Although a gripping read, Rogue Messiahs is not a proper scientific investigation of the phenomenon. The text is not always cohesive, some cases are described in too much detail whilst others are dealt with in a most brief and superficial manner, and the author's conclusions are open to dispute.
According to Wilson, the typical rogue messiah has an unquenchable desire for domination and sexual fulfillment resulting from low self-esteem. The psychology of discipleship is based on wish fulfillment - the craving to believe in someone that will absolve the disciple of all moral responsibility.
Chapter 1: Sex As Salvation, deals with David Koresh of the Branch Davidians and the tragedy of Waco. The second chapter: The Millennium Cometh, covers Sabbatai Zevi, the false Jewish leader of 1666, plus various others like Simon Bar Kochba, Moses of Crete, Aldebert of Soissons and Tanchelm of Antwerp. It includes a section of the Christian Church as oppressor.
The next, The Psychology Of Discipleship, deals with Jim Jones and The People's Temple, Father Divine, Colonel Olcott, Paul Brunton, Madame Blavatsky and the development of W. B. Yeats. Chapter 4: The Messiah As Killer, discusses Auguste Comte, Joseph Smith and Jeffrey Lundgren amongst others. The saga of the LeBaron family is one of the most gory in the book, recounting a series of murders in the chapter titled A Taste Of Power.
The chapter How To Transform Reality looks at successful and failed treatments of delusion, whilst The Psychiatrist As Messiah deals quite superficially with Freud and Jung and the break between them. Chapter 8: Strange Powers, discusses Rudolf Steiner, Krishnamurti, Gurdjieff, Ouspensky and Edward Arthur Wilson who was known as Brother Twelve. Whether the aforementioned psychologists and esotericists really fall into the category of rogue messiahs is open to debate.
The next chapter deals with an 1832 outbreak of religious fervour that led to a weird cult called Perfectionism and at movements like the Putney Association, the Oneida Community and the individual William Miller. The next one is also quite gruesome, exploring the madman Rock Theriault of Quebec. The penultimate chapter investigates the life of W B Yeats and his book A Vision, as well as Aleister Crowley, Shelley, the Golden Dawn, Charles Manson and Yukio Mishima. The book concludes with David Berg of the Children Of God cult and describes the double life of a personal acquaintance of the author's, one Charlotte Bach or Carl Hajdu.
Wilson concludes this book by discussing the different functions of the left and right brain. He concludes that rogue messiahs abuse the powers of the subconscious mind through self-persuasion and that the phenomenon is an example of the evolutionary urge gone wrong. He is of the opinion that the proper application of these powers is positive and may represent an upward step in mankind's psychological evolution.
Rogue Messiahs How are people like David Koresh and Jim Jones able to attract a huge following of believers? Why do those followers stay with them, even to the point of self-destruction? In Rogue Messiahs: Tales of Self-Proclaimed Saviors, Colin Wilson analyzes the lives of more than two dozen individuals responsible for the destruction or death of hundreds of loyal disciples. He also includes interviews with the ordinary people who got caught up in believing whatever the self-proclaimed messiahs taught. Wilson has published more than eighty books, on a wide range of subjects, and is generally regarded as one of the most erudite and well-informed authors of our time. He says that, "to begin with, we have to recognize that these 'messiahs' are driven by two basic human needs, power and sex." He goes on to explain that virtually all humans have these same needs, but in the messiahs, the needs have exploded beyond normal limits. The messiahs generally start out well-intentioned, and may even help some people in their early years. But they "cross the line from inspiration to paranoia, and from teaching to killing--genuine aspiration mixed with self-deception." Wilson also discusses fact that five percent of the members in any group are dominant individuals. Five percent of the dominant members are "so dominant that they automatically become leaders of every group." Of this last group, a very small percentage are geniuses or become great leaders. The remaining dominant individuals "are obsessed by their personality, and the impact it makes on other people." It's from this group that the rogue messiahs are drawn. Not only are they dominant individuals, they require others to acknowledge their dominance. Most of the people drawn into the webs woven by the messiahs believe they're following an idea. Wilson says that "all human beings long for powerful conviction, for ideas that seem to offer them a new and more meaningful way of life." Once they accept the ideas promulgated by the leaders, they find it difficult, if not impossible, to break away from the group. In counterpoint, Wilson also analyzes the personalities of dominant individuals "whose dispositions led instead to spiritual insights of great benefit to humankind and continue to influence our lives today," and deftly shows how the same basic traits can be turned to either good or evil. Readers interested in the workings of the human mind will find Rogue Messiahs fascinating and insightful. It belongs in the library of all those who wish a better understanding of the human condition.
A scattered book with no references, but fun to read Colin Wilson is a good writer. He has a casual style, he puts a lot of emphasis on personal stories, and he's comfortable interjecting himself into the book. When he moves into the psychology or philosophy of a cult, he does it quickly, never letting the book degenerate into dull academic analysis. He mentions sex a lot, too, which will keep your interest.
But this book loses its charm in the second half. The references to sex become arbitrary --- anything sexual Wilson can come up with, he mentions.
He has trouble sticking to the topic of the book, too. For example, in a chapter on an offshoot of the Mormon church, he spends several pages describing a dozen murder victims, how they died, and where they were buried. I couldn't keep track of it all, and I wondered why he bothered to cover it in such detail.
He then moves on to a handful of people who are clearly NOT rogues, messiahs, or even cult members. In the final chapter, he tries to tie it all together --- the cults, the sex, the murder ---- with some kind of armchair psychology, spiced with evolutionary theory.
That would have been a three-star book; good bathroom reading. But because there are no footnotes, it drops to two stars. I can't double-check his sources because he doesn't list them.
Shows why people give their personal power away. This is one of the best books I have ever read, to give insight and understanding of the human dynamic of disowning one's personal power and responsibility for being aware of and owning the consequences of one's choices. It shows that humanity is so very immature in mass. I think it is brilliant.
More sex than power Wilson's initial statement that the misguided figures he discusses are driven by both sex and power is not followed through in the book which mainly emphasises the sexual adventures of the cult figures. This gets tedious and finally becomes a superficial account of their influence. The book becomes a numbing compendium of weird figures and their hateful habits with little cohesive ideas on the dynamics of these groups other than some basic observations. There is nothing much new in here from Wilson who has been plowing the same field for many years. He writes well and the antics of some of the gurus are amazing but on the whole it's a shallow piece that diminishes Wilson's work.
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