The following was co-written with my intergalactic ally Greg Bishop, co-author of “A” is for Adamski: The Golden Age of the UFO Contactees.

Claude Vorilhon was born September 30, 1946 in Vichy, Allier France. His life reads like an improbable novel. He reinvented himself three times as a public figure, first as a teenybop singer, then an auto-racer and journalist, and finally as a messenger for the space brothers.

Vorilhon ran away from home in 1961 at the tender age of 15, hitchhiking to Paris where he hoped to become a recording star. He was discovered by a radio personality and given a record contract and the showbiz name: “Claude Celler.” 1

From 1966 to ’67 he released a string of singles to minor success. One of the sides was entitled “Madame Pipi,” which told the story of a toilet attendant. Claude’s teen crooner career ended abruptly when his sponsor killed himself in 1970. Gathering his earnings from his aborted dance with showbiz, Vorilhon founded a magazine based on his lifelong interest in auto racing, which also allowed him to test-drive new cars.

Vorilhon’s next big adventure occurred during a hike in the Pyrenees mountains on December 13, 1973 when he encountered a small, bald, green-suited spaceman with a goatee on his chin and a halo over his head who introduced himself as Yahweh (God to the Hebrews) and explained that humans were the lab creations of a group of ETs known as the Elohim.

Yahweh further informed Claude that he’d been chosen to spread the Elohim message and treated him to a spaceship trip (at seven times the speed of light no less!) to the Elohim’s home planet where he met up with the holy space age trinity of Jesus, Moses and Buddha. At some point in this madcap romp, Claude was given a scented bath courtesy of six perfectly formed biological robot babes, who subsequently treated him to some steamy robot sex.

In due time, Claude was appointed as the Elohim’s ambassador to Earth and given the space name Raël. This ultimately led to what some termed a free love saucer cult known as The Raelian Movement who encourage sexual promiscuity among its frolicking followers, all in search of an Elohim-blessed “cosmic orgasm.” Talk about a big bang! Bada bomp!

 

Claude’s new friends also showed him the unity of all things and the symbol for this unity. Unfortunately, the symbol in question faced an incredible uphill battle for acceptance. The logo of a swastika perfectly integrated into a six-pointed Star of David shocked and scandalized almost everyone who beheld the cursed thing. It was so dazzling (or offensive) that during the 1970s and ’80s, the Raelian Movement had to order stickers to place over the covers of all the books they still had in stock sporting their space age Star of David swastika. A new symbol they came up with  to replace the former looked appropriately new-age, but didn’t have the impact of the original because, well, nothing quite grabs the eye like a swastika shoved in your face. Eventually, Raël decided that a reasonable amount of time had passed and the scandal had blown over enough to recall its original glory for a new generation.

On a sunny afternoon on June 21, 2012, holiday makers at beaches along the New York and New Jersey shores were treated to the sight of a small aircraft towing a banner reading:

卐  =    ☮+  ♥  PROSWASTIKA.ORG

…followed by the Raelian swastika-in-the-star symbol. Thousands were aghast. Vorilhon might as well have marched up the main streets with a few of his followers wearing white hoods and torches. Raelians posted a press release on the proswastika.org site to explain their provactive  actions:

“Our objective in this annual “Swastika Rehabilitation Day” is to… rehabilitate the image of this very ancient symbol which has, in recent decades, been equated only with Hitler’s horrors, when in fact, the swastika has always meant something very beautiful, peaceful and loving for billions of people all over the world and still is by billions of people.” 2

At the 50^th anniversary Roswell festival in 1997, the Raelians rented a booth at the convention center and went for the hard sell with babes in skintight leotards with headset microphones hawking the virtues of sensual meditation and the sex-positive message of Raël.  3

Not content to conquer just the weird world of UFO fandom, a select few Raelian babes (also known as the Order of Angels) posed in the October 2004 issue of Playboy, along with text that could almost be termed a recruiting pamphlet with nude women scattered throughout. Raël’s “wife and partner for 13 years” quipped, “This is the only religion that teaches that nudity and sexuality are pure and beautiful.” 4

In 1997, the Raelians announced the founding of a biotech company called “Clonaid” to begin research into human cloning, which they said was the first step to immortality. On December 6, 2002, Clonaid director Brigitte Boisselier announced that they had cloned the first human being in asecret lab near Las Vegas. They named the child “Eve,” and announced that DNA testing would soon be performed to prove that the girl was an exact genetic copy of her mother. Over the next several months, Boisselier and others from around the world claimed five more successful human clones were born. By March, 2013, they said that the number had risen to thirteen. No evidence was ever provided for any of these claims.

As of 2020, the Raelian movement is still going as strongly, no doubt due to its sex-positive message and the fact that female members regularly take part in topless protests against prudish laws that prohibit the baring of female breasts in public. Long may they wave.

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raël

2 http://ja.proswastika.org/about-the-swastika

3 Greg Bishop’s personal recollection.

4 (no author) “The Rael World.” Playboy, October 2004: p 77-81.

Check out Gorightly’s captivating interview with Raelian love goddess Donna Newman!

 

Hear Raël croon a groovy tune about the Elohim!