end of the day, the case against the Temple turned on several issues: whether Elise was a “spiritual leader” or a “brothel madam,” whether the Temple “goddesses” were “priestesses” or “prostitutes,” whether “orgasm” was part of … Read moreVICE News reports on the Phoenix Goddess Temple
Edited by Bron Taylor, the anthology Avatar and Nature Spirituality (2013) offers critical, personal, and spiritual reflections on James Cameron’s blockbuster science fiction epic via essays on the following subjects, among others: “Becoming the ‘Noble Savage’” (nature religion and the ‘other’ in Avatar) “The Na’vi as Spiritual Hunters” (a semiotic exploration) “Calling the Na’vi” (evolutionary … Read more“Avatar & Nature Spirituality” (2013)
Denver, Colorado’s International Church of Cannabis promotes the new religion of Elevationism, on the premise that: (…) an individual’s spiritual journey, and search for meaning, is one of self-discovery that can be accelerated and deepened with ritual and mindful cannabis use. We use the sacred flower to reveal the best version of self, discover a … Read moreElevationism and the International Church of Cannabis