Occasionally the most tragic of events can hit the headlines. When it happens, we all wonder why. But all too often a cult can explode into violence upon itself, the result being mass suicide. Why does it happen? What social forces are involved in this will towards self-destruction? This essay is an attempt to understand. And we need to begin with a few examples. Order of the solar temple: For instance, on 22 December 1995, sixteen corpses were discovered on a plateau in the French Alps in the shape of a star. This was the second mass suicide of the Order of the Solar Temple, a cult formed by fraudster Joseph di Mambro and homeopath Luc Jouret. The first had been fourteen months earlier, involving infernos in two Swiss chalet complexes, proceeded by the suspicious deaths, by fire, of five members including a young mother and child in Canada. The Solar Temple was based on a mix of Knights Templar mythology and new age mysticism, with a distinct apocalyptic nature that would lead to a new spiritual existence. But what brought their apocalypse so soon? It is interesting that Di Mambro had a daughter called Emanuelle, known as a Cosmic Child. However, the child that died in Canada was a boy called Emmanuel. Di Mambro was known to be affronted by this boy being named after the Cosmic Child, branding him the antichrist. Whether out of revenge, or the naming being a signal for Armageddon, the suicides seem to be mixed up with the boy. Heaven's gate: Such are the mad reasons for mass suicide. The Higher Source computer cult, better known as Heaven's Gate, killed themselves over three nights in March 1997 in their ranch near San Diego.
Made up of short-haired, zombie-like computer wizards, they went out for a final meal and then helped each other to take vodka and drugs aided by strangulation. They were led by elderly, white haired Marshall Appplewhite and his wife, known together as Bo and Peep. He had met her in 1975 after she nursed him through mental illness, and they had set up many cults previously.
(Essay by Anthony North)
