Promise of as much sex as you want and everlasting life (cloning cult)

The Telegraph (U.K.) ^ | 12/28/2002 | Philip Delves Broughton

[Pokey78]

Rael, the leader of the Raelians, is in fact a 56-year-old Frenchman called Claude Vorilhon, who after a faltering career as a pop singer and racing car journalist found his true calling as a prophet of free love, cloning and the return of aliens to earth.

In his book, The Message Given To Me By Extra-Terrestrials, Vorilhon writes that he was hiking in central France in 1973 when he was approached by a four-foot-tall alien whose skin was "white with a slightly greenish tinge, a bit like someone with liver trouble".

The traveller invited him back to his UFO, parked on a nearby volcano. For the next few days Vorilhon was told the true story of the human race.

Humans were created 25,000 years ago in a laboratory by advanced beings from another planet who had mastered genetics and cell biology.

In between classes, Vorilhon says, he received the devoted attentions of six "voluptuous and bewitching" female robots.

The alien renamed Vorilhon as Rael and sent him back into the world to spread the word. The Bible, he was told, contained the story of the aliens or Elohim, a Hebrew word previously mistranslated as "God".

Rael was told to build an embassy in Jerusalem for the return of the Elohim and fellow prophets Jesus, Moses, Buddha and Mohammed, whose cloned selves were living on another planet waiting to return to Earth.

Rael found that his baggy white suits, his medallions and his topknot of hair - which he claimed was an antenna for receiving extra-terrestrial messages - made him a laughing stock in France. So he moved to Canada.

He now lives just outside Montreal where he has built a museum called Centre UFOland, devoted to Raelian history.

In his office Rael has a white double bed covered with a tiger print throw and large, topless photographs of his young girlfriend Sophie.

Uninhibited sex is an important feature of Raelianism, as is the hope of achieving everlasting life and perpetual orgasms through cloning.

Rael claims to have 55,000 followers around the world, mostly in Canada and French-speaking Europe, though he says only 10 per cent of those are active Raelians.

For most of its existence Raelianism has thrived on publicity stunts and the media's inability to resist a kinky alien cult.

When schools in Toronto banned the distribution of condoms, the Raelians showed up at school gates handing them out. They have bought billboards to announce the return of the Elohim to Earth.

Sudden advances in cloning during the mid-1990s gave the Raelian cult a new motivation. Science, claimed Rael, had finally caught up with his long-ridiculed predictions. It was time to prepare for the return of the cloning aliens.

Rael called on his female supporters to offer themselves as hostesses for the aliens and for him, their prophet on Earth.

He wanted only good-looking women for his Order of Angels. Their tasks would range from consensual sexual gratification to offering their wombs and eggs for cloning experiments.

The sheer number of women Rael had at his disposal made him hard to ignore in the Wild West world of human cloning.

One of the hardest tasks faced by scientists wanting to clone humans is finding women ready to offer their eggs and bodies for the dangerous experiments which might lead to successful cloning. The Raelians have solved this.

Rael set up a company called Clonaid, which was little more than a post office box in the Bahamas but won enormous global attention.

A Raelian bishop called Brigitte Boisselier volunteered to be Rael's head scientist. Miss Boisselier worked for a chemical gas company in France and has two doctorates in chemistry but no formal qualification in bio-technology.

She found an American couple from West Virginia ready to give her £350,000 and laboratory space to clone their 10-month-old son who died during heart surgery. The couple later pulled out, calling Miss Boisselier a "press hog".

Miss Boisselier, who is divorced, has since been working secretly in the Bahamas. Her 23-year-old daughter, Marina Cocolios, is one of Rael's Angels. She has said she would be ready to undergo abortions if defects were found in cloned embryos.

Given the secrecy in which the Raelians operate, it is hard to verify most of what they claim. But they say that 3,000 people have signed up for Clonaid's service.

[Junior]

You know, humans must be the most gullible critters in the galaxy. Some offworlders show up, spin the most outrageous story conceivable, and despite the physical evidence to the contrary humanity buys it lock, stock and barrel.