A few days ago, I decided to tackle the book’s more than 1,000 pages. The swift grave, by the author known as Robert Galbraith pseudonym of the world-famous novelist JK ROWLING, author of one of the most watched literary and cinematographic sagas in the world HARRY POTTER. Well, willing to continue exploring her literary possibilities, something for which we reading lovers are grateful, she decided, a few years ago, to create the detective saga. Cormorant Strike, who has been the protagonist of six novels to date. But it is, however, the seventh book of said saga that has caught my attention.
The swift grave, is a book about a sect located in England, between London, where it has its headquarters, and a nearby municipality, where retreats and courses of all kinds are taught. I approached reading it as an expert on sects and new religious movements. Rumors had reached me from England about the groups that the author of the book had used as sources and I had some interest in reading it.
From the beginning, I noted the characteristics that ran through the text and I was fascinated by a certain approach to one of these groups. However, as I got deeper into the plot I discovered with great care that, most likely, it was based on an organization known in the 80s as Children of God, also known in other parts of Europe as The Family.
Although JK ROWLING locates his sectarian movement in England, and more specifically in London, and establishes his background in a hippy commune on the outskirts, the characteristics are quite close to the group that I mentioned previously. Children of God. This organization was founded in 1968 by David Brandt Berg, better known worldwide as Moses David. The sect was born in a social and countercultural moment in California, in the United States. It was born within a much broader movement called Jesus People.
David Brandt, He claimed to receive prophecies, natural revelations that he adorned with his own delusional beliefs. His followers or adepts were induced to follow him at all times, and urged to abandon their material possessions, handing them over to the group. Little by little, its practices became more sectarian and free and reverential love was even promoted within the organization, until it reached what was called at that time flirty fishing (flirty fishing), where its members were urged to go out into the streets and fish for new followers by attracting them with the use of their own bodies.
The problem came when minors, boys and girls, were also introduced to this practice, which attracted pedophiles and pedophiles from all over the world to the organization. That sexual exploitation had two important consequences over the years, an enormous expansion and an investigation that practically ended it, when in the early 90s it began to be investigated for fraud and inducing prostitution, even of minors.
In 1995, a British court, hence my interest in ROWLING’s book, found the members of the group guilty and many ended up in prison. The European Parliament itself, on this occasion, if rightly, declared to God’s children, a dangerous organization, due to its abusive and manipulative practices.
With this base, more personal improvement courses, isolation of its members, fasting and induction of general detachment from the society that surrounds them, including the family, JK ROWLING generates a very interesting fictional text, easy to read and that those who are lovers of sects, or members of religious organizations should read to see if some of the characteristics that occur in the plot could be a reason for their attention.
On a personal note, comment that in 1992, while working as a journalist for an international television project called Unsolved Mysteries, I made a report about the group God’s children, where I managed to seat two of its members on a television set. They had never sat down and never did again. After that I received some threats and I know that that job meant another step in the shoes of an organization filled with pedophiles and pedophiles.
Today, from afar, I am pleased that a writer of such reputation, despite the fact that her editors and many of her readers did not view this incursion favorably, dared to enter the controversial world of sects in the 90s. The swift grave, It makes it a little easier for us to understand from the fictionalized narrative in the fascinating world of totalitarian movements, that although I sometimes insist on stating that they no longer exist, referring exclusively to those that occurred in the 60s, until the year 2000, sometimes I think I am wrong about something.
Originally published at LaDamadeElche.com
