Back in 2015 Vice News did a deep, well written piece about a CUT decree tape called “Rock and Roll Expose #1” that was published in December 1984.
The writer does a stellar job of describing the strange and surreal qualities of a group of over 100 people chanting the words of Elizabeth Prophet in unison.
There’s something insectine about it, its nasality and its density, like a fog of cicadas descending. Occasionally—every few minutes or so—both of the leads stop to take a breath. You can really hear the congregation then: hundreds, maybe thousands of voices droning in a cavernous room, every tone and pitch in the musical spectrum. It is a great, heaving cloud of voices.
Being young when my parents would decree didn’t really impress on me the otherworldly nature of what they and other devout followers of CUT believed to be saving the world through “violet flame”, “astreas” and other decrees. These chants were intended to purify the soul, prepare and accelerate it for ascension, ward off demons, and sometimes to even spiritually bombard the many societal and spiritual enemies of CUT. Rock stars, famous politicians, Russia, China, sugar, alcohol, nicotine, Scooby Doobie Doo, and porn were “decreed” against to help cleanse the world and prepare it for the takeover of “lightbearers”.
Justice had a great insight that decrees and their possible state of hypnosis probably put their users into an altered state of consciousness, one where the mind is more susceptible to to influence and conditioning. One might even go as far as saying that CUT followers were indulging in self-brainwashing without recognizing it.
On the surface, decrees are poetic and even carry a sometimes Shakespearean meter.
I am the violet flame in action in me now
I am the violet flame, to light alone I bow
I am the violet flame, in might cosmic power
I am the light of God shining every hour.
Although the subtle power of decrees to reinforce the necessity to perform them both ritualistically and regularly made some church members neglect other needs to “save the world”. My parents made me sit alone with a decree book, flipping through the color-coded pages. At age seven and eight I was voraciously reading, but had no comprehension of the psychological impact the repetition had on my young mind and identity.