CULTS: Charles Manson, the Solar Temple & Adolfo Constanzo Part 2

Why would members of the Order of the Solar Temple kill a three-month-old baby they had never met?

⚠️ Trigger warning: This episode includes discussions of murder, ritual killing, the murder of an infant and of children, mass death, cult trauma and coercive control. Listener discretion is advised.

In 1994 the Order of the Solar Temple, led by Joseph Di Mambro and Luc Jouret, killed a baby in Morin-Heights, Quebec because his name made him the Antichrist, then left 53 dead across Switzerland and Canada. Cults Part 2 follows the same question through Adolfo Constanzo's Narcosatánicos in Matamoros, Mexico and Charles Manson's Family in Los Angeles.

Therapists Shannon and Cathy ask what changes psychologically when the killing is the ritual, and why the victim in a ritual murder is never really the target.

CHAPTERS:

0:00 A baby called the Antichrist

1:02 From Part 1 to ritual murder

2:03 Ritual as the delivery system for moral disengagement

5:04 Expressive or instrumental: where ritual murder fits

11:20 Milgram, participation mystique and Hillman

20:18 The Order of the Solar Temple

28:30 Adolfo Constanzo and the Matamoros killings

35:16 Charles Manson and the Tate-LaBianca murders

46:35 What makes ritual murder different

49:34 Coming up in Part 3

IN THIS EPISODE:

- Three ways ritual moves agency, turns a victim into a symbol and dissolves the self into the group

- Milgram's obedience variations: 65%, 92.5% when someone else throws the switch, 10% when two peers refuse

- Gina Perry's archive work and Haslam and Reicher's identification reading

- Jung's participation mystique, from stadiums to robes in a circle

- The Solar Temple: Cheiry, Salvan, the cosmic child and 74 dead by 1997

- Constanzo, Sara Aldrete, Mark Kilroy and the checkpoint that broke the case

- Palo Mayombe as a legitimate Afro-Cuban tradition Constanzo distorted

- Why Manson was not at Cielo Drive, and why that matters

- The Stanford Prison Experiment and what survives the critiques

- PIG on the door: dehumanization that happened in language weeks before

CLINICAL TERMS: ritual murder, moral disengagement, displacement and diffusion of responsibility, dehumanization, expressive and instrumental homicide, obedience to authority, participation mystique, soul loss, thought reform, social proof, cognitive dissonance, mana personality, self-dissolution, situational evil

CORRECTIONS:

- Luc Jouret was the Solar Temple's co-founder and public face, not Emmanuelle's mother. Her mother was Dominique Bellaton.

- The Solar Temple member was the mayor of Richelieu, Quebec, not the mayor of Quebec.

- Le Texier's critique of the Stanford Prison Experiment ran in American Psychologist in 2019, not 2007.

- Bugliosi and Gentry's Helter Skelter (1974) is nonfiction, not a novel.

SERIES: Cults Part 2 of 3. Part 1: CULTS: Heaven's Gate, the Zizians & Jonestown Part 1. Part 3: a brand burned into a woman's skin, a mother who decided her children were zombies, and the full story of the Zizians.

SOURCES: Milgram (1974) Obedience to Authority · Perry (2012) Behind the Shock Machine · Haslam & Reicher (2012) PLoS Biology · Salfati (2000) Homicide Studies · Le Texier (2019) American Psychologist · Reicher & Haslam (2006) British Journal of Social Psychology · Zimbardo (2007) The Lucifer Effect · Bugliosi & Gentry (1974) Helter Skelter. Full APA list on Patreon.

Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes.

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