death cults
Mortality-worshipping groups
Death cults are religious or quasi-religious groups whose beliefs and practices center on death, dying, or the dead.
The term is applied broadly—sometimes to ancient traditions that venerated ancestors or practiced human sacrifice, sometimes to modern groups accused of glorifying suicide or mass death.
Critics use death cult loosely to characterize any movement they view as nihilistic or destructive: Some environmentalists call industrial civilization a death cult.
The phrase carries strong negative connotations regardless of accuracy.
- doomsdayProphesied world's end
- end of daysProphesied final catastrophe
- apocalypseTotal civilizational collapse
- final judgmentConclusive court resolution
- extremismIdeology beyond accepted norms
fanaticism · true believers · sect · suicide · danse macabre · Aum Shinrikyo · drink the Kool-Aid · sacrifice · martyrdom · blood sacrifice · indoctrination · memento mori · ossuaries · necromancy · end-times · cataclysmic · radical · rite
- ancient religiongods, goddesses, pantheon, deity, polytheism
- Mesoamerican civilizationAztec Empire, human sacrifice, jaguar warriors, priesthood, temple complexes
- cultsbrainwashing, mind control, Scientology, Jonestown, Jim Jones
- Canaanite religionBaal, high places, Attar
- extremistsextremists, extremist, fanatics, fanatic, radicals
- radicalizationextremism, indoctrination, radicalism, fundamentalism, fanaticism
death cultsfertility cults
Worship of reproductive abundance
nature worship · vitalism · animism · Wicca · harvest festivals
death cultshumanitarian organizations
Groups providing emergency relief
mutual aid societies · support groups · recovery programs · hospice care · benevolent societies
death, deaths, dead, deadly, deaden, deadened, deadening, deathly, dies