Don’t play a cult.
Play the believer.

The first night I slept here, I thought: I’ve done it. I’ve actually escaped.

No mother telling me what a woman does. No church telling me what God permits. No husband required. We painted, drank, made love, stayed awake until sunrise arguing about magic and poetry.

And Crowley said the only law was: Do what thou wilt.

God, I loved that.

But yesterday he told Thomas to sit outside in the sun without water. An exercise in will, apparently.

Thomas didn’t want to.

So I said, “Then don’t.”

Everyone looked at me as though I’d said something obscene.

That’s when it occurred to me...

We came here because no one was supposed to tell us how to live.

But Crowley tells us when to eat. When to sleep. What to wear. What to endure.

So whose will are we doing?

Because I’m beginning to think...

it isn’t ours.

You hear “Aleister Crowley” and you’ve already decided, haven’t you?

Devil worship. Orgies. Drugs. The Beast 666.

That’s exactly what the newspapers want you to see.

I spent four years watching respectable men send boys into machine-gun fire because a king and a flag told them it was noble.

Nobody called that madness.

Then I come here.

Crowley says: Strip it all away. Your parents. Your church. Your country. Every rule somebody else put inside your head.

Find the one thing that is truly yours.

Your True Will.

Is he difficult? Christ, yes.

Cruel sometimes?

Perhaps.

But he never promised to make us comfortable.

He promised to make us free.

So call him the Beast if you like.

After what I’ve seen respectable men do...

I’m not terribly frightened of beasts anymore.

You should have seen this place when we arrived.

Dust. Rocks. Nothing.

And look at it now.

We built houses. Roads. Gardens. A hospital. We planted trees where everyone said nothing would grow.

Do you understand what that feels like?

Thousands of people waking up every morning and saying, let’s build something beautiful together.

And the people in Antelope hated us before they even knew us.

So yes, we bought houses there. We voted. That’s democracy, isn’t it?

Then they tried to stop us from voting.

So Sheela said we needed more voters.

We brought homeless people here. Thousands of them.

Fed them. Housed them.

Registered them.

And now everyone says we’re the dangerous ones.

Maybe we are.

Because lately, every time someone tells us “no”...

we find another way to make them say yes.

And I’m starting to wonder where that ends.

They call us a cult.

Fine.

You know what this cult did?

We took sixty-four thousand acres of Oregon scrubland and built a city.

Water systems. Roads. Farms. Homes. An airport.

People who couldn’t organize a neighborhood barbecue look at us and say we’re delusional.

We built the thing.

Bhagwan taught us that you don’t have to live the life somebody else designed for you.

So we didn’t.

And apparently that’s terrifying.

The county wants us gone. The state wants us gone. Our neighbors would celebrate if this entire place disappeared tomorrow.

So what are we supposed to do?

Just surrender?

No.

We fight in court. We vote. We organize. We protect what we built.

And if the rules are designed to destroy us...

then maybe the rules don’t deserve our obedience.

...

Christ.

That sounded better in my head.

Mom, please don’t be angry.

I know you’re going to hear people say we were brainwashed.

That we were trapped here.

I could have left.

People did leave.

I stayed.

Because for the first time in my life, everything made sense.

This body isn’t me. Susan isn’t me. She’s something I’ve been wearing.

And now it’s time to take it off.

Hale-Bopp isn’t the reason we’re doing this. It’s the sign we’ve been waiting for.

They’re coming for us.

We’re going home.

I know you’re going to cry when you hear this.

That’s the only part that frightens me.

Not dying.

Hurting you.

So please remember me happy.

Because that’s what I am.

I’m not ending my life, Mom.

I believe I’m finally about to begin it.

People always ask why I stayed.

That’s backwards.

The question is why I would go back.

Back to what?

Work. Mortgage. Television. Spend forty years buying things, get old, die.

That’s the sane choice?

Ti told us there was something beyond the human level.

At first I thought it was crazy too.

Then I stayed long enough that everything outside started looking crazy.

I gave up sex.

Money.

My name.

I stopped calling my wife.

Eventually, I stopped calling her my wife.

That’s the one I still think about.

Because if we’re right...

I gave up one lifetime for something infinitely greater.

But if we’re wrong...

...

Then my daughter grew up thinking her father abandoned her...

because he was waiting for a spaceship.

NXIVM changed my life.

I know how that sounds now.

But it did.

I stopped blaming people. I stopped making excuses. I took risks. I became stronger.

So when she asked if I wanted to join something deeper—just for women—I felt... chosen.

She said it would teach me commitment.

First, I had to prove I could keep a secret.

Collateral.

A naked photograph. A letter that could destroy my family.

I almost walked away.

But that was the point, wasn’t it?

Fear was controlling me.

So I handed it over.

Then came the diets. The readiness drills. “Master.” “Slave.”

Every time something frightened me, they said:

That’s your weakness talking.

Then they told us we were getting tattoos.

We weren’t.

They held me down while they burned the symbol into my skin.

And I remember thinking:

Don’t cry.

Because if I cried...

they’d say that proved I needed this.

I joined because I wanted to be a better man.

Better husband. Better father. Better leader.

And some of it worked.

That’s the part nobody wants to hear.

We held each other accountable. No excuses. No blaming other people for your failures.

Keith could talk for three hours and I’d leave thinking:

Jesus. This guy sees things nobody else sees.

So when people criticized him, I defended him.

They didn’t understand.

When someone left NXIVM angry?

Victim mentality.

When a woman said Keith had treated her badly?

She’s blaming him for her choices.

There was always an answer.

Then I learned about DOS.

The collateral.

The starvation diets.

Women calling each other “master” and “slave.”

The branding.

And Keith...

Keith was at the top of it.

I keep thinking about all those years I was learning how to become a “better man.”

Maybe the lesson I really learned...

was how not to believe a woman when she told me something was wrong.