Page 237 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

222 Carly Machado

2. In Raelian cosmology, Elohim means “those who come from the sky,” a refer-
ence to the extraterrestrial beings who created human life on Earth. The bib-
lical translation of the term as a reference to “God” is claimed to be a mistake
in translation that misled humanity to believe in the existence of God. The
Raelian Movement claims to be atheist and takes the Elohim to be extrater-
restrial human beings, not divine or sacred beings.
3. After becoming leader of the Movement, Raël continued to invest in his career
as a motor racing driver; he competed in various events and advertised himself
as “the quickest prophet in the world.” The financial resources used in this
project were subject to intense questioning both inside and outside the Raelian
Movement (Palmer 2004).
4. Brigitte Boissilier is one of the main international leaders of the Raelian
Movement. A biochemical scientist, Brigitte is the head of CLONAID, a
human cloning company created by Raël. She gained fame within the move-
ment for the “courage” shown in publicly defending the project of human
cloning, which made her face intense questioning over the project’s ethical
legitimacy and legality.
5. 20 ans: la générations des pioners. France: Éditions DIFRA, 1994. Published by
the International Raelian Movement, issue no. 286.
6. According to the official figures of the Raelian Movement, the group today
has 60,000 members distributed across the five continents, with the highest
concentrations in North America, Europe, and Asia.
7. The Raelian Movement’s structure is formed by those responsible for spread-
ing the message of the extra-terrestrials and all the Raelian projects. Composed
of regional, national, and planetary leaders, it is also divided into teams with
specific tasks. The Raelian leaders are called guides and are organized in levels
(from 0 to 6) according to the responsibilities assumed within the structure.
Raël is the “Guide’s Guide” and the only person at Level 6 in the Structure.
8. Raël presents himself as the prophet capable of using Science to explain all the
mysteries misinterpreted by religions. In this sense, he calls himself the
prophet of the scientific age, an age in which his attempt to explain can be
understood, since human beings are now able the comprehend scientific
explanations, in contrast to what happened in earlier times with other proph-
ets such as Jesus, Buddha, and Muhammad, whose societies were not suffi-
ciently evolved to understand them.
9. These Raelian Seminars are organized every year on each continent. I took
part in the European Raelian Seminar in 2005, held in Barcelona, Spain, in

the first week in August. The Seminars are the main activity of the Raelian
groups, serving as a moment of congregation and, most of the time, direct
contact with the prophet Raël. The Seminar activities will be described in
more detail below.
10. Marshall (2006) points to the existence of a “celebrity culture” in contempo-
rary Western societies, analyzed from different angles in the reader edited by
himself on the topic. In this book, identity and individuality combine in the
image of the celebrity, which presents the essential components of the struc-
ture of a consumer culture—in the case of celebrities, a mixed consumption