What is it?

The poster child for modern cults. Science fiction, celebrities, shadowy henchmen who threaten to kill you for criticizing them publically, baby blue clothing... Epsilon has it all. We can't go outside without people following us chanting Kifflom!

Not that we go outside very often, or open the blinds, or talk to anyone but each other. Epsilon pays movie stars to tout a package deal of enlightenment, immortality and sexual promiscuity, all framed by an extremely confusing and implausible backstory involving an alien called Kraff, that Epsilonists conveniently refuse to ever explain or talk about. Still, if Jimmy Boston and Clay Jackson believe it, then it must be true.

Does it pass the CULTSTOPPERS 5-point cult test?

1) Self-appointed messianic leader?

Mr. Cris-without-an-H Formage. A failed actor and successful alcoholic who started a religion franchise as a last-ditch attempt to get himself in the limelight, and in the process deified himself as an alien god. A millionaire hundreds of times over, he now divides his time between high-priced speaking engagements, authoring books he hasn't written, partying with celebrities, and having sex with his young disciples. Not that time is an issue when you claim to be thousands of years old and immortal and that he has made women from sand.

2) Elitist totalitarian structure?

Nobody pitches the Us Versus Them mentality harder than Epsilon. Anyone outside the Epsilon Program is an Unsaveable, doomed to keep dying without knowing their true eternal self. From Day 1, Epsilon followers are told to cut themselves off from negative forces like friends, family and anyone else likely try to knock some sense into them. Once you're in, it's almost impossible to get out. People who divorce famous Epsilonists and start talking about the religion in the media take vacations that they never come back from.

3) Promise of higher power?

According to Epsilonism, everyone is a repressed god and, for vast sums of money, their program can turn you into a living manifestation of the divine, free from disease or weakness. Epsilonism promises to unlock the secrets not only to existence, but also to the entertainment industry, which tends to be more of a selling point for desperate Vinewood wannabes than the whole "the world is 166 years old and we're all from the same tree" bullshit.

4) Mind control techniques?

All the way to the bank: eerie mind-numbing audio, hypnotic imagery, and surreal role-playing exercises that are suspiciously similar to Vinewood acting classes. Epsilon hooks people in with their famous Identity Evaluation, which involves a series of bizarre questions and an ancient machine that spurts out meaningless graphs about your personality, and inevitable lack thereof. From there, you're taken on an expensive, confusing and never-ending journey that's supposed to lead to absolute truth, but usually ends in depression, bankruptcy or sexually-transmitted disease.

5) Heavy financial commitment?

$5000 for someone to tell you to un-know what you know? That doesn't even make grammatical sense, let alone financial. And that's just getting your foot in the door. If you continue to scale the Epsilon "tangent" to become a Thesis of Truth, you'll finish up with more debt than a post-doctoral medical student. Epsilon is in the process of opening new Houses of Worship in all major cities across the USA and Europe, so clearly their business model is working.