Cults are religious, they just have more violent methods of worshipping, like worshipping Satan and murdering people as sacrifices to their god(s).
Can cults count here?
Yeah it'd make sense to put it on here
Technically, every religion at some point was a form of cult
Cult is really pretty non-descriptive. They totally count as religions, though.
And Satanism is less of a cult thing and more of a chill religion itself. Like Buddhism, it's also practiced as an ideology as well as full-on religion. The ideology being that one can use 'sin' as a practical tool. But not actually encouraging one to do evil things.
So. Um. How would a cult be formed? Any ideas on how a small pocket sized religion can just gain popularity?
Sometimes it's done by literally someone on the street calling out their beliefs to passerby, and maybe someone takes them seriously and actually is interested in the cult. Another thing is that they do something that the cult was supposed to do and they talk to the person to discuss them joining. Take the Dark Brotherhood from Skyrim for example. You perform a murder that they were called to do, and they kidnap you and talk to you and sort of convince you to join them. Just a few ideas