Raëlism: scientifically advanced humanoid extraterrestrials created humans
Raëlism is the religious, naturalist
belief system
promoted by the Raëlian Movement, an atheist UFO religion founded in
1970s which focuses on the social ideas of sexual self-determination,
individualism, and humanitarianism in the spirit of sharing and
responsibility, which, they claim, will bring a new age of wealth and
peace guided by those with greater intelligence, as predicted by main
religions. They also believe in
scientifically advanced
humanoid extraterrestrials
known by our primitive ancestors as Elohim (or "those who came from the
sky"). Raëlism espouses belief that Elohim synthesized life on Earth
through mastery of genetic engineering, and that
human cloning and "mind transfer" are mechanisms by which eternal life may be achieved.
According to Raël, a message explaining our origins and future was
dictated to him in December 1973, during personal meetings with a
25,000-year-old extraterrestrial named Yahweh who came in a UFO. The
story goes that after terraforming the Earth, human beings from another
planet — the "Elohim" (Hebrew for the word "God" as found in the Hebrew
Old Testament, which the extraterrestrial himself translated as meaning
those who came from the sky in ancient Hebrew) — created humans and all
life on earth using DNA manipulation and genetic engineering. The
message dictated to Raël during his encounter with the Elohim states
that the Elohim contacted about forty people to act as their prophets on
Earth, among which are those who founded the world's major religions
(Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, etc.)
The Raëlians believe, furthermore, that the Elohim will visit the earth
officially when enough of its population is peaceful and come to know
about them. They believe this is foretold in all religious texts - the
predicted "Age of Apocalypse" or "Revelation" (unveiling of the truth).
Cargo Cults: manufactured western goods ('cargo') have been created by ancestral spirits
Cargo cults are groups of religious movements in Melanesia, in the
Southwestern Pacific, which believe that manufactured western goods
('cargo') have been created by ancestral spirits and intended for
Melanesian people. Cargo Cult members believe that white people,
however, have unfairly gained control of these objects. Cargo cults thus
focus on overcoming what they perceive as undue 'white' influences by
conducting rituals similar to the white behavior they have observed,
presuming that the ancestors will at last recognize their own and send
them cargo. Thus a characteristic feature of cargo cults is the belief
that spiritual agents will at some future time give much valuable cargo
and desirable manufactured products to the cult members.
The most famous examples of Cargo Cults have been the airstrips,
airports, and radios made out of coconuts and straw. The cult members
built them in the belief that the structures would attract transport
aircraft full of cargo. Believers stage "drills" and "marches" with
twigs for rifles and military-style insignia and "USA" painted on their
bodies to make them look like soldiers.
The classic period of cargo cult activity was in the years during and
after World War II. The vast amounts of war matériel that were
airdropped into these islands during the Pacific campaign against the
Empire of Japan necessarily meant drastic changes to the lifestyle of
the islanders. Manufactured clothing, canned food, tents, weapons and
other useful goods arrived in vast quantities to equip soldiers—and also
the islanders who were their guides and hosts. With the end of the war
the airbases were abandoned, and "cargo" was no longer being dropped. In
attempts to get cargo to fall by parachute or land in planes or ships
again, islanders imitated the same practices they had seen the soldiers,
sailors and airmen use. They carved headphones from wood, and wore them
while sitting in fabricated control towers. They waved
the landing
signals while standing on the runways. They lit signal fires and
torches to light up runways and lighthouses. The cultists thought that
the foreigners had some special connection to their own ancestors, who
were the only beings powerful enough to produce such riches. Over the
last seventy-five years most cargo cults have petered out. Yet, the John
Frum cult is still active on the island of Tanna, Vanuatu.
Heaven's Gate: committed suicide so that their souls could take a ride on a spaceship
Heaven's
Gate was a secretive New
Age religion. Knowledge of their practices is limited. Upon joining the
group, members often sold their possessions in order to break their
attachments with earthly existence. For many years the group lived in
isolation in the western United States. Members often traveled in pairs
and met with other members for meetings or presentations they gave to
recruit new members. The members of the cult added "-ody" to the first
names they adopted in lieu of their original given names (i.e.
"Elaine-ody"). Group members gave up their material possessions and
lived a highly ascetic lifestyle devoid of many indulgences. The group
was tightly knit and everything was shared communally. Six of the male
members of the cult voluntarily underwent castration as an extreme means
of maintaining the ascetic lifestyle.
Thirty-eight cult members, plus Applewhite, the cult's leader, were
found dead in a rented mansion in the upscale San Diego community of
Rancho Santa Fe, California on March 26, 1997. The mass death of the
Heaven's Gate group is one of the most widely known examples of cult
suicide. In preparing to kill themselves, members of the cult drank
citrus juices to ritually cleanse their bodies of impurities. Their
suicide, conducted in shifts, was accomplished by ingestion of
phenobarbital mixed with vodka, along with plastic bags secured around
their heads to induce asphyxiation. Each member, for reasons unknown,
carried five dollars in quarters. All 39 were dressed in identical
black shirts and
sweat pants along with brand new black-and-white Nike tennis shoes and purple armbands reading "Heaven's gate away team".
Ho No Hana: the foot reading cult
Ho No Hana Sanpogyo (Ho No Hana Sanpogyo) is a Japanese sect often
called the "foot reading cult." It was called this because its founder,
Hogen Fukunaga, claimed he could diagnose illness by examining people's
feet. He founded the group in 1987 after an alleged spiritual event
where he claimed to have realized he was the reincarnation of Jesus
Christ and the Buddha. The group at one time claimed 30,000 members.
However, Fukunaga charged $900 for the foot readings and a suspicion
arose that he used the money to benefit himself. He was accused of
swindling money from housewives and had to pay over a million dollars in damages.
Now, Ho No Hana changed it's name to "Yorokobi Kazoku no Wa".
Aum Shinrikyo: carried out a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subways
Aum Shinrikyo was a Japanese religious group created by Shoko Asahara.
In 1995 the group was reported as having 9,000 members in Japan, and as
many as 40,000 worldwide. The core of Aum doctrine are Buddhist
scriptures included in the Pali Canon of Theravada Buddhism.
The cult started attracting controversy in the late 1980's with
accusations of deception of recruits, and of holding cult members
against their will and forcing members to
donate money.
A murder of
a cult member who tried to leave is now known to have taken place in
February 1989. The cult is known to have considered assassinations of
several individuals critical of the cult.
On the morning of 20th March 1995, Aum members released sarin in a
co-ordinated attack on five trains in the Tokyo subway system, killing
12 commuters, seriously harming 54 and affecting 980 more. Prosecutors
allege that Asahara was tipped off about planned police raids on cult
facilities by an insider, and ordered an attack in central Tokyo to
divert attention away from the group. At the cult's headquarters in
Kamikuishiki on the foot of Mount Fuji, police found explosives,
chemical weapons and biological warfare agents, such as anthrax and
Ebola cultures, and a Russian MIL Mi-17 military helicopter. There were
stockpiles of chemicals which could be used for producing enough sarin
to kill four million people. After Asahara's arrest and trial, the cult
re-grouped under the new name of Aleph in February 2000.
Solar Temple: killed a baby who was "the Anti-Christ"
The Order of the Solar Temple was a secret society based upon the new
age myth of the continuing existence of the Knights Templar. According
to historians, OTS was started by Joseph Di Mambro and Luc Jouret in
1984 in Geneva. The two convinced their followers that they were members
of the 14th Century Christian Order of the Knights Templar during a
previous life, and that Di Mambro's daughter Emanuelle was "the cosmic
child", and that she was the result of a virgin birth. She would lead
them after death to a planet which was said to orbit around the star
Sirius, but in order to do so they would have to die in a fire, as was
prophesied for the end of the world.
In October 1994 an infant, aged three months, was killed at the group's
centre in Morin Heights, Quebec. The baby had been stabbed repeatedly
with a wooden stake. It is believed that Di Mambro ordered the murder,
because he identified the baby as the Anti-Christ described in the
Bible. He believed that the Anti-Christ was born into the cult in order
to prevent Di Mambro from succeeding in his spiritual aim.
A few days later, Di Mambro and twelve followers performed a ritual Last
Supper. A few days after that, apparent mass suicides and murders were
conducted at two villages in Switzerland, and at Morin Heights — 15
inner circle members committed suicide with poison, 30 were killed by
bullets or smothering, and 8 others were killed by other causes. Many of
the bodies when found were drugged, possibly to prevent the members
from objecting. The buildings were then set on fire by timer devices,
purportedly as one last symbol of the group's purification. In western
Switzerland, 48 members of a sect died in another apparent mass
murder-suicide. Many of the victims were found in a secret underground
chapel lined with mirrors and other items of Templar symbolism. The
bodies were dressed in the order's ceremonial robes and were in a
circle, feet together, heads outward, most with plastic bags tied over
their heads; they had each been shot in the head. It is believed that
the plastic bags were a symbol of the ecological disaster that would
befall the human race after the OTS members moved on to Sirius.
Creativity Movement: "Inferior colored races are our deadly enemies"
The Creativity Movement is a racialist, and White-supremacist
organization that advocates a "White Religion" called Creativity. Though
"Anti-Christian" in a contemporary sense, the Creativity Movement is a
surrogate of Positive Christianity, and is guided by elements of a
pseudo-Christian racial Manichaeanism. The group also denies the
Holocaust, embraces racial neo-eugenics with a religious mission that is
dedicated to the "survival, expansion and advancement of the White Race
exclusively."
The organization was initially founded as the Church of the Creator by
Ben Klassen in early 1973. In the summer of 1993, Klassen committed
suicide.
It was later led by Matthew F. Hale until his incarceration on January
8, 2003 for plotting with FBI informant Anthony Evola to murder a
federal judge.
On July 22, 2002, two members of the organization were found guilty in
federal court of plotting to blow up Jewish and Black landmarks around
Boston, in what prosecutors said was a scheme to spark a "racial holy
war."
Some of the "16 Commandments of Creativity":
It is our sacred goal to populate the lands of this earth with White people exclusively.
Inferior colored races are our deadly enemies, and that the most dangerous of all is the Jewish race.
Destroy and banish all Jewish thought and influence from society.
Chen Tao: "God would be seen on channel 18 all across North America"
Chen Tao is, or perhaps was, the name for a UFO group that originated in
Taiwan. It was started by Hon-Ming Chen. He was born in 1955, but
claimed to be atheist until a religious experience in 1992. They
believed that the Earth went through five tribulations going back to the
age of the dinosaurs. Each of these tribulations were survived by
beings living in North America who were rescued by God in a flying
saucer. Added to that they believed the solar system is 4.5 trillion
years old or roughly 300 times the age mainstream science gives for the
entire Universe. Added to this they believe(d) that the solar system was
created by a nuclear war.
The group is best known for a highly publicized, and failed, prophecy in
1998. Chen predicted that at 12:01 a.m. on March 25, 1998 God would be
seen on channel 18 all across North America. Whether you had cable, or
what channel you had for 18, was irrelevant to God's appearance on that
channel. However when March 25 came and went without the predicted
appearance the group became confused. Chen offered to be stoned or
crucified for the event, but no one took him up on this offer. He had
earlier made a false prediction of finding a "Jesus of the West" who
would look like Abraham Lincoln.
Waitomo Glow-Worm Caves - Otorohanga, New Zealand
London Dungeon - London, England
