A Netflix documentary series examines the Raëlian Movement and its founder. Pic credit: Netflix
Raël: The Alien Prophet is a new Netflix docuseries that examines the teachings of Frenchman Claude Vorilhon (aka Raël) and the beliefs of the Raëlian Movement he founded in the mid-1970s.
The series, which premiered on Netflix on February 7, features interviews with Raël, former members of his cult, and people who investigated scandalous allegations against the movement.
The movement has thousands of followers in France and Western Europe. Members also live in North America (US and Canada), and Asia.
Raëlism, UFOs, and aliens
Raëlism teaches that technological aliens known as the Elohim created humanity. Although pre-scientific cultures mistook them for gods, the aliens are not supernatural beings but aliens with knowledge of science and technology more advanced than humans.
Raël claimed the aliens contacted him in the 1970s and that he saw their UFO spacecraft. He met with them for several days, and they taught him esoteric secrets, including unknown truths about the origin and history of humanity.
The aliens took him aboard their spaceship and flew him to their planet. He met their leaders and learned about their advanced scientific and technological culture.
Paranormal Papers also reported that a former US soldier claimed he met two Andromedan aliens who took him aboard their UFO mothership and shared with him secrets about aliens and the origin of the human race.
Founders of the world’s religions were human-alien hybrids
According to Raëlism, the founders of the world’s main religions, such as Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, were half-human and half-alien beings sent to help humans develop spiritually.
Raël taught his followers that he was the last of the great prophets. The aliens sent him to save humanity from nuclear self-destruction. He promised his followers that a new golden age was coming when humans would live in harmony with their alien creators.
The aliens would come in UFO spaceships and live among humans.
Human cloning
According to Raelians, the alien Elohim will only grant mortality to humans who meet their conditions. They will make humans immortal through cloning. So, people who want immortality have to live according to the teachings of Raëlism.
Raël also taught that humans could achieve immortality through spiritual and scientific methods such as meditation and human cloning. He claimed that aliens revealed the secrets of human cloning and meditation to him.
In the late 1990s, he founded an organization called Clonaid, dedicated to researching human cloning. In the early 2000s, the group announced they had cloned a human.
Although the claim caused a stir, there is no evidence they achieved it.
Free love
Some critics claim the Raëlians promote a form of free love philosophy.
Free love is associated with the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. It advocates for the freedom of adults to pursue physical and romantic relationships without social, cultural, or legal restraint.
People often associate it with a promiscuous lifestyle.