You'd best bone up on that high school French
'cause the Messiah's a frog!

Meet RAEL.

"I don't believe in God," quotes Verbal Klint in The Usual Suspects, "but I'm afraid of him." That's how I regard Rael, my favorite modern Messiah figure currently working the dog-and-pony salvation show circuit. See, I sure as fuck don't believe in any messiah, but I've still got it in mind to cover my ass.

Don't think I'm becoming a spiritual yahoo in my older age. The Christian churches can still suck my ass; I take all the usual exceptions to their crutches and fearsome condemnations. (I've even got trouble with the hardcore Jewish messiah cults, and I dig the Jews about as much as I can dig any religious institution.)

But I'm not swallowing a bill of existential goods just because my mom and pop sucked off the same tit. No: Give me a little originality. Give me a postmodern spin. Give me aliens. Give me biotech. Give me nanogenetics. (And don't even try to give me Dianetics.)

Give me Rael.

Twenty-five thousand years ago, a ship full of extraterrestrials, headed by their Group Leader, Lucifer (who wasn't really a bad guy), came to Earth on a mission to create life. Using DNA, they created every life form on Earth and introduced each new species to the environment, one level of complexity at a time. So, for instance, once bugs were of sufficient population, the bug-eaters were introduced. Then, a batch of bug-eater-eaters were whipped up. And so on, until humans were ready to roll off the assembly line. At this point, the extraterrestrials destroyed their laboratories--which caused the destruction of the One Continent, Pangaea, accounting for Atlantean mythos and cross-cultural accounts of the Great Flood--and scuttled those species not suited for coexistence with humanity, namely the dinosaurs and all the other creatures evidenced by those pesky fossil records.

The extraterrestrials went back to their home planet to keep an eye on our development. Since that time, some forty-odd lucky humans have been told the true story of humanity's creation. Among them are the usual names: Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, etc. Unfortunately, these humans were not savvy enough, techno-philosophically, so the extraterrestrials were mistaken for gods. In fact, the Hebrew word for God, "Elohim," used throughout the Old Testament, really means "those from the sky," not the more, um, commonly accepted "one from the sky."

That's the story according to Rael, a French journalist whose birth name is Claude Vorilhon, chosen by the Elohim in 1973 to spread their message to humanity: We created you in our image, there is no god, there is no evolution. And once the people of Earth accept this and are ready to welcome the Elohim, they'll come back.

Seems Mr. Vorilhon was strolling through the mountains one day (or, if you're buying, then I'm selling: he was drawn to those mountains that day) and happened upon a UFO. If memory serves me well, the first time he just checked out the scene. During subsequent encounters, the Elohim brought him aboard, took him for a galactic spin, and so on with your standard benign abductee report.

Somewhere along the way, they told him the secrets of mankind and instructed him to tell everyone else. That brings us up-to-date: The Raelian Movement claims 40,000 members in 85 countries; they've got half a dozen books, a few audio and video cassettes, and summer workshops on each continent each year.

I discovered them a few years ago when they began preliminary efforts to get a foothold in New York City.

The Raelian movement has all the trappings of any good religion. Year zero of their calendar is 1945, when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, marking the beginning of the Age of Apocalypse. Their baptism ritual, called Transmission of the Cellular Code, notifies the Elohim on their home planet that an individual has acknowledged their existence. Their moral code commands respect for the self, for others and for nature.

Most importantly, though, they've got a catchy icon: the Star of David with a galaxy-like, spiral formation in the center. According to Mary Helen, who ran the first conference I attended, this symbol was emblazoned on the extraterrestrials' lapels and their spaceships.

Frankly, Rael is a genius. He's created an open-ended, non-secular religion that doesn't debunk existing faiths, but instead encompasses them. For instance, Moses wasn't a crackpot tripping on bad bread; he experienced the Elohim under a less technologically advanced paradigm--he saw them as gods, not aliens. And Jesus wasn't born of God: he's the offspring of the Elohim and Mary. And so on with all the religious figureheads.

The Raelian story is wonderful to read, like a Vonnegut short when he wrote for the sci-fi pulps. And hearing the emissaries speak is equally entertaining; they can talk their way out of any corner, offering explanations or diversions for any scientific or religious challenge. Their moral platform is hard to knock: love, peace, respect.

But there are skeletons in the Raelian closet, things they don't mention at the conference. For one, the summer workshops are, basically, naturalist pussy hunts. Workshop participants are encouraged to "have a medical check up before [coming] to the camp to check for transmittable diseases, particularly of a sexual nature." Furthermore, students under the age of twenty-five attend for free. It makes sense, I guess: To be fair, though, the Raelian Movement was founded in 1973, very promiscuous times. And Rael is a Frenchman--you know how frisky they can be.

The Raelians get weirder when you keep digging into their philosophies and platforms. Consider their perspective on disease: Because human DNA must remain unchanged, according to the will of the Elohim, evolution is a false concept. And, out with the Darwinian bath water goes mutation, the agent for evolution. Disease, according to Rael, is DNA's way of preventing and eliminating mutation. Cancer, according to Mary Helen, is one of the Elohim's devices for maintaining the integrity of their original DNA. "If [mutated DNA] is not repaired, then cells make sure the human will disappear." Ouch.

Extrapolate that concept in this day of AIDS, which has, generally speaking, thus far hit minorities and other undesirables harder than whitey, and one must wonder who exactly is being eliminated from the human gene pool. (Though Mary Helen deftly dismissed me by noting that AIDS is a virus, not a disease, so it doesn't count.)

The most damning skeleton in the Raelian closet, however, is even more entertaining. According to the Raelian website, the modified Star of David was adopted by Rael in 1991. (At the conference, the audience was told that the star symbol was seen by Rael in 1973.) Until that time, the universal symbol for the Raelian movement was--guesses anyone?--a swastika. Or, again to be fair, it was really a swastika inside a Star of David. Christ! Which is worse?!?

The former use of the swastika is justified thus: "The word 'swastika' comes from the sanskrit meaning 'well being.' It is a Buddhist symbol and a religious symbol of India...It represents infinity in time--no beginning, nor end."

Yeah, no shit. Swastikas are as old as the hills; they're all over the Far East. That's all fine and dandy...pre-WW2. But by 1973, all those pleasant notions of well-being and infinity were deep, deep in the crapper. I've got to ask why, in 1973, a seemingly intelligent Frenchman hell-bent on manufacturing a meal-ticket religion would choose a swastika. And why he would wait until 1991 to change that symbol?

Perhaps the Elohim weren't paying attention to the middle portion of the twentieth century. Or maybe they were too busy covering their tracks on Mars. Or maybe they were just too busy convincing twenty-four year old college students to take blood tests in preparation for removing their clothes at the next workshop.

Six months after researching and writing my first piece about Rael (roughly, the above material minus the introduction) for New York Press, I went to see Rael in person. I believe it was Rael's first appearance in New York City.

Held at Manhattan's New Yorker Hotel, curiously once the headquarters for Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church and still owned by the Church, the event was attended by roughly one hundred people, many of whom were already Raelians, judging from the many baseball caps emblazoned with the (new) Rael icon. There were quite a few speakers, starting with the local Rael reps I had met at my first meeting, and culminating, naturally, with Rael himself. In between, unfortunately, I suffered through this odd two-man folk act. That was misery.

As for Rael: He's got it. That certain quality which makes a messiah out of a man. Or, if not a messiah, then simply a leader. He is supremely comfortable speaking to crowds and shows no handicap when speaking in English (though I suspect he uses his heavy accent as a carefully considered device to add weight to his words when speaking to English-speaking crowds).

His words are custom-made for a liberal, collegiate or post-collegiate audience. He doesn't dwell on the alien stuff. Instead, he concentrates on the central tenets of the Elohim: love, acceptance, honesty, etc., etc. All the post-hippie buttons that sensitive, intelligent strays need to hear before they hop on board with a cult leader. That, and he preaches meritocracy, which posits that the smartest people should rule the world. (Brilliant! I mean, how can you argue with that? Everyone considers themselves to be smarter than the next guy, and who doesn't think they can run things better than that next guy. Talk about pushing the right fucking buttons!) At the end of his routine--I do consider it a routine, naturally, much like any other stand-up comic--all I wanted to do was sign up for one of those summer seminars. In fact, if I find myself living as a freelancer any time soon, I swear to the Elohim I'd consider spending my two weeks up in Montreal for the North American Raelian Bag-an-Old-French-Broad Summer Seminar, or whatever the fuck it's called.

While most Crank readers probably assume that I'm a ballsy, in-your-face kind of guy, that's not always true. It's not that I get shy, but I don't enjoy intruding on people. And even though Rael was essentially begging people to be his followers, I was nonetheless hesitant to bother him in person. Especially for a picture. (Did you think I wanted to actually talk with him? Christ no. I needed a photo for my office.)

But I refused to be a pussy. In fact, "Don't be such a pussy" were the words ringing in my head. So I went out to the lobby, searching for my little French Messiah.

I caught him coming out of the bathroom, fully flanked by his entourage. Upset that I had just missed an opportunity to possibly sneak a peak at Little Rael, I resolved to at least get a photo with the big guy. I approached, excused myself for interrupting and introduced myself as a curious soul, someone intrigued by his message. When he shook my hand, I saw it once again: He's got it. Such a pleasant demeanor, a palpable charisma and the snappiest threads I've seen this side of a Battlestar Galactica rerun.

I put my arm around the Messiah and got a couple shots. As we stood there, he asked where I lived, how I'd heard about him, etc., etc. I was charmed, and flashed my own most charming smile back at him. With a few drinks and another hour of chit-chat, I bet I could've transmitted a little of my own cellular code directly into the Messiah, if you know what I'm saying.

Oh, I'm joking around, of course.

I still get their flyers and announcements in the mail every few weeks, and I'm tempted to go back to one of the local seminars. The envelopes are hand-addressed--a brilliant touch!--and the meetings are nearby, usually early on a weeknight evening when I've got no other plans anyway. Shit. Who could pass up an evening of "sensual massage techniques" with a bunch of frisky Frenchies?

Check back in a couple years. If I find myself bored one summer, I just might scoot up to Montreal and check out the summer retreat. Unfortunately, being older than 25, I'll have to pay full price, but maybe that'll put me closer to the front of the line when we all get naked and, um, talk about our extraterrestrial origins.

For the purposes of brevity and entertainment, I've omitted many of the more compelling details behind the Raelian religion. For a complete schooling, I highly recommend an extended workday visit to www.rael.org. Since I wrote my first story about Rael, the website has been updated and made a little prettier (after all, those 24-year old college girls are more web-savvy these days) and may no longer contain some of the quotes I've included in this article. Pay special attention to UFOLAND, Montreal's latest attraction. I'm considering a trip this summer. (Portions of this article originally appeared in New York Press about five years ago, so fuck you "EXTRA" or whatever piece of shit tab show did a Rael feature back in June, 2000.)