Editorial Team
A new Netflix documentary probes into a “UFO-inspired religion” and its quirky founder.
Released on Feb. 7, “Raël: The Alien Prophet” examines Raëlism, a French-born religious cult founded by Claude Vorilhon in the 1970s. We actually wrote about it last year, but that was before the Netflix doc came out, and now we have new information to share.
The basic premise of Raëlism, or the Raëlin Movement – which very much still exists with over 60,000 members worldwide – is that an alien race called Elohim created humans and are responsible for all life on earth.
Vorilhon also goes by “Raël” and claims to be an alien prophet. He says he’s had many encounters with UFOs and acts as a messenger for extraterrestrials. He believes that he’s Jesus Christ’s brother and has made plans to build an alien embassy by 2035. He also encourages extramarital affairs and claims to have slept with thousands of women. And that thing about buttholes. We’re getting to it.
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Another big part of Raëlism is the belief in human cloning. Inspired by the cloning of Dolly the Sheep, Raël and Brigitte Boisselier – a chemist, Raëlism leader and total whackjob – created a company called Clonaid in 1997. They claimed to have cloned a human baby in the early 2000s, though they never actually proved it. It was later claimed that more babies had been cloned, but again, no proof.
It’s also been alleged that Raël had his own sex slaves and that some of them may have been minors. “One former cult member interviewed for the documentary called him a “dangerous sex maniac” who beds a steady stream of beauties,” writes the Toronto Sun.
Also, people in the docuseries are naked a lot.
We learned about a lot of weird stuff in this four-episode series. But the weirdest takeaway, at least for us, was the reportedly forced practice of anus gazing.
“We were told to undress,” said Brigitte McCann, a journalist who was able to infiltrate the group. “They said you must undress. You also had to masturbate. They told you to smell your scent. Chantal and I felt very uncomfortable. Then, um, they asked us something I’ll never forget. You had to take a mirror and examine your anus.”
“I didn’t like all the opening of genitals or all the focusing on the anus,” said former Raëlian Pete Cooke.
This really weird fucking practice is part of a “sensual meditation” which Raël actually wrote a book about.
Some people were cool with it, though.
“I remember, uh, there was this exercise,” one female follower recounted with a giddy smile on her face. “It involved a mirror which you used to look at every part of your body. We even looked at our anuses!”
Another follower, Jean-Pierre, said staring deep within himself changed his personality and made him more sensitive. “At one time, if you looked at my girlfriend a certain way, I’d smash your face. I was a real brute. I was a fighter, a warrior. I’d been trained for that. It’s stupid, but that’s who I was. I was an idiot, really, to put it bluntly.” Jean-Pierre goes on to say that his children noticed how much he had changed. “I wasn’t the tough, demanding, hard father. I became the gentle father they could rely on.”
Here are some weird videos.
