Raelians
Raelians
This UFO cult claims to be cloning people under the directive of the Elohim, the extraterrestrial creators of humans on Earth.
In July 2001 the Raelian Movement made headlines around the world when one of its members, Brigitte Boisselier, a forty-four-year-old scientist with doctorates from universities in Dijon and Houston, announced that Clonaid, her team of four doctors and a technician, would soon produce the first human clone. Defying opposition from President George W. Bush, Congress, Secretary of Health Tommy Thompson, and the Food and Drug Administration, Boisselier refused to disclose the location of Clonaid’s two laboratories, other than to state that one was in the United States and the other abroad. Clonaid, established by Ra’l in 1997, is funded in part by $500,000 from an anonymous couple who want a child cloned from the DNA of their deceased ten-month-old son. Ra’l states that such cloning will demonstrate the methods employed by the Elohim in their creation of the human species.
So who is Ra’l?
Claude Vorilhon, a French sports journalist and former race-car driver, claims to have been contacted by an extraterrestrial being while climbing the Puy de Lassolas volcanic crater near Clermont-Ferrand, France, on December 13, 1973. Vorilhon was astonished when he saw a metallic-looking object in the shape of a flattened bell about thirty feet in diameter descend from the sky. A door opened in the side of the craft, and what appeared to be a humanlike being about four feet in height emerged in a peaceful manner. Vorilhon soon learned that the being was a member of the Elohim referred to in the creation story in Genesis, the “gods” who made humans in their own image; they did this, according to Vorilhon, by utilizing deoxyribonucleic acid—DNA.
Vorilhon was told that the Elohim had sent great prophets, such as Moses, Ezekiel, Buddha, and Muhammad to guide humankind. Jesus, the fruit of a union between the Elohim and Mary, a daughter of man, was given the mission of making the Elohims’ messages of guidance known throughout the world in anticipation of the Age of Apocalypse—which in the original Greek meant “age of revelation,” not “end of the world.” In this epoch, which the people of Earth entered in 1945, humankind will at last be able to understand scientifically that which the Elohim accomplished eons ago in the Genesis story.
Vorilhon said that the Elohim renamed him “Ra’l,” which means “the man who brings light.” Shortly after his encounter with the extraterrestrial, he created the Raelian Movement, which soon acquired over a thousand members in France. Today, according to figures produced by the Raelians, their membership includes 55,000 individuals in eighty-five different countries.
Ra’l maintains that he established the Raelian Movement according to instructions given to him by the Elohim. Its aims are to inform humankind of the reality of the Elohim “without convincing,” to establish an embassy where the Elohim will be welcome, and to help prepare a human society adapted to the future. In the years since his first contact experience, he has written a number of books, which can be obtained directly from the Raelians. The titles include The Message Given by Extraterrestrials and Let’s Welcome Our Fathers from Space.