I hate her for making me feel like this; for making me covet yet another thing that my brother gets. She bewitches me, and I would rather rid her from the face of the earth than exist in a world where she tempts me but leaves me with empty arms.” Whether, like me, you were born at the right time to grow up in the seventies, or are simply interested in seeing just how things have changed culturally in the past fifty years this is a great book. From the very start Edmondson seems emotionally needy and mentally unstable. Leaders of the Nexium group play on these issues and slowly pull her into the organization's crazy Scientology-like system of self-esteem mixed with abuse. The author calls the group a "cult" but it's not by normal definition--they didn't force her to stay in it and she freely hopped planes regularly to fly across country to attend ridiculous seminars. The leaders would guilt-trip her and she would buy into it. Once or twice might make you feel some sympathy--but all the time over a period of twelve years? She has to shoulder a lot of the blame. There was a strong Gothic element to British TV output as well, with annual Ghost stories for Christmas (usually an MR James adaptation) and such downright strange shows as Dead of Night, The Stone Tape and Sapphire and Steel. All of this is recalled in loving detail by the authors along with recommendations of what to watch and how to watch (either DVD or YouTube. Thank god for YouTube!).

he stares, as though he’s diving into my soul and seeing every part, makes me feel like I could ask him for the world, and he’d tear it to pieces just to fit it in my hands.” Don’t Call It A Cult by Sarah Berman (journalist’s reports of various women who have escaped NXIVM and their experiences in the cult)

Product Details

Glad to hear that Scarred For Life volume 2 (the 80's) is the authors next project. I for one will be buying it.👍 True power lies in the ability to harness energy and wield it like a sword, becoming the puppeteer that masters all the strings instead of the marionette being forced to dance.”

Although I’m reading a lot of stuff about NXIVM, this will probably be the only review I post so I’m including further reading that I am doing in case you want to embark on this little obsession with me.

Overview

You thirst for power?” he rasps, his palm ghosting across my collarbone before wrapping around my throat. “I can fill you with it until you scream.” As they say at the start, it's not a reference book, more a collection of conversational essays on television, film, books and games, not to mention public information films that made up the landscape for two boys with an interest in horror, fantasy and SF. But it's not bloke-ish, nor does it ignore significant girl comics and books of the decade.

Wow wow wow. What I notice most is one the curtain fell foor this Keith Raniere guy his followers. all of a sudden think nothing at all was good.It is interesting that for a lot of people when something bad happens they only see the bad. I understand that they want to say they are victims and I think they are in a way but my my my how they profited of it all as well. I do think that about Sarah Edmondson. She was so good in getting so many others to sign up for this thing which cost them a ton of money and I am sure she believed it was all so good but take some responsibility about that. Same with the filmmaker guy. Not only has there never before been a society so obsessed with the cultural artifacts of its immediate past, but there has never before been a society that is able to access the immediate past so easily and so copiously.” I’m going to kiss you now,” I tell her. “Why?” she whispers. “Because, ma petite menteuse, the thought of not kissing you makes me want to die.” Ah the 1970s. What a strange decade it was. The beige hangover to the psychedelic 1960s. Or was it? In its own way the 1970s was just as “far out” as it’s predecessor and in Scarred for Life authors Stephen Brotherstone and Dave Lawrence recall what it was like growing up in that decade surrounded by pop culture that seemingly wanted to scare the pants off you at every turn.Edmondson was in NXIVM for years, slowly working her way up the ranks when one day her best friend, who was one of the highest-ranking people in the organization, asked her to be in a secret club where Sarah would be the slave and she would be the master. She sold it to her as a group of women helping other women grow and develop. However, it soon became clear that wasn’t the case. The “slaves” were actually being groomed to be sex slaves for NXIVM’s leader. You could burn down the entire kingdom until it’s nothing but charred rubble, and I would crawl over the embers with glee, so long as I could worship at your feet.” Finally there’s a discussion of the 1970s fascination with the paranormal. Everything from Ancient Aliens and UFOs (take a bow Erich Von Daniken) to Uri Geller, Nessie, The Bermuda Triangle, hauntings and how this was all taken far too seriously by the media. I told you it was a strange decade. Reading this book was kind of wild for me because a good majority of it took place in the Town of Clifton Park New York where I lived from the ages of 15 to 37 it reference a lot of locations that I know including Knox Woods where I lived for a couple years. This cult was somewhat well known in our town before I do big stories broke on it. I had a colleague who lived across the street from a house they owned and had meetings in. And he ended up doing a lot of research on them and had told me about it. So when the story broke I was not surprised I figured it was only matter of time. Scarred is Sarah Edmondson's compelling memoir of her recruitment into the NXIVM cult, the 12 years she spent within the organization (during which she enrolled over 2,000 members and entered DOS—NXIVM's "secret sisterhood"), her breaking point, and her harrowing fight to get out, to expose Keith Raniere and the leadership, to help others, and to heal. Complete with personal photographs, Scarred is also an eye-opening story about abuses of power, female trust and friendship, and how sometimes the search to be "better" can override everything else.