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Ceremony leaders, lineage and cult warning signs

BySafe Ceremonies

When you sit in a ceremony, you hand a great deal of trust to the people running it. You may be in an altered state, far from home, in a group whose members already know each other. So it’s worth finding out who holds power in the group, who they answer to, and how they use that power.

Plenty of ceremony groups are small, informal and run by people doing their best. A few are high-control groups that slowly take over more and more of their members’ lives. Many sit somewhere in between, with a charismatic leader, a loyal inner circle and nobody in a position to tell the leader no. This guide gives you the questions to ask about leadership before you commit to anything.

Why power matters more in ceremony

The Council on Spiritual Practices’ code of ethics for spiritual guides asks guides to protect people’s health and safety during a practice “and in the periods of vulnerability that may follow.” In other words, the guide’s duty doesn’t end when the ceremony does.

Research points the same way. In one small study, volunteers given LSD scored higher on a test of suggestibility than they did on a placebo. In a larger survey, people’s beliefs about the nature of reality shifted after psychedelic use, and most of the change lasted at least six months. Neither study was about ceremony groups, and both have limits. Together they suggest that the person leading a ceremony can have unusual influence over you, in the room and for some time afterwards. You’ll want to know how that influence is kept in check.

Lineage: what it can and can’t tell you

Many facilitators introduce themselves through a lineage: the teacher, family, community or church they learned from. A lineage can be real and meaningful, and long apprenticeships are part of many traditions.

A lineage tells you where someone learned. It doesn’t tell you how well they learned, whether their teacher would vouch for them today, or whether the safety practices you need came with it. Lineage claims are also easy to inflate and hard for an outsider to check.

Ask:

  • Who did you learn from, for how long, and in what setting?
  • Is your teacher still in contact with you? Would they confirm your training?
  • Are there elders or a community in your tradition who could correct you, or stop you from leading?
  • What have you changed from the tradition, and why?
  • Where does your training in screening, first aid and emergencies come from?

Respect for a tradition and questions about it can go together. A facilitator who is secure in their training will usually be happy to talk about it. Be cautious of anyone who treats a question about their lineage as an insult, or whose story of their training grows grander each time you hear it.

Who holds power, and who checks it

Find out how the group is organised. It might be a business with owners, a nonprofit with a board, a church with ministers and members, or one person with a few helpers. Any of these can work. What you’re looking for is whether anyone can say no to the person at the top.

  • Who makes decisions? Is there a board, a council of elders or partners who share responsibility?
  • If I had a complaint about the leader, who would I take it to, and could that person act on it?
  • Has a facilitator ever been asked to step back or leave? What happened?
  • Who owns the land, the buildings and the money?
  • Are the staff paid, volunteers, or members working in exchange for ceremonies?

A leader who answers to nobody is a warning sign in itself. A checklist published by the International Cultic Studies Association names a leader with no accountability to any authority among the patterns found in cultic groups, along with discouraging questions and treating the leader’s teaching as unquestionable truth. The author is clear that the list is an aid to thinking about a group, and he warns against using it as a scale that decides whether something is a cult. Use it to compare against what you see.

Dual roles

Watch for a leader who plays several roles in your life at once: facilitator and therapist, facilitator and landlord, facilitator and employer, facilitator and partner. Each extra role adds to the leader’s influence over you and makes it harder to say no to any of them.

Sexual and romantic relationships are the sharpest case. The Chacruna Institute’s guide on sexual abuse in ayahuasca settings compares the relationship between healer and participant to that between doctor and patient, and places the responsibility on the healer to stay out of relationships with participants. Ask any group you’re considering what its rule is.

Warning signs of a high-control group

These are signs that a group may be taking more from its members than it gives back. One on its own may mean little. When you see several together, take them seriously.

  • The leader is described as uniquely gifted or chosen, or as the only one who truly understands the practice.
  • Questions and doubts are treated as ego, resistance or a spiritual failing.
  • Former members are spoken of with contempt, or you’re told not to talk to them.
  • You’re encouraged to spend less time with family and friends who “don’t understand.”
  • The group asks for more and more of your time: weekly ceremonies, volunteer shifts, trainings.
  • Money keeps flowing upward, through rising fees, donations or paid levels of initiation.
  • Leaving is described as dangerous to your spiritual or mental health.
  • Rules for members don’t apply to the leader, especially around sex, money and substances.
  • Members are pressed to recruit new people.
  • Criticism of the group is called gossip or an attack, and never answered directly.

How a group handles problems

Every group has problems sooner or later. A healthy one has a way of dealing with them. Ask how complaints are handled, whether facilitators follow a written code of conduct, and whether the group has ever changed how it works after something went wrong.

Search the leader’s name and the group’s name together with words like “complaint,” “lawsuit” or “abuse.” Finding nothing proves little. A pattern of similar accounts from different people, over time, deserves weight, and so does the way the group responded to them.

Talk to people who left

Current members will show you the group’s best side, and they may be completely sincere. Former members can tell you what leaving costs. If you can find someone who stepped away, ask how they were treated when they did. A group that lets people go on good terms is showing you something good about itself. One that cuts them off, shames them or keeps pressing them to come back is showing you the opposite.

Go at your own pace

A healthy group lets you come once and not return. It doesn’t ask you to commit to a programme before you’ve tried a single ceremony, and it doesn’t treat time between ceremonies as falling behind. If you feel rushed toward deeper involvement, more ceremonies, a training, a role on the team, slow down and ask who benefits from the speed.

If you’re already involved

If you recognise several of these signs in a group you belong to, you don’t have to decide everything at once. Talk it over with someone outside the group whom you trust. Take a break from ceremonies and notice how the group responds. The International Cultic Studies Association publishes articles on these patterns that may help you put words to what you’ve seen. If you’re struggling after a ceremony, Fireside Project’s free psychedelic peer support line, 62-FIRESIDE (623-473-7433), takes calls and texts from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Pacific time every day.

More guides

Reviews from past participants often reveal how a group is run: who was in charge, how questions were received, how people who left were treated. You can search the Safe Ceremonies listings, including sacrament ceremonies and peyote and iboga, and read what people say before you commit to anything.

Sources

Photo: Symmetry in Red by SFB579 Namaste, CC BY 2.0, cropped.

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Author: Safe Ceremonies

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