Weird religions, odd religions, and flat out insane religions are not really all that weird, odd or insane if you look at things in a certain context. One group of people may find that having an imaginary friend in the sky who admonishes them for pretty much every single pleasure that can be found on Earth is normal. Another may have a deity that for some reason has a thing against airplanes whose followers keep blowing them up over and over again. For them, that may be normal. There can even be a faith system that bans the consumption of entire food types that seems batshit crazy to some people (Because bacon is really fuckin’ good!) but to people of those faiths it is totally normal. That doesn’t mean there are not any religions lingering out on the fringe that don’t make you shake your head like an Etch-A-Sketch because the WTF moment of realizing their origin and/or belief structure is simply too jacked up to comprehend.

Before delving into the world of strange and unusual religions, a disclaimer is necessary. We here at Mind Candy do not care who you sleep with, who you fuck, what color you are, where you come from, how much money you make (Well we do care about that a little and who you’re fucking just cos’ we’re nosy) who you worship or how you choose to worship. At Mind Candy, we belong to the Temple of the Jedi which to some people is pretty fucked up, but to us is very normal so yes, we really do get it. So long as everyone is of legal age and consenting we could care less if you worship a sock puppet and ritualistically screw one legged women named Babs who wear poodle skirts. If that gets you in touch with your deity, higher power or advances your twelve step program somehow than so be it – fuck Babs silly! Just realize that we do get it. Our pointing out that it is unusual should not offend you, and if you do take offense – go fuck yourself! Thanks and enjoy our list – Mind Candy!

* Cosmic People of Light Powers, also known as Universe People, are pretty tame compared to some lesser known fringe religions. A best guess is that the religion sprang up sometime around 1997 when extraterrestrial beings began contacting Ivo A. Benda and later a group of other “contacters” via telepathic messages. Eventually there were supposedly some personal visits and conversations about the spaceships orbiting Earth and travel to other dimensions. They even discussed Jesus of Nazareth, apparently he was a “groovy vibes dude.” Of course there are things about micro-chipping the population, humans as cattle, a ton of ufology conspiracy theories, and a few weird things too that make Universe People just a bit too fringe for most.

*Scientology. I’ll say it. Scientology is fucked up. It fucked up Tom Cruise, it fucked up Kirstie Alley, it’s fucking up Lucy Liu and it should die a slow painful death for fucking up Katie Holmes! They can however keep John Travolta and Jason Lee who are possibly beyond saving. People…..Scientology is based on shit that was ripped off from several places to create a SciFi book that was then touted as a religion. L. Ron Hubbard was batshit! What makes Scientology so fucked up is that if you don’t have cash, and tons of it, to turn over to the cult, then you don’t get your OT levels up and you are sucking wind baby! It is all based on weird past life trauma reversal shit that is all kept secret until you unlock keys to enlightenment .. Blah blah blah…. As fucked up as the whole Xenu thing with volcanoes and hydrogen bombs is, is it actually any less weird that many of the other invisible friend in the sky faiths? Not really, they just suck balls because they are fucking annoying.

* HAIL BOB!! The Church of the SubGenius is a parody religion – we get that! We know it is the same as the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster in that regard, but the Church of the SubGenius is still just…different. It’s a freakin’ cool faith system that parody or not is pretty damn attractive. The Church of the SubGenius has existed in some form since the 1950’s when used car salesman J.R. “Bob” Dobbs breathed life into it. When SubGenius Pamphlet #1 came out in 1979, things heated up. A religion based on slacking off appealed to college kids. It appealed lazy SOB’s that didn’t want to do anything. It appealed to people with a sharp sense of humor.

Being in on the traditional greeting of “Hail Bob!” made you one of the clever people. You got it. Whatever “it” was – you frickin’ got it! With the rise of the Internet, the Church of the Sub Genius rose as well. A whole new audience was sucked into the temple of slack. Actually, as far as fringe religions go, this is one of the best around. Sure it’s a parody, but who says it has no value? Can anyone prove those invisible friends in the sky are actually delivering a better benefits package than good ‘ol Bob? That’s what we thought…HAIL BOB!!

* Here at Mind Candy, we really dig the Church of Euthanasia! “Why?”, you ask. Thanks for playing along! We dig the Church of Euthanasia so much because it pisses people off. I mean it really pisses people off – and we find that groovy! We’ll call them the CoE for short, because typing out there full proper name is tiring and I hate being tired. Founded somewhere around Boston, CoE has a pretty simple belief – there are too many fucking people on the planet. They just want to cull the herd a bit. Rather than outright murdering people, CoE is an advocate of a woman’s right to choice when it comes to abortion. CoE thinks sodomy is good – you ain’t making new babies if you’re having gay sex are ya?

The only commandment CoE actually has is “Thou shalt not procreate.” That makes gay butt-sex and muff diving A-Okay! Hey, guys get all the BJ’s they want so how bad can it be? The four pillars of the faith which I guess are like the Lite beer of commandments are:

1) Suicide

2) Abortion

3)Cannibalism (Only after the body is dead!)

4) Sodomy — YIPPEEE!!! Butt-Sex for the masses!

All you need to know about CoE is that they have slogans that are soooooo made for tee-shirts and rockin’ bumper stickers like; “Save the planet – kill yourself”, and “Eat a queer fetus for Jesus.” We are guessing that references Jesus of Nazareth and not Jesus of the Home Depot parking lot just off 295, because we have no fucking idea why he would want to see any fetuses eaten or have any eaten in his name. But in a weird way, it has a certain Catholic ring to it with all the flesh eating and stuff.

* We also like Apatheism here – which is odd because we aren’t huge fans of too many ism’s. Apatheism is a little bit like Atheism – which is incidentally another is we are kinda fond of. Apatheists are like Atheists on steroids. Atheists would believe in God if God came to Earth and made himself or herself known. There is no word on what percentage of Atheists would become Apatheists if they found out God was actually Goddess or a queer or a transsexual or of a skin tone different than they might have expected or if he has a tiny willy or bad B.O. or something.

Apatheists are different because even though they don’t believe in God, if God or Goddess or whatever came down to Earth, tapped them on the shoulder and started turning shit into food and stuff into wine and healing lepers and shit they’d still stay fuck you! Apatheists just don’t care. They don’t want to waste energy on religion, which is odd because the religion is based on having no religion. Once a year Apatheists pop bubble wrap which I even a ritual at this point, so there is ceremony top it all – even if minimal.

* There was this religion that sprang up in New York back in the 1970’s and somehow wound up with an HQ in Putnam, GA, back in 1993 called Nuwaubianism. If you never heard of it, you’re not alone. The word is that Nuwaubianism is still around somewhere but you have to “know someone” to join. The faith is basically known as being Black Muslim with their faith structured around the teachings of this cat called Dwight York, a well known and convicted money launderer and child molester. That’s not what makes it all weird though. Check out how this belief system is put together.

Nuwaubianism basically takes a little bit of whatever it can get it’s hands on, throws it into a big pot of WTF and waits to see what develops. The main ingredients were pulled from Rosicrucianism, Freemasonary, revisionist Islam and Christianity, the Shriners (yeah, the freakin’ Shriners!), Moorish Science Temple of America, numerology, and Astara among a collection of other new age type shit. They took parts they liked, ditched what they didn’t and slid it around a set of tenants of faith which include:

* Visionary scientist Nikola Tesla was actually an alien hailing from the planet Venus. Why Venus you may ask? Why the fuck not!

* If you do not destroy the afterbirth, the child that it is linked to will be duplicated by Satan because Satan steals afterbirth and makes clone babies out of them.

* NO ABORTIONS!!! Nuwaubianists believe that there is a secret hiding the fact that many aborted fetuses actually survive. Those survivors have somehow made their way into the sewers where they hang out, train, maybe watch some Glee, and wait the call from (maybe…SATAN!!!) to take over the world.

* Even if you aren’t one of the people whose afterbirth was stolen by Satan to duplicate you, Nuwaubianists believe every person has seven clones living somewhere in the world. Assumedly, if you meet your Doppelganger your head will fucking explode! Think “Scanners” bitch – big fucking dome explosion!

* Homo Sapiens are mutated clones of Homo Erectus that were made on Mars. … I’ve got nothing to add here…this is just fucked up.

* This however is my favorite Nuwaubianist belief:

They believe that on June 6, 1966, the son of Satan was born on Earth. He was born on 72nd Street in New York at the Dakota House. This is where it gets weird. Supposedly, the spawn of Satan came from the Womb of Jackie O. – yeah, Jackie Onasis, nee Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. Supposedly, the Illuminati arranged for the Pope to show up and do some serious devil magic shit over the baby, because the Pope is the Antichrist, right? After doing some serious death magic over the baby, the necromancer in question, the Pope, turned the baby over to Richard M. Nixon – yeah, that Nixon! Nixon couldn’t be seen with the bastard spawn of Satan, so he sent the little demon to Belgium because everyone knows that if you need to hide a Devil baby, Belgium is the place to do it. But that’s not what is really fucked up.

What’s messed up is the belief the Devil baby that was removed from Jackie O., financially looked after by the Illuminati, death magicked by the Pope, and somehow had something to do with tricky Dick Nixon and some Belgian waffles or some shit, is actually a robot or something. Maybe Android would be a better term, because supposedly the devil baby is still somewhere in Belgium hooked up to a fucking computer called “The Beast 3M”, AKA 3666, and somehow or another the now grown up spawn of Satan is calling all the shots from there. Who would have thunk it, the spawn of the Master of Abortions, Little Horn himself is an android that may have possibly been the product of Nixon sticking his tricky dick into Jackie Onasis, The parties, much like the streams in Ghostbusters, should never be crossed! If only they had Egon to warn them. Or Ron Jeremy.