More or less 10 years ago, I discovered Morgue and what would afterwards become Hyperianism. It was called “The Order of One” at the time. There was this strange and weird occult atmosphere around it all, and at the time it wasn’t very well known. They were selling their book, “Book Zero”, on a website page that was only accessible on Thursdays at 3:00a.m.

It was a dark time for me.I was young, I suffered from isolation, financial struggles, questions about my sexual identity, gender and questions about the purpose of my life and what I wanted to do with it. I was drawn in by this morbid aesthetic, albeit a bit reluctant and skeptical at first. I ordered the book on one sleepless night, and received it a few days after. I wasn’t sure about everything that was written in it. In fact, I thought there were some interesting stuff but I was still sceptical of a lot of it.

There was some sort of playing card titled “0 – The Void”, and a letter with the book, a letter welcoming me into the Order. There was also instructions at the end to access a secret page on the website, using words from the book. Curious, I accessed it. There was instructions on things to do, to reflect or meditate on, and pieces of art to create, to really enter into the Order, at “Level One”. After that there was a Level Two, a Level Three, and then some “inner circle”. It was the beginning and they were trying to create that cult hierarchy. There weren’t many of us so we were all promised a possible place in this “inner circle”.

I can’t really say at what moment I completely flipped off from the skepticism and went full force into this stuff. But loneliness and global dissatisfaction with my life, compared to this seemingly welcoming group of people made me into a drone. I had one goal : get higher and be part of this inner circle.

With each step concluded, I received a black envelope with my name handwritten in gold or silver on it. Inside, there was a letter addressed to me, congratulating me for having climbed another step and a card representing my “Rank”. “1 – Awareness”, “2 – Polarity” and “3 – The Singularity”. I still have these cards with me wherever I go, in my wallet.

The truth is that Morgue was targeting us. Young people, adept of this occult and morbid aesthetic, with some form of ties with the LGBT community or that struggled with religion in their life. They built their first cult and close followers like this, giving “responsibilities” to the one that were the most able to make this cult grow : those who created things on social media and were able to build a following on social media. The rest of us, more discreet, were there to support and make their followers count grow. We were mainly ignored, just a little message from time to time to make sure we still felt included and part of the whole thing.

When I think of this period of my life, I feel used. I feel like I’ve been used, like a tool, and discarded when I wasn’t useful anymore. When the cult became Hyperianism and had grown a lot in popularity, we were not messaged anymore. I slowly began to understand the situation and get out of this drone mentality that I was trapped in for 2 years. I saw the fact that I’ve been used to mainly grow social media accounts and buy merchandising. No more personnalized letters with my name on it, no more interaction, just loneliness again and the feeling of disgust of myself to have been such a naive person, to have been used that easily.

To this day I still have deep feelings about all of this. Just writing those lines and thinking about that period of time is making me anxious. I have spent years trying to appropriate the cult’s symbols for myself, as a way to recover. I’ve created countless art pieces about that period, that cult, that person, Morgue, to try and heal from all of that. I am not aware of all the things they have done since 2017, I have cut every ties I had with all of that. But I know they have been doing similar stuff to a lot of young people, on a much larger scale.