The Raelian Movement
Another expression of contemporaiy esoteric religious thought can be found in movements committed to a belief in extraterrestrial beings. Popularly dubbed “UFO cults,” many of these communities have assumed the concerns—and in some cases the language—of millenarian Christian theology, namely, a visionary future in which believers will be rescued from a dying Earth by visitors from outer space, who will transport the chosen few to a blissful life on a distant planet.
One recurrent article of faith among such groups is the belief that human civilization is the result of interaction with beings from another planetary system who have used our world as a laboratory for genetic and cultural experimentation. Within the context of this quasi-religious creed—which sociologists refer to as Ufology—spiritual enlightenment consists of the realization that our collective destinies are ultimately in the hands of unearthly beings whose power and intelligence vastly exceed our own and whose immediate goal is to make contact with those few human beings capable of receiving their secret (and ultimately world-redeeming) revelations.The Raelian movement, which was given its name and its creed by its founder, Claude “Rael” Vorilhon (b. 1946), is one of the better known communities of UFO worshipers. Its belief system should be at once familiar and strange to anyone living within a Judeo-Christian culture. In his book The Message Given to Me by Extraterrestrials: They Took Me to Their Planet (1978), Rael revisits the various accounts of divine-human interaction in the Hebrew Bible and identifies the Elohim—a term used in the Hebrew Bible to identify the Creator God —as the true creators of our planet and of the human race. However, the Elohim are not supernatural beings, Rael insists, but rather an advanced race of extraterrestrials. It was the Elohim who renamed Vorilhon “Rael,” and it was one of the Elohim who impregnated Mary of Nazareth and fathered Jesus centuries ago.
Rael believes that he, too, is the result of humanextraterrestrial mating, which places him among a select group of prophets and teachers that includes, among others, Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad. Believing himself to be the Messiah of our age, Rael founded the Raelian religion in 1974 (known formally as “The Movement to Welcome the Elohim, Creators of Humanity”) as a means of publicizing the presence of the Elohim within our planetary system and in anticipation of the day when the peoples of Earth will be able to receive the Elohim in peace. Only then will a new world order be possible and the global reign of men and women of superior intelligence commence.Rael’s flair for publicity is one of the reasons that the Raelians have achieved a larger measure of public recognition than most UFO religions. In 2002, Dr. Brigitte Boisselier (b. 1956) announced that she and her fellow Raelians had successfully cloned a human baby in fulfillment of the Raelian goal of achieving immortality through scientific means. No proof has been offered confirming this claim, but it did succeed in drawing international attention. Rael himself has organized a conference promoting masturbation, arguing that “self-love” would stimulate the growth of new brain cells and thereby make it possible for humans to experience sexual pleasure without guilt. Rael has repeatedly sought public confrontations with the Catholic Church, insisting, for example, that his followers address him as “Your Holiness”—a title normally reserved for the Pope.
Many of the Raelian teachings that have provoked controversy can be found in other UFO- oriented organizations and in esoteric religious communities generally. Critics of Vorilhon’s writings have accused him of having “borrowed” Erich von Daniken’s mythic account of the extraterrestrial origins of human civilization {Chariot of the Gods, 1968) for his own purposes and have focused on his advocacy of various kinds of sexual “liberation” as proof of the inherently antisocial character of the movement (though a belief in “free love” is not uncommon among alternative religions).
But in his own defense, Rael has pointed out that his belief in superior beings from another galaxy or in spaceships circling Earth is no stranger than believing in supernatural “guides” who direct the course of human history. From his perspective, all he has done is offer a more “scientific” version of a belief that, in one form or another, has been embraced by most of the world’s religions. As for the Raelians’ promotion of cloning (for pets as well as humans) as a legitimate response to the dilemma of mortality, it was never the desire of the Elohim, they argue, that the human race remain forever limited to a single lifespan, nor that we should suffer from the ravages of disease. The Elohim, the Raelians teach, remain poised, waiting for the next evolutionary leap in human development to occur, at which time they will share with us the superior knowledge and technological expertise they have accumulated over eons of time.Critics insist that what is particularly disturbing about this movement (and other dedicated UFO communities) is the potential for socially destructive behavior. Anticult activists point to the collective suicides of the Heaven’s Gate community in 1997—whose thirty-nine members took their lives in the belief that, having shed their bodies, their spirits would ascend into the heavens and join the “mother ship”—as proof that Ufology, carried to its extreme conclusion, can generate a pathological form of world renunciation. Still, although it is not possible to assert that the Raelian community will never adopt a radical and apocalyptic view of the human condition, Vorilhon has yet to display any sign of the psychopathology that compelled Marshall Herff Applewhite (1931-1997), the leader of the Heaven’s Gate movement, and his followers to take their lives as an act of spiritual liberation.
Rael is seated in front of a model of a double helix as he announces the supposed cloning of a human child.