Editorial Team
Hold onto your spacesuits, folks! Before you go confusing this with Realism, which is all about painting fruit bowls and grumpy-looking people, let’s dive into the celestial world of Raëlism.
Galactic Origins and (Non)Earthly Beliefs
Raëlism (or Raëlianism) is basically a space-age, French-born faith that can be tagged as a UFO religion. Why? Because it’s all about them unidentified flying objects and ET beliefs! Established back in the 1970s, Claude Vorilhon had a “Close Encounter of the Third Kind” moment and decided to spice things up by renaming himself Raël. Ever since, he’s been the poster boy of what scholars tag as a modern-day religious movement: The International Raëlian Movement (IRM) or for those who like their faith with a bit of drama, the Raëlian Church. Move over Captain Kirk; Raël’s steering this ship!
The whole jazz? They believe in the Elohim – an otherworldly race that played MasterChef with our DNA, cooking up humanity in their celestial kitchen. They don’t view them as gods, but as fancy beings from another galaxy who were probably bored of their alien pets.
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Close Encounters of the Raël Kind
Our main man Claude Vorilhon wasn’t just into renaming himself. He claims that back in ’73, he got to chit-chat with some space-faring folks. According to him, these Elohim fellas paid Earth a visit around 25,000 years ago (probably no dinosaurs around to photobomb their selfies). They apparently had a killer recipe for creating life and sprinkled a bit of their space seasoning here. They also told Vorilhon, “You’re now Raël. Congratulations!” which roughly means “Mr. Space Messenger.” His new gig? Warning humans that things got real after Hiroshima in 1945.
Raëlians Today: They’re Among Us!
Currently, Raëlism is no small club. They’ve got around 65,000 members worldwide. Though quite the cosmic journey, not everyone’s on board the spaceship. Many folks label them a “space alien cult,” and there’s a website which showcases testimonies by ex-Raëlians.There’s even a documentary called “The Prophet and the Space Aliens,” to get your space popcorn popping.
Final Frontier
Raëlism is like that quirky cousin in the family of religious movements. They give a sci-fi twist to the age-old question of our origins. So, whether you’re eye-rolling or starry-eyed, Raëlism shows there’s no limit to our cosmic creativity when pondering the mysteries of the universe. Beam us up, Scotty!
