Introduction / by Joseph P. Laycock
Suggestions for further reading
[PART 1] The premodern era. The Bacchanalian affair (186 BCE)
Legends of the wicker man (58 BCE-18 CE)
The orgies of the Christians (second century CE)
The 'Narrations' of Pseudo-Nilus (fourth to sixth century CE)
The Orléans heresy (1022 CE)
[PART 2] The long nineteenth century. William Dorrell, the invincible vegetarian messiah (1798)
'The awful disclosures of Maria Monk' (1836)
"The pathology and treatment of mediomania" (1874)
A vampire cult in Kansas City (1890)
Cyrus R. Teed, the electro-alchemical messiah (1839-1908)
George J. Schweinfurth, the failed messiah of Winnebago County (1853-1910)
[PART 3] The twentieth century. Invasion of the yoga cults (1911)
The trial of Aleister Crowley (1934)
The birth of brainwashing (1950)
The coming of the saucer religions (1955)
The Jonestown "death tape" (November 18, 1978)
Internal documents from the Branch Davidian siege (1992-April 19, 1993)
The sentencing of Shoko Asahara for the Aum Shinrikyo attack (March 20, 1995)
The departure of the Heaven's Gate group (March 26, 1997).
