1 Aleister Crowley – an influential occultist and ceremonial magician.
2 Manly P. Hall – known for writings on esoteric philosophy.
3 Anton LaVey – established modern Satanism.
4 Grigori Rasputin – a controversial spiritual figure in Russian history.
5 Osho – a spiritual teacher known for controversial teachings and communes.
6 Jesus Christ – the foundational figure of Christianity.

    • otacon239@lemmy.world
      0·
      8 days ago

      [controversial reply with a healthy mix of upvotes and downvotes that’s ambiguous enough that you’re not sure if they’re serious, confused, or bad at sarcasm]

  • daannii@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    8 days ago

    Jesus while he lived or modern? cause that’s two completely different groups of people.

  • sad_detective_man@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    0·
    8 days ago

    Anton LaVey’s crowd are chill as hell. Just a little cringe but whomst amogus has not had notions of doing catholic mass naked except for a mask and a cape?

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
      0·
      8 days ago

      That’s like defending Christianity based on the charity and love. Yeah they’ve got some awesome bits, the problem is that they has to mix Ayn Rand bs into their ritual orgies

      • sad_detective_man@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        0·
        8 days ago

        Except when christians pull us all into their baggage it’s purging the various impure people or an oil war to try and kick off their stupid little apocalypse.

        When LaVeyans are being their most toxic it looks this:

        Like, yeah he’s doing a stupid little hierarchy but where on that hierarchy does Pajama Satan sit?

  • Godort@lemmy.ca
    0·
    8 days ago

    Taken per capita, probably LaVey. Taken as “Total harm done” it’s Jesus, no contest

  • durinn@programming.dev
    0·
    8 days ago

    7 Apophis - once an extremely powerful Goa’uld System Lord. Arch enemy of the Tau’ri, he impersonated the ancient Egyptian deity of chaos, darkness and fire.

  • FreddiesLantern@leminal.space
    0·
    8 days ago

    Of the top: Catholicism, evangelicalism, Mormonism, Jehovah’s witnesses,…

    I mean this list goes on and on. They all have one guy in common.

  • notaviking@lemmy.world
    0·
    8 days ago

    I feel the inclusion of Jesus does this list a disservice, could have been like a Buddha, Mohamed, Jesus… List and I think that would have been better because of the league Jesus is playing in. Basically skews the list.

    But the first 5 in the list is an awesome list to choose from. I would say Rasputin due to the shit show Russia was going to be put through that I feel he was the straw that broke the camel’s back and led to cascading events I feel still persists

    • Simulation6@sopuli.xyz
      0·
      8 days ago

      How large a fan base do most of these have? Should have used Count of St. Germain rather then Jesus, though.

  • YappyMonotheist@lemmy.world
    0·
    8 days ago

    Jesus, by far. The people who have been murdered in his name is probably close to or over a good billion, right?

    He’s not really a “foundational figure of Christianity” though, his image was just co-opted by the Roman empire which then created the religion also co-opting the actual “Jewish revival” Jesus was at the core of (bringing the fundamentals of monotheism back into mind and expanding the teachings to everyone, not just a small select community).

    • bestboyfriendintheworld@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      7 days ago

      Jesus never asked for wars in his name though. It’s not part of his teachings.

      Christianity changed a lot once it became the dominant religion of the Roman Empire.

      However Christianity also brought a lot of positive social changes with the focus on forgiveness and helping the unfortunate for example.

      It was spread by conquest, but also peaceful friendly missionaries. These missionaries often invented a writing system for the illiterate people they visited.

      • YappyMonotheist@lemmy.world
        0·
        8 days ago

        Completely eyeballed it but I included every Western imperialist project that was done with Bible in hand and chanting variations of “Deus Vult”, so that’s large chunks of Asia, most of Africa, all of Latin America, and every Western incursion on West Asia from the Crusades to Iran today. And let’s not forget the pagan persecution in the West itself by the Romans. That’s a shit ton of people through the ages, right?