podcast

Anke Richter, Part 2 - Harem Culture, Leaving ISTA, and DeCult

12.08.2026
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This week is part 2 with Anke Richter, journalist, author of Cult Trip, former member of Tantric group ISTA, and founder and director of New Zealand’s cult conference DeCult. In part 2 with Anke, she explains how the founder of International School of Temple Arts had constructed a sort of harem culture and was sleeping with all the women, where the line is between normal dating in a community vs. coercion, and how her journalistic investigation into a different tantra group while still actively in this one finally set off her alarm bells.
They discuss what’s positive about the tantric world, how the flip side of sex-positive groups can be a pressure to act sex positive when you don’t actually FEEL sex positive, and why she started cult conference Decult.

SOURCES

Cult Trip

DECULT

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