What is Raelism?

“Raëlism, also known as Raelianism or the Raëlian movement, is a UFO religion that was founded in 1974 by Claude Vorilhon, now known as Raël. It is numerically the world’s largest UFO religion. An adherent of Raëlism is a Raëlian.” (Wikipedia)

That is rather succinct, but it is a good starting place. Here’s a link to their site:http://www.rael.org/

My Interest in Raelism

In the late 1970’s I came across a book by Rael (Claude Varilhon) which outlined his encounter with an alien named Yahweh and what was explained to him. The part that caught my attention was the concept that: ‘In Raëlian cosmology, our observable universe is an “atom” of a much larger level of matter (and possibly organism) and subatomic particles in our bodies also possess universes like our own, but on a much smaller scale. This pattern, atom within universe within atom, is believed to be infinitely repetitive, from the infinitely small, to the infinitely large.’

Yes, that caught my attention, since I felt that “God” was a being that made up our space and we were living in and through that being. Even the ‘big bang’ was some form of conception, if you can conceive of such a thing (as director Luc Besson did visually in his film Lucy, starring Scarlett Johansson). It has been my touchstone ever since, although I have long stopped being an active adherent. My reason? They claim to be atheistic, not believing in “God” and I have a wee problem with that. They are actually splitting hairs, because the Elohim (also known as ‘gods’ in the Old Testament) were our creators, and they believe in them. The sticking point is that the Raelians don’t believe in One God, and that’s where I think they’ve missed the point. They can imagine the cosmology, as stated above, but not connect that with “For in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

The Exact Time?

Needless to say, the chart was always going to be interesting, but the one detail that was sketchy was the time of the encounter. Rael says that instead of driving to work, he kept going, as if led to do so, until he found himself in a remote place. That implies sometime that morning after 9 am local time. When I first erected this chart, I saw the beginnings of an interesting aspect or two, and then just kept moving the time forward until it locked into place at 11:11 am. Was this the original 11:11 gate (as discussed in At This Point in Time)? That’s intriguing. This point in time may not be the exact first moment of their encounter, but it could relate to the moment when the game changed for Rael.

The Conclusion

So, as I see it, the problem can be summed up in very few words: Yahweh is part of those that come from the sky, effectively our fathers. This encounter must have created an inner conflict of self-will versus obedience to a higher being. As we have seen, Claude Varilhon (after a few months of such inner turmoil that he developed ulcers) decided to knuckle down to his father’s will, changed his name to Rael, and began to share the knowledge with the world. http://raelian.com/en/jean_sendy.php