Learn about the history of Doomsday Cults with iMinds insightful knowledge series.
A doomsday cult is a quasi-religious group that believe the end of the world is imminent.
Doomsday cults are typically led by charismatic messiah-figures, who teach that their cult holds the secret to surviving the apocalypse. More recently the term has come to include cults who carry out acts of violence or terrorism in an attempt to bring about revolutionary change.
Despite increased media attention in the last thirty years, doomsday cults are not a recent phenomenon. Sanskrit texts from Ancient India suggest that doomsday cults existed in prehistory.
In what is now the region of Kashmir in northern India, a demoness named "Long-Tongue" was worshipped by villagers in the hope she would prevent the end of the world by eating human waste. By the sixth century AD, Long-Tongue was adapted by Hindu tradition and became the goddess Kali. Kali is still present in the Hindu pantheon as the goddess of destruction, but for most Hindus she does not hold an apocalyptic role.
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