I was talking to the loved one about this last night. She is going for ministry in the Church of England. (Yes, I remain a skeptical atheist.)

She is very charismatic (despite her introversion) and has the superpower of convincing people. I can just picture her standing up in front of a crowd and explaining to them how black is white, and the crowd each nodding their heads and saying "you know, when you think about it, black really is white ..." She often leads her Bible study group (the sort with several translations to hand and at least one person who can quote the original Greek) and all sorts of people - of all sorts of intelligence levels and all sorts of actual depths of thinking - get really convinced of her viewpoint on whatever the matter is.

The thing is, you can form a cult by accident. Something that looks very like one from the outside, anyway. If you have a string of odd ideas, and you're charismatic and convincing, you can explain your odd ideas to people and they'll take on your chain of logic, approximately cut'n'pasting them into their minds and then thinking of them as their own thoughts. This can result in a pile of people who have a shared set of odd beliefs, which looks pretty damn cultish from the outside. Note this requires no intention.

As I said to her, "The only thing stopping you from being L. Ron Hubbard is that you don't want to. You better hope that's enough."

(Phygs look like regular pigs, but with yellow wings.)