The Latin word "cultus", from which our "cult" came, is translated as "worship". If you take a closer look, you can see that the cult is one of the pillars of human culture in general. Admiration for something is very characteristic of our nature, because it creates a certain ideal for us, gives us a goal - we must strive for this.
Cult in ancient times
It is safe to say that a religious cult in any form is already proof of the existence of intelligence in a living being.
After all, to create it, you need to have imagination and logic (albeit primitive). In the future, a person found more and more phenomena that seemed to him stronger than a simple living being. There was a worship of almost all elements of nature that could be both useful and harmful to man - rivers, forests, animals and plants. Therefore, as soon as people ceased to be animals and acquired some mental skills, the cult was not slow to appear.
Apparentlyman gave the first worship to the most precious gift of nature - fire. After all, keeping a hearth, making fire, even simply lighting a “torch” from a common fire - all this looked like a ritual. Fire was the first companion of a person who helped him, made his life easier or destroyed everything in its path, if "pissed off" him. Traces of the cult of fire have remained in every mythology of the world - remember at least the legend of Prometheus.
Next stage
However, a cult is an evolving tradition. At some point in his existence, a person was faced with the fact that there is a thing that is absolutely not subject to his explanations, which did not react in any way to worship and reverence. She was inevitable. This is Death.
From the very birth of human intellect, he was worried about the question of what comes after crossing this line? He couldn't answer himself. It was then that the cult of ancestors arose. After all, they, already being in the next world, knew what death was. The ancestors who went to another world could help a person in worldly affairs, thanks to their wisdom and all-knowledge.
In order to understand the cult of the dead, it is worth familiarizing yourself with the myths of Scandinavia. It was there, due to the importance of the tribal community, that ancestor worship was a huge part of the local ritual ceremonies.
The appearance of the myth as a cult
As we found out, initially a cult is a worship of natural phenomena (objects) or ancestors. In the second case, a personality already appeared in worship - evil or kind, cunning or honest, having its own specific character.
The endowment of inanimate objects and even feelings (!) with personal qualities of a person created a myth. A huge pantheon of various gods appeared, each culture has its own. However, the cult of ancestors did not go away with the advent of Zeus, Thor, Ra and various other idols.
Its further development is especially noticeable in China. In the Celestial Empire, everything, the most insignificant phenomenon and the most inconspicuous object, according to the ideas of the inhabitants, has a guardian spirit. The deceased ancestors became them, sometimes replacing each other or simply patronizing together. Many famous Chinese rulers, scholars and officials "remained" on earth after their death, helping ordinary people and protecting rivers, houses, settlements, light and rice fields.
Religion
No matter how important the realization of the existence of God is for most of the inhabitants of the Earth, in its purest form, religion is the cult of the Supreme Being, and nothing more. It is the worship of a single, independent and omnipotent being that is central to monotheistic religions.
A religious cult is, in addition to worshiping God directly, also endowing a huge number of artifacts and rituals with some kind of sacred, higher meaning. Following these same rituals (repentance, communion in Christianity, for example) is one of the main pillars of religion. With their help, you can satisfy the Supreme Being, and for non-compliance - anger him.
Religion plays a huge role in the history of mankind - so big that it is difficult to overestimate it. In the worldfaiths (Buddhism, Christianity, Islam), in fact, laid down all the moral norms of behavior for modern man. Religion thus became higher than a mere cult, which turned from a frightened admiration into a doctrine, an attempt to bring human life into a grace-filled order. It is the presence of philosophical impulses that puts religion on a higher level than a cult.
And if we move away from the sacred?
However, a religious cult is just an item (albeit a huge one) in the list of human worship. Far from always, a cult carries a higher and divine charge, a desire to explain the world. Our world and history is, in fact, filled with various types of worship.
One of the most important cults in the history of mankind can be called the cult of power. He came to us from a cruel animal world, where the presence of strength is a mandatory item for survival.
The strongest (alpha) instantly becomes the leader. Without his permission or knowledge, weaker beings cannot do anything. However, these same betas and scales follow each other in the same way, creating a simple hierarchical ladder, where the weakest (omega) is obliged to worship the strongest.
Such an animal arrangement can be well seen in schools, where children have not yet learned to control themselves and splash out all the animal that is left to us from their ancestors.
Rational cult
Two major eras in the history of mankind brought another cult. It can be called purely human, devoid of an ancestor from the world of cruel nature.
This is the cult of reason. The presence of rational, logical thinking, thanks to ancient philosophers, is considered the main asset of man. The ability for one's own thought is placed much higher in it than the worship of the Supreme Beings.
A reasonable being should set a goal in knowing the world through science, as well as maximum objectivity in his knowledge. The cult of the mind often excludes the very idea of a Deity - simply because we do not see any evidence of the intervention of the Supreme Being in the affairs of people.
In France during the Revolution, this phrase carried the antithesis for mainstream Catholicism. At that time, the cult of Reason became a whole Parisian movement aimed at establishing the dictates of science. Its participants disrupted masses and services, destroyed altars, while trying to enlighten the people through reading books.
At some point, the movement got lost in the abyss of revolutionary action. However, the denial of the divine and the establishment of the human mind on the highest pedestal, and the presentation of objectivism as the main good, was greatly reflected in the events under the slogan “Freedom! Equality! Brotherhood!”
Cult of Personality
Cult is a concept that is extended for a short period of time. The clearest example of such a "short-lived" cult is the worship of one person - even during his lifetime.
The cult of personality occurs most often as a political effect in totalitarian countries, being the main sign of autocracy. The closest analogue is a religious cult. A person who has managed to gain power is endowed by the people with almost divine, magical abilities. Faith in him and his word becomes unshakable.
However, it was not in vain that Sholokhov once said about the reign of Joseph Stalin: “There was a cult. But there was also personality. Indeed, as soon as the first outstanding personality appeared in the world, ready to put himself above the rest, a cult appeared. Alexander the Great became the first person to be deified during his lifetime in the ancient world. The next development of the cult of personality was already in Ancient Rome: almost every great emperor was deified there, and Gaius Julius Caesar, during his lifetime, began to build a temple for himself at the expense of the treasury.
The cult of personality was of great importance in the 20th century. Here it becomes the basis for many significant events - the clash of two cults, Hitler and Stalin, we now call the Great Patriotic War.
Conclusion
It's hard to imagine how human culture would have developed without some kind of ideal that was put on a pedestal worth striving for. The cult is the most important step in the history of man, which is probably the first on the path to the ideal. Not an ideal to be worshiped, but one to become.
The presence of a conscious social cult previously distinguished a person from an animal.
