Here’s A Look At The Celebrities Who Are Rumored To Have Been Part Of A Cult
Everyone wants to know about the personal lives of celebrities because they give off an air of mystery. Rumors and stories about them being connected to cults and spiritual groups are more common. The term “cult” itself connotes intense feelings and forbidden behaviors, which occasionally involve mind control and sexual rites for the participants. Here are a few well-known figures supposedly connected to a contentious cult. Hollywood is a hub for art and freedom of expression, and many celebrities have been known to adhere to covert sects.
Miley Cyrus
In 2023, wild theories emerged that Miley Cyrus had joined the ancient Modern Mystery School cult. According to Dazed , the rumor began when a photo of Cyrus with two women, “Blue” and “Lily Ashwell,” started making the rounds on X . A different picture of the Flowers hitmaker purportedly attending a Modern Mystery School lecture in May is also circulating. In another image with ” Know Thyself, ” a Modern Mystery School slogan, projected in the background, Cyrus can be seen seated close to the same two women and two unidentified men. Fans soon started speculating about Cyrus’ involvement in the cult, in 2021 Vice reported that to advance to the higher levels of the organization, members must spend upwards of $20,000. Past pupils claimed to have been subjected to “financial and sexual exploitation” in the group, calling it a “cult” and a “spiritual pyramid scheme.”
Jaden & Willow Smith
Jaden and Willow Smith have been linked with the mysterious crystal society, The Orgonite Society. Willow is known to dabble in the spiritual aspects of religion, the hypothesis gained momentum in 2014 after she shared a picture of herself reading a book by “Osho,” another name for the Rajneeshpuram guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, whose contentious sect was examined in Netflix’s Wild, Wild Country . Jaden was often spotted crystal shopping with his ex-girlfriend Kylie Jenner in 2014, as per Refinery , the cult presumably connected to the idea of “orgone,” or cosmic-erotic energy, as proposed by psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich.
Winona Ryder
In 2019, Winona Ryder defended her guarded upbringing during an exclusive with Parade . The Stranger Things actress called her parents hippies, “They were much more—I would say—beatnik, even though beatnik is sort of the precursor to the hippies.” When she was about seven years old, her family and six other families moved onto a large plot of land in Northern California that belonged to her father’s friend. She claimed that her home wasn’t part of a ‘cult’, even though she is aware that the phrase “commune” may conjure up visions of a cult. Without giving away too many details about her secluded commune life Ryder stated that she soon relocated to Petaluma, California, at the age of eleven, and soon after, she started a career in acting.
Joaquin Phoenix
Joaquin Phoenix was reared in Children of God, an organization that has a long history of forcing its members to forgo their money and social interaction, along with his famous siblings River, Rain, Liberty, and Summer. However, the Joker: Folie à Deux actor denied any involvement in the Christian group during an interview with Entertainment Tonight in 2014. “When people bring up Children of God, there’s always something vaguely accusatory about it,” he said. “It’s guilt by association. I think it was innocent on my parents’ part. They believed, but I don’t think most people see it that way. I’ve always thought that was strange and unfair.” “I think my parents thought they’d found a community that shared their ideals,” he added. “Cults rarely advertise themselves as such. It’s usually someone saying, ‘We’re like-minded people. This is a community,’ but I think the moment my parents realized there was something more to it, they got out.”
Neil Young
Neil Young was famously associated with the Manson family, he was close to the cult leader Charles Manson who had committed nine brutal murders. “We just hung out,” Young said of Manson, according to a 2013 biography titled Shakey . “I think I met him maybe two, or three times. He was an angry man. But Brilliant. Wrong, but stone-brilliant. He sounds like Dylan when he talks,” Young added. “He seemed a little uptight, a little too intense. Frustrated artist. Spent a lot of time in jail.” California was home to the Manson Family, a cult in the late 1960s and early 1970s, they were involved in the murder of actress Sharon Tate and others.
Kylie Jenner
In 2014 Kylie Jenner confused fans with her mysterious obsession with orgonite, man-made crystals. She posted an Instagram update that caused serious frenzy and rumors that she had joined the Orgonite Society. According to Refinery , Jenner posed holding a big pyramid-shaped gemstone. She captioned her post – “Love”. The artificial crystal known as orgonite, which is formed of both organic and inorganic components, is said to possess healing and purifying properties. Additionally, her revelation stoked a wild rumor that the beauty mogul and her then-boyfriend Jaden Smith had joined a sex cult. The ex-couple were spotted several times shopping for crystals and posing with their art-like creations on social media. They even created a social media page for their alleged secret group on X .
Keira Maguire
Bachelor alum Keira Maguire was born into a polygamist cult called The Seaside Sect that was founded by her father. “I didn’t know who my mum was until I was five. It sounds strange, but it just is what it is. I didn’t even have birthdays,” she said in 2016 after her origins went viral. “I think I had my first birthday when I was seven. For other people, it might be really sad. But it’s not, because it’s my story.” Her father who was known as Laishkochav, a self-proclaimed ‘messiah’ settled down with 63 kids and nine “wives.” Michelle, Maguire’s mother, was one of those spouses; when Keira was five years old, she took her kids away from the clan. After the cult disbanded, Laishkochav was found guilty of 20 child sex offenses in 2000 and passed away in prison.
Michelle Pfeiffer
Michelle Pfeiffer was famously linked to a nature-based cult known as breatharianism. The group believed the only source of nourishment for the human body comes from the sunlight. She revealed her involvement with the group in 2013 to Stella Magazine as per the Huff Post , “They were very controlling. I wasn’t living with them but I was there a lot and they were always telling me I needed to come more. I had to pay for all the time I was there, so it was financially very draining. They believed that people in their highest state were breatharian.” “They worked with weights and put people on diets. Their thing was vegetarianism,” she added. She was married to Peter Horton from 1981 to 1988, and Pfeiffer disclosed that he “saved” her from the organization by making her aware of its perils.
Andrew Keegan
Andrew Keegan was accused of starting a cult named ‘Full Circle’, which was a California-based group meeting in an abandoned church in Venice. In an episode of the Pod Meets World podcast from February 2024, Keegan responded to the accusation, saying the group was just a gathering place for ‘spiritual hippie’ types, per Variety . “[It] was kind of looking back, was insane. I was putting down thousands of, tens of thousands of dollars, and we opened it up, and we spent three years and we did build an amazing friend group,” he added. “We just got together, and we did a Sunday thing and did almost a thousand events in three years and it was hard, and it was beneficial to a lot of people.” The cult was shut down in 2017.
Bethany Joy Lenz
In a 2023 exclusive interview with Variety , One Tree Hill alum Bethany Joy Lenz revealed that she had been part of a cult for over ten years. Lenz revealed that she destroyed her career because of the group, “I could go live with this remote, small group of people, convinced I was making a noble, spiritual sacrifice. I’ll tell you, any group that requires you to believe every detail of what they believe to be loved without condemnation… please run the other way. Just run.” She added, “I mean, it was like a secret life. I’m on this TV show. I’m living this glamorous, celebrity life — as people see it — and I have a total secret life going on,” she told the outlet. “It was so painful.” Lenz left the faith-based cult in 2012, she told People , “The stakes were so high,” she said. “They were my only friends. I was married into this group. I had built my entire life around it. If I admitted that I was wrong—everything else would come crumbling down.”