VILNIUS, Lithuania - Recent reports of the
birth of a cloned baby have focused world attention on the group that claims to
have pulled off the feat.
The cloning report came from Las Vegas-based Clonaid, whose founder started the
Raelian Movement.
To better understand what is behind the announcement, ZENIT interviewed Massimo
Introvigne, director of the Italy-based Center for Studies on New Religions
(www.cesnur.org). He is currently in Lithuania preparing his institution's 2003
World Conference, scheduled for April 10-12.
Q: How did this sect come into being? Who is Rael?
Introvigne: First of all, I want to make it clear that I do not use the word
"sect," which at present has acquired more controversial rather than
scientific meaning.
Claude Vorilhon, who is at the origin of the Raelians, was born in Vichy in
1946. With a passion for motoring, he founded and directed a sports magazine
dedicated to cars. On Dec. 13, 1973, in the crater of Puy de Lassolas, one of
the highest volcanoes in Clermont-Ferrand, he experienced -- this is what he
says -- "contact" with an extraterrestrial being, the size of a
child, who invited him to get into a UFO, where he revealed to him the truth
about the Old and New Testament, which would be completed by subsequent
revelations.
According to these revelations, many years ago, extraterrestrial beings similar
to men learned how to create life in a laboratory. Part of the inhabitants of
the planet were scandalized by the discovery, and obliged the scientists to
continue their experiments in a distant planet, the Earth.
Here the Elohim -- that is, the extraterrestrial beings, "those who came
from Heaven," in keeping with the word used in the Bible, improperly
translated as "God" -- created men by cloning, in their image and
likeness. Then, surprised by the aggressiveness of their creatures, they exiled
them from the "laboratory," the "terrestrial Paradise."
However, later, some Elohim united themselves with terrestrial women, thus
giving origin to the Jewish people. Meanwhile, in the Elohim's planet, an
opposition party -- led by Satan -- thought that dangerous beings had been
created on earth and asked for their destruction. Satan's theses prevailed, and
the deluge took place -- in reality, an atomic bombardment.
However, a group of Elohim succeeded in saving some creatures in Noah's Ark --
a spaceship. After the deluge, the Elohim realized that they had been created,
in turn, by beings from another planet -- and so, ad infinitum -- and promised
never to destroy humanity again. What is more, they sent messengers to Earth --
Moses, Jesus -- born from the union between the head of the Elohim and a
terrestrial woman -- Buddha, Mohammed and others -- to reveal the truth,
although initially in an allegorical and veiled way.
However in 1945, the year of the atomic explosion in Hiroshima and of
Vorilhon's conception, the era of the Apocalypse began: the
"revelation," the era in which the truth can be presented in
scientific and no longer allegorical terms.
The extraterrestrial being conferred the name "Rael" on Vorilhon --
"the messenger," in French it is written with dieresis, Raël -- and
gave him a series of counsels for humanity of our time.
In 1974, Rael published "The Book That Tells the Truth," and founded
MADECH -- Movement for the Welcome of the Elohim, Creators of Humanity. There
was no agreement within MADECH among those with a passion for UFOs, the curious
and Rael's followers in the creation of a new atheistic religion. So, in 1975,
Rael left MADECH. On Oct. 7, 1975, in Roc Plat, Brantome, he met
extraterrestrials again and this time they even allowed him to visit the Elohim's
planet.
New revelations arose, in which it was said, among other things, that Rael is
the fruit of a relation between Yahweh, the head of the Elohim, and his mother,
kidnapped from a flying saucer and inseminated as [according to him] in fact
happened with Jesus' mother, which he gathered in several volumes. Rael founded
the Raelian Movement in 1976.
After the success of a conference tour held that same year, Rael went to the
Canadian Quebec, particularly tolerant of religious minorities, where he established
the International Raelian Movement center, which he named Raelian Religion in
1998.
Q: How are the Raelians organized?
Introvigne: The movement has a hierarchical organization that makes a
distinction between the "Structure" -- composed of close to 1,500 of
those more involved in the movement; the Guides at the top -- and the simple
members -- about 50,000.
Within the Structure, five levels are found, from the bottom up: Leadership
Assistance, Leaders, Assistant Guide, Priest Guide, Bishop Guide and finally
Planetary Guide or "Guide of Guides" -- Rael himself.
In the 1990s a religious order reserved for women was also created, the Order
of Rael's Angels. They are divided in "rose" angels, for the time
being only six, and "white" angels, an additional 160, for the
purpose of caring for Rael, including emotionally and sexually -- as well as of
the other 39 prophets and of the Elohim [...] only when they return to the
Earth, and of spreading the Raelian message among women who are not part of the
movement.
The return of the Elohim is expected in 2035. The Raelians plan the
construction of an embassy to receive them -- though not in Israel, the place
originally foreseen, where, however, the difficulties seem insurmountable. And
this plan was prepared also by the activity of UFOland, a sort of museum and
ufological propaganda center established in Valcourt, Quebec, but closed in
2001.
In France, the Raelians were among the principal targets of the anti-seven
movement, but they reacted with firmness, obtaining even some considerable
success in the courts.
Q: What does Rael teach?
Introvigne: The Elohim, the creators of man, supposedly revealed to Rael all
the ingredients to found his "atheistic religion": neither God, nor
the soul, nor Paradise, nor hell exist. After death, those who are worthy will
be "re-created" on the Elohim's planet.
To facilitate the work it will be opportune for a Guide, a Raelian leader, to
transmit the cellular plan of the faithful one to the Elohim, in an apposite ceremony,
and that at the moment of death the frontal bone -- from which the
"re-creation" will stem -- will be transmitted to the head of the
movement --the Guide of Guides: Rael. The sample of the frontal bone has been
the object of specific agreements between the Raelian Religion and funeral
agencies.
Among the Elohim's practical counsels, which are also, so to speak, of a
political character, is the "geniocracy" according to which the
active and passive electorate should be reserved to persons with an
above-average intelligence quotient. Given the controversies, however, Rael has
presented the geniocracy as a classic utopia, planned as a provocative ideal
and not destined to be literally realized.
Q: What is cloning for the Raelians?
Introvigne: Cloning, as we have seen, is the way in which, according to Rael's
revelations, human beings have been "created" -- in reality, rather,
"fabricated" in a laboratory -- by the extraterrestrials. The latter,
in turn, were cloned one day from other extraterrestrials, and so ad infinitum.
Rael does not tell us from where the first extraterrestrials came, who should
be the origin of the whole chain.
Therefore, in cloning people, they do no more than repeat the experiment of the
extraterrestrials of which they are a product. It must be clarified that an
authentic cloning would be one that consists in reproducing the adult man in
the same state in which he finds himself, in fact, in a better state, free of
illnesses and old age. According to Rael, it is not about the cloning that
takes a baby out of man. This is only a first step.
[To be continued Friday]