It’s funny how you can read a book so important to you at the time, go through years of experiencing the world and then come back to the same book- and see so much more than you did when you first encountered it.  This is how it is for me, reading CULTS IN OUR MIDST, one of my first books on thought control, which allowed me to penetrate my own covert indoctrination and mind control, engineered by AMORC.

            One of the things that Singer speaks about is what she calls “a continuum of influence and persuasion.” This continuum includes education, advertising, propaganda, indoctrination and thought reform with the idea that a cult usually defined by its use of thought reform.
            Having spent quite some time reviewing several books by H. Spencer Lewis recently, particularly a book called Mental Poisoning and Self-Mastery and Fate and with the Cycles of Life. I cannot help but reflect on the way that AMORC uses the full spectrum of persuasion as it was put together by a copywriter, specializing in advertising. I was initially caught by AMORC’S amazing advertising promotions.

            These ads are meant to appeal to a certain type of person- immensely curious about the world, slightly fascinated by mysterious things, desirous of increasing his or her personal ability to cope with the world and the desire for belonging to an elite organization.

            Considering that AMORC really does not use live recruiters standing around  airports with books or incense or holding expensive mass meetings for the public, there is a magical efficiency in its method of using advertising. And no wonder, H. Spencer Lewis was a mind control genius.

          

  But AMORC doesn’t stop there. Advertising, not always a big cult endeavor is also equaled by education- which is a gentle type of seemingly innocuous platform, generally online, in bookstores and Lodges, publishing and selling a huge line of book products. These products give prestige to AMORC but also an indirect way of recruiting earnest seekers who are looking innocently for books on the occult.

            Of all the elements in this continuity of influence platform, I would say propaganda is really the least important.  By propaganda, I generally mean material fed to the general public through newspapers, magazines, TV, radio and Internet.

            In the beginning, Lewis did have an announcement in The Globe back 1915 when he inaugurated the order, big public alchemical demonstration, a radio show with a religious slant, but mostly AMORC has laid low. Now they have had a 2004 Meditation for Peace, open on-line classes for the public in 2006, live classes for the public. In 2001, Christian Bernard was featured in a World Conference held in Gothenburg Sweden where he presented the “Positio Fraternitatis Rosae Crucis,” a rather tame manifesto announcing AMORC’s position on the state of the world. This was followed by a variety of conferences over the year. Suffice to say, this kind of propaganda is a rather soft sell and barely makes it into the public eye.

            In my next discussion of this chapter, we will go into the nitty-gritty of Roscicucian (AMORC-style) indoctrination and thought reform (and the conditions for its deployment) as discussed by Margaret Singer.