A more detailed study of the significant cult events briefly listed in the partial twenty-year timeline offered below would reveal to the reader how such organizations intentionally, insidiously and effectively use various mind control techniques, including drug therapies, to control their subjects. The events set forth in The Oracle of Delphi, therefore, must seem all the more plausible, indeed all the more likely, when viewed in comparison to these actual events. Fact is, after all, stranger than fiction.

March 1997: Marshall Applewhite and 38 followers commit mass suicide in a concerted effort to escape their bodies and board a spacecraft believed to be following comet Hale-Bopp.

October 1994: The burned bodies of 48 Solar Temple members are discovered in a farmhouse and three chalets in Switzerland. At the same time, five bodies, including that of an infant, are found in a chalet north of Montreal. Twenty-one more deaths follow in December of 1995 and March of 1997.

April 1993: At least 70 Branch Davidian cult members die after a 51-day siege of their religious compound near Waco, Texas. The sect's leader, David Koresh, who told followers he was Jesus Christ, dies of a gunshot wound to the head.

October 1993: Fifty-three hill Vietnamese tribe villagers commit mass suicide with flintlock guns and other primitive weapons in the belief they will go straight to heaven. They are victims of fraud committed by a man who receives cash donations for promising a speedy road to paradise.

December 1991: Mexican minister Ramon Morales Almazan and 29 followers suffocate after he tells them to keep praying and ignore toxic fumes filling their church.

December 1990: Twelve people die in a religious ritual in Tijuana, Mexico, apparently after drinking fruit punch tainted by industrial alcohol.

November 1978: The Rev. Jim Jones leads 914 followers to their deaths at Jonestown, Guyana. Most of the congregation drinks cyanide-laced grap