How to Create a Cult?

There are some words in our language that give us shivers.

Cult or sect is probably one of those words.

I have personally never met someone who proudly said "I am a part of a cult," and yet many people seem to be perceived as "cult" members still. I see many people judging other communities or tribes as some sort of new-age or other types of radical cults. It is often used almost as an insult to shame an entire network of beings.

Every single person wants and needs to be a part of a group, a family, a tribe, or a community. But probably most are terrified of ending up in a cult.

But how do you differentiate them? How do you know when you are simply a part of a like-minded group of people and when you are already a proper cult member?

First, cults can have many types.

They can be religious or spiritual. But they can also be political, social, cultural, economic, etc. Rebel groups are also often considered as cults. You can also be in the cult of a lobbying party, video game, or a cryptocurrency. Any group can demonstrate cult-like behaviors. Many small businesses and even big corporations operate in the cult-like mindset today.

Creating "cults" around brands and products is one of the most studied marketing techniques in high-level business schools.

If you want your business to work like magic and grow endlessly, most market developers and strategists will offer to teach you how to create a cult out of your organization. This methodology works, and usually businesses have no problems in taking full advantage of this process to grow their revenues.

In the corporate world, this is just how it works best. No one is scared or ashamed of this.

And yet, in reality, the dynamics of power and all the other repercussions are exactly the same as in religious cults which we shame and are afraid of.

Isn't it curious?

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So, let's assume we want to create a successful cult. What are the logical steps that would lead us there?

You might be surprised, but it is not that easy to create a proper cult. There is a secret recipe that must be followed.

A cult is a very unique social structure.

It is not yet a community, and it is not a tribe anymore. A cult is like a smaller group with its own ideology and evolutionary strategy in a larger system (they often depend upon) that sees itself somehow different from others. Most often, a cult is also characterised by a presence of a leader.

It represents a distinctive social structure that exists at the intersection of several organizational forms, yet stands apart from each of them.

It is neither a tribe in its purest sense, nor a community in its healthiest expression, nor merely an organization with rigid hierarchies. Rather, a cult emerges as a hybrid form when developmental processes become arrested or distorted.

To understand cults with greater nuance, we must recognize their multidimensional nature:

Psychologically, cults function as identity containers that offer both belonging and distinction.

They provide members with a powerful sense of being part of something special—chosen, enlightened, or uniquely positioned to understand truths hidden from outsiders. This psychological positioning creates a compelling double gratification: the comfort of belonging coupled with the superiority of exclusivity.

Structurally, cults exhibit a particular pattern of concentric circles of involvement and access.

At the center sits the leadership (often a charismatic individual or small elite group), surrounded by layers of decreasing access to power, information, and decision-making. These layers are not merely organizational conveniences but intentional barriers that maintain power differentials while creating aspirational pathways that keep members striving for greater inclusion.

Epistemologically, cults operate through controlled knowledge systems in which information flows primarily in one direction—from the center outward.

Alternative perspectives, critical thinking, and external information sources become categorized as threats rather than resources. Truth becomes defined not by its correspondence to observable reality or logical consistency, but by its origin from approved sources within the group.

Developmentally, cults perform a curious paradox.

They simultaneously fulfill developmental needs (for belonging, meaning, and purpose) while actively preventing continued development beyond certain thresholds. They offer answers to life's fundamental questions while systematically dismantling the tools that would allow members to evaluate those answers or generate alternative ones.

The key distinction between cults and other forms of social organization is this precise combination of isolation, control, and exploitation—not as occasional dysfunctions but as defining features.

Unlike healthy communities that encourage personal growth within a supportive framework and maintain permeable boundaries with the wider world, cults typically restrict growth to predetermined paths that serve the group's or leader's interests while actively maintaining separation from outside influences.

In the natural evolution of human organization, tribes are meant to evolve into communities. This is how consciousness expands – from individual to tribe to community to ever-wider circles of belonging. But evolution isn't guaranteed. Sometimes, it gets stuck.

A tribe that fails to evolve into a community becomes a cult.

What happens in this arrested development? We can understand it through the lens of Spiral Dynamics, a developmental model that describes how human consciousness evolves through distinct stages, each with its own worldview and values system.

In Spiral Dynamics terminology, tribal consciousness (often called "Purple") represents an early stage of collective development. This stage is characterized by:

• Strong kinship bonds and blood ties

• Mystical beliefs and ritual traditions

• Protection from threats through group belonging

• Intuitive decision-making and elder wisdom

• Circular time perception and ancestral reverence

As a tribe grows and encounters increasingly complex challenges, Purple consciousness naturally seeks to evolve toward more sophisticated forms of organization. This developmental journey follows a sequential spiral pattern where each stage transcends yet includes the previous ones—creating an integrated evolution rather than a series of disconnected leaps.

This spiral progression reveals an important rhythm: an alternation between individually-focused and collectively-focused stages. Each shift represents a recalibration between personal agency and group cohesion, a dance between autonomy and belonging that becomes increasingly nuanced as consciousness evolves.

A healthy developmental sequence moves through these stages:

• Purple (magical/tribal) – Creating safety through kinship bonds, ritual, and tradition. This collectively-focused stage provides essential belonging and protection.

• Red (impulsive/egocentric) – Expressing power, asserting dominance, and breaking free from tribal constraints. This individually-focused stage allows for the emergence of distinct leadership and personal power.

• Blue (order/authority) – Establishing clear structures, principles, and meaning systems that provide stability and direction. This collectively-focused stage creates the necessary foundation of shared rules and roles.

• Orange (achievement/strategic) – Embracing innovation, effectiveness, and growth through individual excellence and merit. This individually-focused stage unlocks creative potential and rewards performance.

• Green (communitarian) – Cultivating equality, consensus, and inclusion that honors all voices. This collectively-focused stage reintegrates individual achievements into a more conscious community framework.

• Yellow (systemic/integrative) – Developing flexible, context-appropriate responses that navigate complexity with ease. This individually-focused stage allows for autonomous functioning within larger systems.

• Teal (evolutionary/holistic) – Manifesting self-organization, purpose-driven action, and evolutionary potential. This collectively-focused stage transcends rigid structures while maintaining coherent functionality.

Communities cannot simply bypass stages in this developmental sequence. A tribe cannot leap directly from Purple mythic-membership into Green egalitarianism without first developing the necessary Red assertiveness, Blue structures, and Orange capacities that provide the foundation for higher integration.

However, something critical goes wrong in the cult formation process. Instead of facilitating this natural evolution, the developmental trajectory becomes hijacked.

While developmental hijacking can occur at any transition point in the spiral, each shift from individually-focused stages to collectively-focused stages presents a particular vulnerability. The transition from Purple tribal consciousness toward Blue order-based systems is especially susceptible to distortion in religious and spiritual communities.

However, it's important to recognize that cults can form at other developmental stages as well:

• Blue to Orange transition: Business cults often form here, where achievement-oriented systems become warped into exploitative structures that demand absolute loyalty to corporate ideologies while promising individual success

• Orange to Green transition: Social cause cults can emerge here, where communitarian ideals become twisted into rigid orthodoxies about inclusion and social justice that paradoxically exclude those with different perspectives

• Green to Yellow transition: New Age or consciousness cults may form here, where systemic thinking becomes corrupted into elitist worldviews that separate the "evolutionarily advanced" from "lower consciousness" individuals

In each case, the natural progression toward greater complexity and integration becomes arrested. Taking the Blue hijacking as a characteristic example, in healthy development, Blue structures provide necessary organization while preserving dignity and autonomy.

However, in cult formation, we see a warped implementation where:

1. Structure becomes domination: Rather than serving the group's genuine needs, hierarchies become rigid power preservations

2. Rules become unquestionable dogma: Instead of practical guidelines that can evolve, rules become sacred and beyond critique

3. Order becomes control: Rather than providing stability for exploration, order becomes an end in itself

4. Trust becomes blind obedience: Instead of earned authority based on wisdom, authority demands unquestioning submission

This distortion occurs because the tribal need for belonging—one of our most fundamental human needs—gets hijacked by Blue-level control mechanisms. The legitimate desire for structure and meaning gets corrupted into strict hierarchies, unquestionable dogma, and absolute authority. Members trade autonomy for certainty, critical thinking for belonging.

What makes this particularly insidious is that it mimics true development while actually preventing it.

The cult often adopts the language and trappings of higher developmental stages (like Orange achievement or Green inclusivity) while maintaining rigid control structures that preclude the authentic emergence of these more complex forms of consciousness.

The Developmental Trap

What makes cults particularly insidious is how they mimic aspects of higher consciousness while actively preventing true development. They offer:

• The safety and belonging of tribal life

• The meaning and purpose of Blue consciousness

• Sometimes even the promise of achievement from Orange levels

• Or the language of inclusivity from Green

But these are hollow promises, facades covering a structure that ultimately restricts rather than expands consciousness.

For individuals developing beyond the group's level, this creates a painful cognitive dissonance. Their personal evolution is at odds with the group's stagnation. When they question or try to evolve the group, they face the cult's immune response: shaming, ostracism, or intensified control measures.

The Corporate Parallel

This brings us back to the corporate world's open embrace of cult-building techniques.

Many businesses explicitly seek to create the tribal belonging, unquestioned loyalty, and boundary control that define cults. They want employees and customers who identify so deeply with the brand that it becomes part of their identity.

The language differs – we speak of "company culture," "brand loyalty," and "organizational values" rather than "devotion," "faith," and "doctrine" – but the psychological mechanisms are often identical.

What makes this particularly troubling is that businesses operate at Orange (achievement/strategic) or even Green (communitarian) levels in some aspects, while deliberately fostering Purple (tribal) and Blue (authority) dynamics in their relationship with stakeholders.

The Dance of Leadership

The evolution from tribe to community hinges on a critical yet often overlooked phenomenon: the transformation of leadership itself. In this journey, we see a fascinating dance of power – first concentrated, then deliberately distributed.

When a tribe begins evolving toward more complex organization, it naturally empowers certain individuals as guides or representatives. This initial concentration of power serves an important developmental purpose. The emerging leaders function as guardians of transformation, creating necessary structures and processes that the tribal consciousness alone cannot generate.

This leadership emergence follows a predictable pattern.

The tribe, sensing its own limitations in coordinating more complex activities, collectively empowers those individuals who demonstrate particular capacities – perhaps visionary thinking, organizational skill, or the ability to mediate conflicts.

This power transfer is a form of collective intelligence in action; the tribe intuitively knows it needs these capacities amplified to evolve.

What happens next determines whether this evolution completes or arrests. The true guardian of transformation understands something profound: their power is borrowed, not owned. They recognize their role as temporary scaffolding – necessary for a time, but ultimately meant to be dismantled as the new structure becomes self-sustaining.

In successful evolutions, we see what might be called "reverse empowerment" – leaders who systematically work to distribute their initially concentrated authority.

They create processes through which collective wisdom can emerge. They establish decision-making frameworks that require less central coordination. They mentor others rather than directing them, gradually transferring not just responsibilities but the underlying capacities that make leadership possible.

The dance is delicate because it requires synchronization between leaders and community members. Often, community members resist taking back the power and responsibility they initially delegated. Having tasted the comfort of following clear direction, they may prefer the relative safety of remaining followers rather than embracing the ambiguity and responsibility of distributed leadership.

This reveals why cult formation is not solely the fault of power-hungry leaders – it requires the complementary abdication of responsibility by members. The gravitational pull toward cult dynamics comes from both directions. Leaders who refuse to distribute power meet followers who refuse to reclaim it, creating a codependent relationship that masquerades as community while actually preventing its emergence.

This understanding challenges both our typical narratives about cults (that they're simply the creation of manipulative leaders) and our myths about community formation (that they emerge organically without the need for leadership). The reality is more nuanced – communities require a developmental sequence where leadership is first concentrated to create necessary structure, then deliberately distributed to create genuine autonomy.

The Path Forward

Understanding this developmental trap offers insight into healthier paths forward. True communities maintain the best aspects of tribal belonging – the connection, mutual support, and shared identity – while transcending their limitations.

Healthy communities feature:

• Leadership that serves rather than dominates

• Boundaries that are defined but permeable

• Identity that includes but transcends the group

• Knowledge that evolves rather than calcifies

• Relationships based on authentic exchange rather than exploitation

Perhaps most importantly, healthy communities support the ongoing development of their members, even when that development challenges the community to evolve.

The question for any group, from spiritual communities to corporations, is whether they're facilitating this evolution or preventing it. Are they creating structures that help both individuals and the collective transcend and include previous levels of development? Or are they using sophisticated tools to keep people trapped in dependency and limitation?

A community that supports evolution may sometimes feel less secure than a cult, but it offers something far more valuable: the space to become fully ourselves within the embrace of authentic connection.

The Shared Responsibility of Evolution

The transformation from tribe to community represents one of humanity's most significant developmental challenges – one that plays out repeatedly across scales, from small groups to entire civilizations. What makes this transformation so universally challenging is that it requires simultaneous evolution at both individual and collective levels.

The pull toward cult dynamics emerges precisely at this juncture of shared responsibility.

For a tribe to become a genuine community, two complementary processes must unfold in tandem.

First, those in leadership positions must evolve beyond their attachment to centralized power. This is not merely an organizational shift but a profound personal transformation.

Leaders must develop beyond the ego gratification of being needed, beyond the security of clear authority, and beyond the identity formed around being "the one in charge." This evolution requires leaders to find fulfillment in enabling others rather than directing them – to experience their success through the success of those they've empowered.

Second, community members must evolve beyond their attachment to the safety of followership. This requires developing comfort with ambiguity, willingness to take risks, and the courage to express one's authentic voice even when it differs from the collective. Most challenging of all, it requires embracing responsibility not just for one's own actions but for the well-being of the whole.

When either side fails in this evolutionary task, the cult trap awaits. If leaders cling to centralized power while members readily surrender responsibility, we see classic authoritarian cults. If members demand the benefits of community while refusing its responsibilities, we see leader-worship cults where figurehead authority remains unchallenged despite obvious dysfunction.

This explains why it is so easy to become a cult member, particularly in times of uncertainty.

The cult offers a seductive package: belonging without the burden of integrity, identity without the challenge of authenticity, and the appearance of power without the weight of responsibility. For individuals seeking refuge from the demands of growth, these compromises may seem a small price to pay.

Yet there is no shortcut to genuine community. The path requires both leaders and members to continually evolve, with leadership becoming increasingly contextual and distributed. In mature communities, the distinction between leader and follower becomes fluid and situational – everyone leads in contexts where their gifts are needed, and everyone follows where others' wisdom is greater.

This is why the concept of fixed leadership must ultimately dissolve for a successful transition. In both healthy tribes and true communities, leadership is contextual and emergent – but communities operate at a more complex level where leadership can rapidly shift based on changing needs and capacities rather than fixed roles or positions.

The irony is that many organizations attempting to "build community" focus exclusively on formal structures while ignoring this fundamental evolution of power dynamics. They create the superficial trappings of community – mission statements, values documents, participation structures – while maintaining leadership paradigms that ensure these remain mere facades over essentially tribal or cult-like power distributions.

True community emergence requires courage from all involved – the courage of leaders to progressively work themselves out of a job, and the courage of members to step fully into their power and responsibility. It is a dance of mutual growth, where each side must trust the other's capacity to evolve.

When the Evolution Succeeds

While we've explored the arrested development that creates cults, it's equally illuminating to examine organizations that successfully navigated the tribe-to-community transition. These success stories offer both hope and practical insights.

Consider Buurtzorg, a healthcare organization in the Netherlands that began as a small tribe-like group with a shared vision of humanizing care. Their journey is particularly instructive because they encountered – and overcame – the exact developmental trap we've been discussing.

In their early scaling phase, Buurtzorg began adopting more sophisticated management structures that inadvertently created distance between care providers and patients.

Documentation requirements increased, standardized protocols proliferated, and decision-making became more centralized. Though efficient on paper, this evolution toward a corporate structure began undermining the very human connection at the heart of their mission. Nurses reported feeling more like technicians following procedures than caregivers responding to human needs. Despite growth metrics suggesting success, the soul of the organization was at risk.

What makes Buurtzorg remarkable is that they recognized this drift toward what we might call a "sophisticated corporate cult" – a structure that had all the trappings of advancement but was actually restricting both individual autonomy and authentic connection. Instead of doubling down on control, founder Jos de Blok made the courageous decision to deliberately dismantle hierarchical structures and distribute power throughout the organization.

They reorganized into autonomous neighborhood teams of 10-12 nurses who manage themselves, make their own decisions about patient care, and handle their own scheduling. Crucially, they eliminated entire layers of middle management, replacing them with coaches who serve rather than direct teams. Technology was reimagined as a tool for connection rather than surveillance, with nurses controlling their own information systems.

This wasn't merely a structural reorganization but a fundamental power redistribution – the very reshuffling that cults resist. The result was explosive growth not despite but because of this transition to true community principles. Today, with over 15,000 employees, they've maintained the intimacy and purpose of a tribe while functioning with the sophistication of a community, delivering higher quality care at lower costs with greater nurse satisfaction.

The Buurtzorg story illustrates that organizations don't need to avoid the power reshuffling that naturally occurs in the tribe-to-community transition – they can embrace it. By creating systems where leadership serves emergence rather than constrains it, where boundaries remain defined but permeable, and where individual growth and collective evolution are seen as complementary rather than threatening, they demonstrate the immense potential that lies beyond the cult trap.

The Digital Paradox

The evolution of social structures doesn't happen in a vacuum, particularly in our digital age. Technology functions as a profound force in tribal development, capable of either facilitating healthy community formation or reinforcing cult-like isolation.

At its best, technology breaks geographic constraints, enabling communities to form around shared purpose rather than mere proximity. It creates unprecedented transparency, reducing leaders' ability to control information flow. Digital tools allow for flexible participation structures with multiple pathways for contribution, making communities more accessible and diverse.

Yet these same tools can be wielded to create more sophisticated forms of tribal isolation.

Algorithmic echo chambers intensify confirmation bias, creating bubbles of perceived consensus. Surveillance capabilities enable unprecedented monitoring of member behavior, reinforcing conformity. Closed digital spaces can become more isolated than physical ones, creating the illusion of being part of something larger while actually restricting exposure to diversity.

Perhaps most troubling is how technology enables parasocial relationships that feel intimate but are fundamentally asymmetrical. Charismatic leaders can now create the sensation of personal connection with thousands simultaneously, amplifying the psychological dynamics that fuel cult formation.

The same digital tools that could help us transcend tribal limitations can also be used to exploit them more efficiently. The key difference lies not in the technology itself but in who controls it and toward what purpose it's directed.

Recognizing the Trap

For those who sense they might be caught in a developmental trap, whether in a spiritual community, political movement, or corporate culture, certain warning signs and liberation strategies are worth considering.

You might be in a developmental trap if personal growth is encouraged only within narrow, prescribed paths – if questions are welcome only when they lead to predetermined answers.

Watch for how outside relationships are framed; in cults, external connections are often portrayed as dangerous or contaminating. Notice when your sense of self becomes increasingly defined by group membership, when imagining life outside the group provokes disproportionate fear or emptiness.

Perhaps most telling is what happens when you express doubts. In healthy communities, sincere questioning strengthens rather than threatens the collective. In cults, it leads to status loss or punishment. You might find yourself increasingly relying on leaders to determine what's true or valuable, your own discernment subtly discouraged.

The path forward begins with small acts of developmental courage. Deliberately maintain relationships outside your primary group. Practice asking "What do I think about this?" before seeking others' views. Seek friendships based on mutual evolution rather than fixed roles. Observe group dynamics without immediately condemning or defending them, creating internal space for discernment.

Liberation often starts with testing small boundaries – experimenting with minor deviations from group norms and observing responses. Healthy communities can tolerate difference; cults respond with control measures disguised as concern or protection.

The journey from tribal belonging to community participation isn't about rejecting connection – it's about finding forms of belonging that nurture rather than restrict our becoming.

True communities expand our capacity to be fully ourselves while contributing to something larger than ourselves. They make us more rather than less – more autonomous, more connected, more discerning, and more compassionate – while cults ultimately make us less of ourselves in service to the group's limitations.

The Spiral of Conscious Evolution

As we reflect on this journey through the perilous terrain between tribe, cult, and community, we might recognize that we stand at a pivotal moment in human development. The challenges we've explored aren't merely academic – they're playing out across our world in real-time, from workplaces to political movements, from spiritual circles to online spaces.

The proliferation of cult-like dynamics in our era isn't a coincidence.

In times of rapid change and uncertainty, the pull toward simplified belonging intensifies.

The more complex and threatening the world seems, the more appealing the promise of clear answers and defined boundaries becomes. Yet simultaneously, we've never had greater access to the tools and knowledge that could facilitate genuine community evolution.

Perhaps what we're witnessing is not a failure but a necessary tension in our collective development. Like adolescents caught between the comfort of childhood dependence and the responsibility of adult autonomy, our social structures struggle in this transitional space.

The regressive pull toward cult-like patterns exists precisely because we stand at the threshold of something more evolved.

The way forward isn't to shame those caught in these dynamics – whether leaders who haven't yet learned to distribute power or followers who haven't yet embraced their full agency – but to recognize them as expressions of our shared developmental journey. We're all, in various contexts, sometimes the one clinging to power and sometimes the one evading responsibility.

Creating genuine community is ultimately an act of love – love mature enough to embrace both connection and freedom, both belonging and individuation.

It requires us to grow beyond our fear that authentic selfhood threatens connection, and beyond our fear that genuine belonging threatens autonomy. In the most evolved communities, these apparent opposites reveal themselves as complementary aspects of the same flowering of human potential.

The true antidote to cult formation isn't isolation but deeper, more conscious connection. It isn't the rejection of leadership but its transformation. It isn't the abandonment of structure but its evolution into forms that serve rather than restrict our becoming.

What stands before us isn't merely a choice between tribe, cult, or community, but an invitation to participate consciously in our ongoing evolution – to recognize the spiral pattern that connects these forms and to navigate it with increasing awareness.

In doing so, we might discover that the most profound freedom isn't found in separation from others but in the conscious co-creation of social structures that liberate rather than limit our collective potential.

The question isn't whether we'll form groups – we always will.

The question is whether we'll do so with the courage to remain awake through the messy, beautiful process of evolving together, creating spaces where both we and our communities can continually become more than we've been before.