Padraig O'Reilly

 Padraig O'Reilly

As I approached the bus-stop this morning, hat-less and care-free, enjoying the noon-day sunshine, I looked around for my new friend Padraig O'Reilly. It has become one of my routines on alternate Wednesdays, after the coffee-house discussion in the Old Mill. This smartly turned-out young man caught my eye a few weeks back with his rubber knee-pads,  leather belt, high-boots and his taut, kung-foo, readiness. I was too polite to ask his business, but too curious to ignore his evident plea to be noticed. Perhaps a fantasy warrior. Or a prisoner on early release for good-behaviour. 

He had responded most courteously to my greeting in a lovely Irish lilt. I soon gathered his destination, his preference for the early shift, his ambitious saving-plans, to learn to drive and then to buy a car. He wanted to know the hours I used to work (9 – 5 in my case, or 8–6 when I accounted for travel). And my regular breakfast. I was charmed by his openness, and interest. I learned of his 'traveller' in-laws; and out-laws, as the case might be.  I realised that I was being measured against his own experience. 

This morning I complimented him on his neatness and he, in return, praised my turnout. He reached for a note-book in one of the conspicuous pockets hanging from his leather belt. As he thumbed through to the back page, I remembered that writing was one of his prouder accomplishments. There he had listed five lotteries, including Euro-millions, Set-for-Life and the "Post-code" Lottery. In these he had decided to invest £50 a week.  Forty pounds, he corrected himself, sheepishly, as he crossed out the "post-code" lottery; someone must have told him that it did not operate like the others. 

"You are feeling lucky, are you?" I teased. "A feeling in your bones?"

"Some years ago", I continued, "I thought I might run a lottery in which the punters would all give me £2 a week, I would pocket one pound and give them £1 back. For that is all these other lotteries are doing, isn't it," I continued; "except that they give a million pounds to one guy and nothing at all to a million other guys. (Maybe they give 50p to charity; and pay tax on the 50p they keep.) 

"You can't win if you don't enter", he replied. 

"Very true, very true," I conceded. "What would you say to this, then: every week you give me £50;  and after 4 weeks I give you £200?"

"You have to stick to the limits you can afford", he told me. "Never go over". 

"That is good advice" I agreed. 

He waved me onto the bus ahead of him, and I accepted. He likes to sit up front by the driver; by the door. 

Four weeks later, Easter Friday afternoon,  I was queuing in the post office behind three men all of whom were there simply to buy a lottery ticket and a scratch card. The man at the front handed over £4.50 which he had ready as coins in his hand. I, still on mission, was tut-tutting to myself when my ear was caught by the conversation of two women behind me. One was telling the other that she knew of a chap who won a million pounds on a scratch card. Bought a house, the money soon gone. 

I realised that it was I that did not understand lotteries. Oh, I understood the maths alright. It was the hour or two of hope, of dreaming, that was beyond my emotional register.  No imagination, that was my problem.

As I packed my purchases into my bag I turned to the women.

"I was excited to overhear that your friend won a million pounds", I said; "One in a million, I suppose." 

"Yeh, literally!" she replied.

Mad Cults & Minority Beliefs

 Mad Cults & Minority Beliefs.

I wonder how interested we should be in those murderous cults of the postwar era that led their devotees to commit mass suicide. It is such a bizarre extreme that interest seems somewhat ghoulish.  Dutch tulip-mania was odd. Christianity is odd, and in some forms very odd. But these cults strike me as impossible to understand.

I am thinking of the seventies cult of "the jungle poisoner", Jim Jones of Jonestown, and his "Peoples Temple" cult that culminated in 1978 with 'revolutionary suicide' in the Guyanan jungle. And of David Koresh's "Branch Davidian" cult that ended (in 1993) in the  Mount Carmel siege near Waco (Texas). The third example that comes to mind is less well known in the Anglophone world; it climaxed in French-speaking Switzerland in the nineties. I looked it up on Wikipedia  –– 'L' Ordre du Temple Solaire'. 

"The Order of the Solar Temple (French: Ordre du Temple solaire, OTS), or simply the Solar Temple, was a French-speaking religious group, often described as a cult, notorious for the mass deaths of many of its members in several mass murders and suicides throughout the 1990s. The OTS was a neo-Templar movement, claiming to be a continuation of the Knights Templar, and incorporated a mix of Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, and New Age ideas. It was led by Joseph Di Mambro, with Luc Jouret as a spokesman and second in command. It was founded in 1984, in Geneva, Switzerland."

It seems to me that these three murderous cults of the postwar era were each started by charismatic pranksters who were amused at their ability to hoodwink people, but who grew to believe their own nonsense, even to death. This Swiss cult was said to contain many "intelligent middle class adherents". (!)

Part of my interest comes from the realisation that essentially all religions are cults; it is hard to find a definition of a cult that does not include the Church of England. There may be a spectrum, running from Jim Jones on the one hand to the archbishop of Canterbury and the Quakers on the other. But Quakerism is undeniably a cult; its followers proudly and stubbornly following their charismatic (though long dead) leader. On that spectrum running from Jim Jones to George Fox there lies all the great religious names: Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, Guru Nanak,......; men with magnetism, and a message that appeals.  

The number of adherents who follow a cult determines its social standing but that may depend on marketing as much as on appeal; think of Spanish thumb-screws and the 'Auto da Fé '. 

Popularity may relate less to the plausibility of the claims, than to their desirability, their ability to meet a human need. Some people crave status. But many people need a friend, and many need hope.  

I have remarked elsewhere [1] that the outstanding popularity of Christianity as a world religion may derive from the hope of life after death. After all, how plausible is 'life after death'? And how desireable? 

The Quaker cult seems to be 'odd man out' in that there seems to be essentially no claim. Followers are offered (a) friendship, and (b) the sense of doing the right thing. Nothing more (in the present century). That may be why the cult is dwindling. 

[1] https://occidentis.blogspot.com/2023/12/life-after-death.html