THE CULT: FROM EARTH TO THE SKY
The Cult is a group of people and a movement. It focus on how people are able to grieve. It started in early '70s in Los Angeles (city of angels) and it continues until our days.
The members of the group are not judged by the way they mourn something, nor are they judged for what they mourn—whether it is a person, a pet, or anything else.
Many members are in the group in order to mourn life itself or fragments of it. Engagement with nature and its reverence is an integral part of the Cult.
Of course, there are other practices as well: dark meditation on grief, on life and on death; old and new rituals, many of which are improvised; the formation of new bonds between members; conversation, silence, and withdrawal from the world.
Although there is an old manual describing what this group represents, the rules of this group exist in order to change. Indicatively, the first rules/guidelines of the group are presented.
The Cult, with their mantra that “matter is solidified music,” ascribed to Pythagoras, navigates the world with a unique consciousness that perceives the extraordinary within the ordinary. They are hunters, not just of game, but of moments, experiences, and emotions that exist on the fringes of perception. Living in nature allows them to reconnect with the primal and the mystical, while their seamless integration into ‘normal’ lives underscores the fluidity with which they transition between the conventional and the surreal.
The Cult’s Manifesto
1. The Reality of Surrealism
•“Surrealism is not a dream; it is a lived experience.”
2. Matter as Music
•“Η ύλη είναι στερεοποιημένη μουσική.” -Πυθαγόρας
• (“Matter is solidified music.”)
Our world is a symphony in stasis. Each object, each being, a note in the grand orchestration of existence.
3. The Nature of collective grieve
• “Je suis un autre.” – Arthur Rimbaud
• (“I am another.”)
We grieve not for the physical, but for the transformation of self, the realization that we are perpetually becoming.
4. The Sacred in the Wild
• “Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons. It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.” – Walt Whitman
We embrace nature as both sanctuary and teacher. It is within the wild that we find our truest selves, unencumbered by the artificial constructs of society.
5. Surrealism in the Everyday
• “To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, / One clover, and a bee. / And revery. / The revery alone will do, / If bees are few.” – Emily Dickinson
In the mundane, we find the extraordinary. Our daily lives are interwoven with the fantastical; the dream and the reality are one.
6. The Infinite Journey
• “The only way out is through.” – Robert Frost
Surrealism is a path without end, an eternal journey through the depths of the mind and the expanses of the universe. To live as a surrealist is to walk this path without fear, embracing the unknown.
This manifesto, like the lives of those who follow it, is a living document—ever evolving, ever changing—reflecting the continuous dance between the seen and the unseen, the real and the imagined. It is a call to embrace the surreal not as an escape from reality, but as a deeper, more profound engagement with the world around us.
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