Cult of Kek

About

The Cult of Kek, also known as the Church of Kek, is a satirical religion based around the worship of the ancient Egyptian deity Kek^[4] (also spelled Kuk or Keku), an androgynous God of darkness and chaos who is often depicted as a frog or frog-headed man in male form or a snake-headed woman in female form. On 4chan, the character Pepe the Frog is often considered a modern avatar of the diety, who uses ancient Egyptian meme magic to influence the world, often by fulfilling the wishes of posts that end in repeating numbers. Additionally, the deity is associated with the popular 4chan slang term “Kek”, and is often embraced by supporters of 2016 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Practitioners are known to frequently write “praise Kek,” and jokingly refer to the church as a “religion of peace.”

Origin

On November 27th, 2015, a 4chan user submitted a post about the Egyptian deity to the /his/ (History) board on 4chan, featuring a depiction of the god as a frog-headed man (shown below).^[10]

Spread

On March 11th, 2016, Redditor river_of_karma submitted an image macro associating Pepe the Frog, Donald Trump and “memetic magic” with the ancient Egyptian deity to /r/pepethefrog^[2] (shown below).

On June 4th, a “Kek worship general” thread was created on the /trash/ (off-topic) board on 4chan.^[8] On June 25th, an anonymous 4chan user submitted a post to the /r9k/ (Robot 9000) board asking if viewers had “accepted lord Kek, ancient Egyptian god of darkness, into their lives?” (shown below).^[5]

In /pol/’s kek mythos, posts ending in sevens hold more weight than others, as seven is considered a lucky and/or holy number in many cultures, which increases in value for dubs and trips. Similarly, three sixes (666, the Number of the Beast) are considered to represent Satan and evilness. This received one of its highest points on June 19th, 2016, when a post reading “Trump will win” managed to get the 77777777 GET (shown below).

On August 5th, YouTuber Ganzorf uploaded a video titled “Who is Kek? – The Dark God Rising,” which discussed the Cult of Kek.^[11] On September 12th, an anonymous 4chan user submitted a thread associating the Church of Kek with black magic (shown below).^[1]

On September 14th, Redditor alexmikli submitted a post titled “TIL of the Gyptian god Kek, a god of chaos and nighttime who was represented by a frog” to the /r/TIL^[3] subreddit, where it gathered upwards of 1,200 votes (93% upvoted) and 100 comments within 48 hours. The following day, a parody of the Clinton campaign blog post referring to Pepe the Frog as a “symbol associated with white nationalism” was created, which discussed the Kek deity and its relationship with “meme magic” (shown below). Also on September 15th, The Cult of KEK Facebook^[6] page was launched.