I’ve been reading No Longer Quivering.  I knew Quiverfull people were out there, but not that out there.

• Quiverfull people usually subscribe to patriarchy: not only is the man the head of the house, but he is to be obeyed implicitly.  (This tends to have the effect of transforming him into a spoiled brat.)
• They usually put the ban on dating in favor of courtship, which is about as romantic as a thumbtack in in the arse.  Of course, the father is often in control of whom his daughters marry.
• Women exist for no other purpose than to serve the men and pop out baby after baby after baby. 
• Believers are brainwashed into believing that people outside of the movement are horrible godless monsters, and non-QF/P children are bratty reprobates.
• Many QF/P groups demand strict modesty - one writer described her experience as “The Little House on the Prairie Fashion Club.”
• Children are homeschooled so they don’t get none o’ that evil liberal secular humanist government brainwashing.

It’s not about having children just because you want to have children.  It’s about control.  It’s about controlling the women so they do nothing but attend the man’s every whim and almost their entire adult lives before menopause pregnant, popping out over a dozen children.  It’s about controlling the children by beating them into “joyous obedience.”  It’s about ultimately controlling America by producing enough spawn that they can take over and transform America into a “godly nation,” AKA theocracy.

Funny thing is, if these people happened to be Muslim instead of Christian, there would be a huge public outcry.  In fact, these people are openly trying to do what people blame Muslims of covertly trying to do.

This post is inspired by a link posted by witchyways: The Importance of Maintaining a Healthy Level of Skepticism.  It’s an excellent article, and I recommend everyone in pagan and new age circles read it.  The writer mentions several things that she considers a tip-off that the person she’s dealing with isn’t all there or is trying to take advantage of her.

Here are a couple of things that I consider to be major tip-offs - romanticism and guilt-tripping.

Romanticism takes the form of statements like:

• “Things were so much better back when more people believed!”
• “True knowledge comes from within.”
• “We can’t fix the world with right-brained thinking; that’s what got us into this mess.  We need to live from the heart.”
• “Believing in vampires and werewolves makes the world more exciting!”
• “Just because you can’t see or feel it doesn’t mean it’s not real.”

Guilt-tripping takes the form of statements like:

• “People like you are why the world is in such an awful state right now.”
• “It’s so awful how nobody believes in anything anymore.”
• “Jesus died for your sins. You’re not going to reject His love, are you?”
• “The world is in such terrible shape.  If you really cared about it, you would join our movement.”
• “Believing in this makes so many people happy.  How could you take away their happiness?”

Bottom line, don’t let anyone rope you in with romanticism or guilt-trip you into believing something.  Use facts, logic, your own experiences, and don’t be afraid to be a skeptic.

From the site that brought you The Cult Test, here is an excellent piece on various propaganda and debating techniques used by those who would own your minds.  The article typically focuses on the behavior of Alcoholics Anonymous, but as it demonstrates, any group or person can use the same techniques.

One item, The Glittering Generality, is one I’ve seen come out of many pagans who extol the virtues of pre-Christian cultures and religions we know next to nothing about.  (This was taken to the extreme in a recent Witchvox article that tried to paint Neanderthals - whom we know almost nothing about culturally - as goddess-worshiping noble savages.)

An item I see used to attack the pagan community is the Reverse Cause-And-Effect Relationship.  For many years my parents blamed a mentally ill relative’s problems on the fact that she had dabbled in the occult as a young adult.  In fact, the reverse was true: she suffered from paranoid schizophrenia her entire life, and started trying to find answers for her problems in occult books after her illness had reached a state of severity that she no longer had the presence of mind to seek psychiatric help.  Likewise, people will often repeat anecdotes of friends who used Ouija boards or dabbled in other occult matters and shortly thereafter went insane.  In reality people who experiment with the occult are most likely to do it in their late teens and early twenties, which is the same time that paranoid schizophrenia, if a person has it, will begin to manifest its more noticeable symptoms.  It’s therefore just as likely that their friend’s insanity was coincidental, or that they were getting into the occult because paranoid schizophrenia creates delusions of grandeur/power and they came to believe that they had great occult power.

So, read the page, educate yourself, and protect your mind.

The Cult Test is a list of symptoms that are often seen in destructive cults.  It’s somewhat long but very much worth the read as it will enable you to recognize and protect yourself from mind-control/manipulation tactics used by cult leaders and would-be cult leaders.  I recommend that anyone and everyone read this, especially those who are seeking or plan to seek a spiritual group of some kind.  Destructive cults can come in all shapes and sizes, from tiny groups with fewer than a half-dozen people to massive organizations claiming millions of members worldwide.