Preface
New Acropolis presents itself as an open cultural and educational organization engaged in philosophy, Volunteering and the arts. But behind this public image another reality hides: the organization is deeply missionary, built around the idea of global expansion and the “conquest” of as many people as possible. Recruiting new members is not a side effect of New Acropolis’s activity, but its core function, sanctified ideologically and encoded in internal documents.
This article reveals the scale and mechanisms of active recruitment in New Acropolis, based on authentic internal materials of the organization.
1. Recruitment as the sacred duty of every member
In an internal document of the organization — the “New Year’s message” of the founder Jorge Ángel Livraga (HAL) — recruiting new members is explicitly named the daily duty of every acropolitan:
“Every day that passes, every hour that passes, every minute that passes — you must devote it entirely to New Acropolis. Every day we must work for New Acropolis and try to attract one member, paste posters, perform all the necessary translation and exchange tasks, which each time allow us to have more brothers, more joined hands, more uplifted hands pointing to the horizon.”
— Bastion No. 60-1: New Year’s message. Jorge Ángel Livraga, January 1982 (source)
Each member is obliged to attract new people every day. This is not a recommendation — it is a clear directive from the founder, part of the ideological “mission.”
2. “Conquest” rhetoric: Acropolis as an Empire
In the same internal directive HAL uses overtly militaristic and imperial rhetoric — he speaks of the “cutting edges of the Empire” and demands “aggressive” people on the recruiting front:
“We need on the ‘outskirts’ of the Empire people totally devoted to the Ideal, with simple and clear ideas, with a natural ascending force, who will not make great problems for anything.”
— Order No. 26: Relations between MN and students. Jorge Ángel Livraga (source)
Thus, in its own language New Acropolis is an “Empire,” and recruiters are warriors on its “outskirts.”
3. “Manager’s Guide”: instructions for expansion
The “Manager’s Guide” (“Golden Axe” and “Labyrinth of Lazurite”) is a secret internal document of New Acropolis, written by HAL in 1976. It is not intended for public distribution and not even for ordinary members of the organization. (source)
Already in the introduction HAL sets the task of active action and expansion for the organization:
“Our Movement, newly born, must already face a world doctrinally indifferent and organizationally hostile. We have taken on a difficult task in a hard century.”
“The completion of the course must yield practical results: promotion of new leaders and new expansions at all levels.”
“Action, as Krishna teaches us in the Bhagavad-gita, is our world. Every leader must be active.”
The Guide contains an entire chapter — “Section XV: How to act in case of rapid expansion” — and several chapters devoted to overcoming stagnation and restoring growth.
What to do if the organization does not grow? The Guide gives clear instructions:
“Carry out external propaganda by any means. In cases of significant economic weakness Central Command itself must attend to this personally: paint street posters, speak in the media — television and radio — call press conferences or be among the participants of some external conference or association and tell them about ‘New Acropolis,’ carrying brochures or, at least, business cards.”
— Section XVI: How to act in case of paralysis/stagnation. ‘Manager’s Guide,’ HAL, 1976 (source)
That is, a halt in growth is a crisis, and restoring recruitment is priority number one.
4. The sole “channel to the Higher Forces”: mystical justification for recruitment
The internal ideology of New Acropolis gives recruitment a sacred dimension. In closed sessions for the Living Forces (LF) — the inner core of the organization — leader Olena Sikirich openly declared that New Acropolis is the only channel to the Teachers and the Mysteries for all humanity:
“And now, although we don’t tell this to members so it doesn’t look like we are vain or whatever, in the 20th century the only channel to the Teachers is Acropolis. Just as in the 19th century there was the Theosophical Society. This is our ‘family.’ The only channel and the only ones ever given the right to undergo the trials to deserve an esoteric school — that is Acropolis. And if someone among the 4–5 billion people living on Earth wants to enter the mysteries, they must enter Acropolis.”
— Olena Sikirich, ‘Summer internship of the Living Forces,’ 1999 (source)
From this position recruitment acquires a cosmological scale: if you do not bring people into Acropolis — you deprive them of the only path to spiritual evolution. This is a powerful mechanism of psychological pressure on the organization’s members.
Sikirich likewise openly formulates the task of proselytizing among the most educated people of society:
“If we do not attract the attention of the highest minds and remain spinning within our four walls, then one can consider that our task is not fulfilled. It is very important that we remember this.”
— Olena Sikirich, based on materials: ‘Legends and myths of New Acropolis,’ Ksenia Kirillova, 2007 (source)
5. Lectures are recruitment disguised as education
Internal instructions for lecturers (“instructors”) frankly describe public lectures not as the transmission of knowledge but as a tool for recruitment and suggestion. The transcript of Sikirich’s session with instructors (“Manifestation of the 7 laws in the work of the instructor,” 1997) reveals the methodology:
“Anticipate certain moments of people’s disposition toward you. Create at the start of the lecture so-called invisible bonds, thanks to which you later will be able to take the lecture or meeting to its end. Your task in this context is that you, for people—especially if you work with them a long time as an instructor—must become a dear and close person... You must do everything in your power to become for them, not even an authority, but a dear, one of their own... Build the lecture so that they love you...”
— Olena Sikirich, ‘Manifestation of the 7 laws in the work of the instructor,’ 02.02.1997, based on materials: ‘Legends and myths of New Acropolis’ (source)
This approach is a classic “love-bombing” — a manipulative technique widely described in the context of destructive cults.
Moreover, HAL himself in the journal Bastion explicitly explained: lectures are “Acropolian struggle,” not education:
“The instructor-acropolitan must always remain at the height of his position and feel himself as a channel of History. We have come to change the world, not to be yet another of the schools that speculate on esotericism. Esotericism and other similar things are merely part of the acropolian struggle, meant to inspire the students.”
— “On scholasticism,” Jorge Ángel Livraga, September 1981, based on materials: ‘Legends and myths of New Acropolis’ (source)
6. Manipulation of consciousness as a tool of retention
Recruitment is only the first step. Then techniques aimed at the gradual subordination of a person’s consciousness to the organization’s goals are applied. Internal instructions describe methods resembling Ericksonian hypnosis:
“Through emotions you must evoke devotion to the school, to the dream, to the Teacher... It is necessary, as far as possible, to consciously plan that during the session there are moments of so-called emotional shocks... All hi-hi-hi, ha-ha-ha, well done, yes-yes-yes, and at the end — AVE!!! Lull, la-la-la beautifully, and then feel the moment — bam.”
— Olena Sikirich, ‘Manifestation of the 7 laws...,’ 02.02.1997, based on materials: ‘Legends and myths of New Acropolis’ (source)
The goal is for students to be unable to live without the organization:
“You must reach the state... that you live from lecture to lecture, and that your students, your people live from one meeting with you to another. And if you do not achieve this, then instructing will be of no use.”
— Ibid. (source)
There is a department in NA hidden from visitors that integrates people, analyzes them and determines what activities they can be offered based on their personality to interest them. (source)
Daniella recalls how she tried to recruit all her friends. (source)
7. Lying as an allowed recruitment method
The practice regarding truth in recruitment is particularly telling. Internal documents confirm: when attracting new members the organization deliberately conceals its true nature.
First, new attendees are not informed about the existence of a secret teaching. Second, HAL normalized lying as “sacred inspiration”:
“HAL taught us that in this context it is not scary to invent something — some information that no one will check, let them even say that it didn’t happen... Here is an example of HAL, great HAL, who never lied, and did not even lie when recounting the fact of Giordano Bruno’s arrival in Zagreb, although that never happened.”
— “Living Word” from the message to leaders of 17.02.1996, Olena Sikirich, based on materials: ‘Legends and myths of New Acropolis’ (source)
Researchers relate this practice to the concept of “esoteric discontinuity”: a person is recruited into one organization and finds themselves in a fundamentally different one.
8. The “external facade” of normality as an attraction tool
To successfully recruit new members, New Acropolis deliberately maintains the image of a “normal” cultural organization. But even HAL publicly acknowledged this contradiction:
“Is there not the possibility that, by conducting many events aimed at an external audience and which may give relative prestige, or more precisely a ‘mask of prestige,’ we lose the opportunity to give our members the necessary attention and control?.. I believe that if we continue to devote so much attention to the ‘facade’ of our Institution, neglecting the people who already form it, the annual loss of members will continue.”
— Mando No. 14: How to attract and retain members? Jorge Ángel Livraga (source)
This quote confirms that “external activities” — Volunteering, cultural events, lectures — are primarily a “mask,” an instrument of recruitment. The real substance of the organization is internal.
9. Severing ties with the outside world after recruitment
After recruiting a new member the organization gradually severs their external ties — family, friends, non-acropolitans. This is also directly recorded in HAL’s internal directives:
“In our Movement we do not ask you to be an anchorite, but begin to break unnecessary chains with friends who do not participate in your Ideal... because preserving those old relationships will harm you and those people who have not yet awakened as philosophers.”
— Bastion No. 30: Some practical advice for new acropolitans. Jorge Ángel Livraga, February 1979 (source)
“‘We must avoid the psychological trap... to feel the time devoted to New Acropolis as something ‘torn’ from our life. The truth is the opposite: the only useful hours of our present incarnation are those devoted to the Ideal. Everything else is dust that the wind of life scatters.’”
— Bastion No. 63-3: On how to use time. Jorge Ángel Livraga, May 1982 (source)
Social isolation is a classic sign of destructive organizations. It performs a double function: it retains already recruited members and reduces the risk that they will hear a critical view from outside.
10. “Conquest of the world” as a global goal
Sikirich openly formulates that the scale of the mission is planetary, and any local halt in growth is unacceptable. New Acropolis is presented as the seed of a future global power:
“We know that we are the seed of an organization that will grow into a huge army, a huge force.”
— Bulletin associated with Fernando Schwarz — one of the leaders of New Acropolis’s ‘Security Corps,’ based on materials: ‘Legends and myths of New Acropolis’ (source)
HAL himself in the “Manager’s Guide” paints an image of an organization that could become worldwide:
“It [New Acropolis] may have millions of participants, thousands of houses, hundreds of universities and printing presses...”
— ‘Manager’s Guide,’ HAL, 1976 (source)
Even the “Manager’s Guide” concludes with an exhortation to expand:
“Be Heroic, be Generous, be acropolitans. And may the God of Fate bless your deeds and eternalize in our students the ancient impulse of the Spirit that must forge the New Man, New Woman and New World.”
— ‘Manager’s Guide,’ HAL, September 1976, Granada, Spain (source)
Conclusions
Active recruitment in New Acropolis is not a spontaneous practice of isolated enthusiasts. It is a systemic, ideologically justified and meticulously instructed activity that is the backbone of the organization:
- Recruitment is a sacred daily duty of every member, explicitly declared by the founder HAL.
- The organization uses the language of conquest and Empire — even in internal documents.
- Public activities (lectures, Volunteering, cultural events) are primarily a “mask” and a tool for attracting new people, not an end in themselves.
- Manipulative techniques, including “love-bombing,” emotional shocks in lectures and suggestion of dependency — are used systematically and deliberately.
- The hidden nature of the organization is intentionally concealed during recruitment — new members are attracted to a “philosophical school” and receive a sect with an occult teaching.
- Global expansion is a declared goal of the organization, justified mystically: New Acropolis is presented as the only path to evolution for all humanity.
- After recruitment members are gradually isolated from the outside world, which makes leaving psychologically very difficult.
All this corresponds to the signs of a destructive organization — not the advertising brochures, but real practices recorded in New Acropolis’s own internal documents.