Raël, born Claude Maurice Marcel Vorilhon, is responsible for starting the Raëllian Movement in 1973.
Claude Maurice Marcel Vorilhon was a rising pop star on the radio as a teen in Paris before becoming a sports car journalist and establishing his own publishing house.
Vorilhon was a racecar enthusiast and he created the sports car magazine, ‘Autopop’, to gain access to the sports car world.
He entered the public eye in 1973 when he claimed to have encountered an alien race called the Elohim.
He stated that the alien told him that aliens created mankind, and Vorilhon was chosen as their messenger to prepare the world for their return.
He changed his name to Raël and established the Raëllian movement, a religion based on the doctrine that the Elohim created humans and would one day return.
Spreading his message
Raël built a following and bought a large piece of land where his followers gathered and lived according to his teachings.
Raël promoted polygamy and encouraged his followers to explore their sexuality, but when accusations rose of him extending these ideas to children, Raël faced significant backlash.
He moved to Canada with his followers and set up another huge commune to spread his message.
Raël began pushing forward the idea of human cloning, and how it was the wish of the Elohim that they clone a child.
A lab was set up in the United States and work began to achieve this scientific breakthrough, but the US Government stepped in and banned all human cloning in the country.
Meanwhile, an investigative journalist and her colleague infiltrated the commune and recorded Raël’s horrendous treatment of women as his sex slaves.
When the report finally broke out, Raël faced significant criticism again and moved to Japan to escape the attention.
He continues to live in Japan to this day where he preaches the ideologies of the Raëllian Movement.
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