Heaven’s Gate Away Crew- A Psychoanalysis of Cult Culture

For as long as I am alive, Marshall Applewhite -his skin sallow mustard and brittle like ageing paper, his eyes screaming wide with insanity and bared teeth placed so absurdly close together, will be my demon. I fully believe that he was Voldemort reincarnated: that is just how much terror he inspires in me: the Messiah of a cult of hippies and conspiracy theorists, 31 of whom committed horrifying mass suicide, beginning March 22, 1997, in white Nikes. This was the Heaven’s Gate Away Crew.

      I wondered how could people trust a man who had blinked 38 times in an 8-minute tape and ardently maintained a philosophy that sought to intertwine the Bible and Star Trek. Then rushed in the memories of the thousand and one times golden-haired, saffron-clad politicians pulling fast ones on the international populace and the meditative gurus in their ashrams and holy priests in their chapels on oratory stands, voices rich with righteous anger and the shepherded public listening with hot and glowing fanaticism. 

                          Folie à deux or folie à plusieurs is a psychological disorder where symptoms of a delusional belief are transmitted from one individual to another. Cases include the Erikkson sisters, the Papin sisters and the Parker-Hulme murder. Test, check, recheck: your beliefs. Any person in the vicinity of a potentially deranged patient is vulnerable to this form of madness, and because anosognosia kicks in, it is impossible for you to realize that you might be under the Evil Piper’s spell. In an ever-expanding realm of misinformation, and hence of paranoia, trust none but reason.