Without Acting Like a Cult Leader

(everything stated in this blog is based upon my own research, personal practice, and opinion)

You’ve read the warning signs, salted your altar, exorcised purity culture, and you’re feeling fired up. You want to build something better. A coven, a temple, a Discord server, a backyard solstice drum circle with more consent and fewer narcissists in wizard robes. Excellent!

But wait! Before you don that velvet cloak and call yourself “High Priestess of the Spiral Light Chicken Collective”, let’s have a frank little chat.

While the dream of spiritual community is sacred, beautiful, and even achievable, the execution often feels cursed. What starts as a few people lighting candles together ends up with someone crying in the woods, someone else sleeping with three initiates, and a third person rewriting history in a 42 comment Facebook subthread.

So, here’s a guide to building a sustainable, anti-culty community, without becoming the next cautionary tale in a Netflix original called “WitchTok Survivors Anonymous”.

Leadership Is Not Divine Right

Let’s be crystal clear from jump. Deciding to found a community doesn’t mean you’re chosen by the gods. It means you were the one brave (or bored) enough to start the group chat and own some folding chairs. Maybe a garage. That’s it.

Being a leader does not make you a guru, a messiah, or the CEO of anyone’s soul. It makes you the janitor, the therapist, the spreadsheet maker, and occasionally the crisis mediator when the ritual goes sideways because someone’s ex’s neighbor’s dog’s cousin’s owner “had the audacity to show up”.

If you crave leadership because you want authority, attention, or uncritical adoration you are aiming for a pit of toxicity… maybe get a puppy instead.

Consent Isn’t Just for Sex, It’s for Everything

Spiritual community without consent is just spiritual manipulation with better branding. If you’re asking people to perform rituals, share trauma, enter trance states, or get naked in a forest, you better be crystal clear about what’s going down and why.

Is it required? Optional?

Can people opt out without punishment or side-eye?

Are power dynamics being named and discussed?

Do people know what “calling down a deity” might actually feel like?

Consent means ongoing negotiation, not one-time permission. It means building a culture where people can say “no” without consequences. No guilt, no gaslighting, no “well maybe you’re just not spiritually ready yet.” Miss us with that culty condescension.

Share Power or Prepare to Implode

Hierarchies aren’t inherently evil. But…rigid, unaccountable, god-king hierarchies where no one can question the leader without being exiled to the astral wastelands? That’s how you get cults. And documentaries. And lawsuits.

If you’re the founder or facilitator, great. Thank you for your service to the community. But…you are not the sole gatekeeper of the gods. Rotate responsibilities. Encourage collective decision-making. Create feedback loops that actually get used. If your ego can’t handle being challenged, you’re not leading a group, you’re running a monarchy.

Beware the Trauma Vortex

Spiritual communities often attract those of us who’ve been hurt by religion, by families, by the world. That’s not a problem. That’s why we build community. But here’s the kicker: you’re not a therapist (unless you are, in which case, be careful of therapizing your friends for free at ritual).

You cannot build a community where everyone’s deepest trauma gets excavated every week without serious tools, safety protocols, and boundaries. Shadow work does not mean turning the circle into a group therapy free-for-all while Mercury is retrograde and half the people are sleep-deprived but juiced up on spellwork and meade. Make space for healing, yes, but build structures that protect people. Don’t re-traumatize folks for “depth”. Sometimes the deepest work is not dragging someone’s pain out into the candlelight, it’s holding space for their silence.

Do Not Sleep With Everyone in the Circle

Do I need to say this? Apparently yes.

If you are in a position of power, perceived or actual, you cannot ethically initiate romantic or sexual relationships with people under your authority. Period. It creates a power play. “We’re all adults” is not a magical shield against coercion. “They came onto me” is not a defense against pushing. “It was a sacred tantric union guided by the goddess” is just horny cult leader Mad Libs. This goes triple for group founders, coven leaders, and anyone leading initiations, trance journeys, or naked bonfire rituals. If you are “in charge”, just don’t.

Spiritual intimacy is real. It’s powerful. It’s also easy to abuse. Don’t.

Actually Handle Conflict (No, Really…Do It)

One of the biggest red flags in any group, spiritual or otherwise, is how they handle conflict. If the vibe is always “everything’s fine,” you’re in a time bomb, not a community.

Create clear, transparent conflict resolution processes before the fight breaks out. Normalize disagreement. Model apologies. Address harm directly and proportionally.

And for the love of all that is holy, stop using “you’re bringing in bad energy” to shut down criticism. People are allowed to be upset. If your idea of harmony is silence and obedience, you don’t want a community, you want minions.

No Secrets, No Sacred Cows

Does your group have secret rules? Off limits topics? A culture of reverence for one person above all others?

That’s not mystery tradition. That’s cult behavior.

Mystery should invite curiosity, not demand obedience. Sacredness should inspire reverence, not fear. If someone questions a belief, asks “why,” or says “this feels off,” and your instinct is to deflect, or demand silence…congrats, you’re halfway to being the problem.

Create a culture where people are allowed, encouraged, even, to question, critique, and challenge. If your path can’t handle that, maybe the problem isn’t the question.

Laugh. Loudly. Often.

Want to know the fastest way to tell if you’re in a healthy spiritual community? Laughter. Not performative chuckles. Not tight smiles. I mean snort-laughing during setup for ritual. I mean someone saying, “Did that incense just fart?” and everyone losing their minds for five minutes.

If your group can’t laugh, at itself, at the absurdity of ritual, at the ridiculousness of being human, it’s not enlightened. It’s afraid.

Humor dissolves hierarchy. It punctures ego. It reminds us we’re alive, messy, ridiculous creatures spinning spells on a rock hurtling through space.

And honestly, if your gods don’t have a sense of humor, get better gods.

The Red Flag Speedrun

Here’s your spiritual community red flag bingo card. If you check more than three, abort mission and grab the nearest goblin to help you escape.

✖ The leader never apologizes

✖ Conflicts always end in exile

✖ No one can explain why the rules are the rules

✖ Rituals are mandatory for group acceptance

✖ Every conversation circles back to the leader’s trauma

✖ Dissent is framed as betrayal

✖ You’re told to cut off anyone who disagrees with the group

✖ Everything feels a little too perfect on the surface

You Don’t Need to Be a Cult Leader to Lead Well

Building spiritual community is hard. It takes emotional labor, humility, flexibility, and deep unsexy commitment. You will mess up. You will piss someone off. Sometimes more than several in a day at big events. You will hold space and still somehow drop it. That’s okay.

You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be honest. Consensual. Accountable. Open. Self-aware. Willing to learn. And not seeking your own hype. In short, integrity matters.

You want to build real magic?

Lead with less power and more presence.
Create containers that bend instead of break.
Love people enough to let them leave, and come back.
And most of all, don’t make yourself the altar.

Because this isn’t about you being worshipped.

It’s about all of us being free.

(from the Oracle of Perception)

Monthly Mindfulness – 7-28-2025

The Unknown

This card asks us to sit with the beauty of not knowing. Can you relinquish control, and admit not knowing? How do you approach the unknown? How do you navigate the knowledge blanks in your world (great and small)?

Some things are unknowable, and that’s ok. It is not a defeat to admit ignorance. Only in awknowldgment of the unknown can we access the map to growth. I get it. It’s a scary place for many. Not having the answer… In magick the unknown is in the position of alteration. The unknown is your friend. The unknown is a thing in flux.

What is important at this time is the present, and the known. Pull your sight back in a bit, and live in today more than tomorrow. You can plan ahead, but you exist in the now…are you existing in the now?

—- You can grab a copy of the deck, Oracle of Perception in the shop @ BuyMeACoffee.com/EmbalmedApple