1 Aleister Crowley – an influential occultist and ceremonial magician.
2 Manly P. Hall – known for writings on esoteric philosophy.
3 Anton LaVey – established modern Satanism.
4 Grigori Rasputin – a controversial spiritual figure in Russian history.
5 Osho – a spiritual teacher known for controversial teachings and communes.
6 Jesus Christ – the foundational figure of Christianity.
Jesus, by far. The people who have been murdered in his name is probably close to or over a good billion, right?
He’s not really a “foundational figure of Christianity” though, his image was just co-opted by the Roman empire which then created the religion also co-opting the actual “Jewish revival” Jesus was at the core of (bringing the fundamentals of monotheism back into mind and expanding the teachings to everyone, not just a small select community).
Not disputing you but I’d be interested in how you arrived at this count.
Completely eyeballed it but I included every Western imperialist project that was done with Bible in hand and chanting variations of “Deus Vult”, so that’s large chunks of Asia, most of Africa, all of Latin America, and every Western incursion on West Asia from the Crusades to Iran today. And let’s not forget the pagan persecution in the West itself by the Romans. That’s a shit ton of people through the ages, right?
WAG