Raëlism

Movement·Founded 1974 CE·The movement claims membership in the tens of thousands across roughly a hundred countries. The figure is self-reported and has not been independently checked.

Raëlism

The International Raëlian MovementThe recordWorld Religions and Spirituality Project — the International Raëlian Movement

Branch
Overview Belief 3How to Live 1Practice 1Stories & Scripture 1 You × Raëlism Discussion

History & overview

The full story →

We were made in a laboratory, and the makers left a forwarding address.

Founded by the French motoring journalist Claude Vorilhon, who said that on 13 December 1973, beside a volcanic crater outside Clermont-Ferrand, a small humanoid stepped out of a craft and explained that life on Earth was designed in a laboratory by a species called the Elohim. Raëlism is atheist by its own account — no gods, no souls, nothing supernatural — and its central request is that an embassy be built, with a landing pad, so that the makers can return openly.

Why it is filed this way

Raëlism has a founder, a scripture, an initiation, a clergy and a request of humanity, and denies being a religion in the supernatural sense while calling itself one in every other. It is filed as a movement on the structure rather than on the metaphysics.

DeitiesExplicitly atheist, and the movement says so before it says anything else. The Elohim are a technologically advanced species, not deities; Raëlians hold that the Hebrew word was mistranslated as God. Jesus, the Buddha, Moses and Muhammad are read as their messengers, and Raël as the last of them.
Founded1974 CE · France
FounderRaël (Claude Vorilhon)
AfterlifeNo soul and no survival. Continuity, if any, is through cloning and the recording of the genetic code.
TextsLe Livre qui dit la vérité (1974) · Les extra-terrestres m'ont emmené sur leur planète (1975)

The map

Raëlism’s corner of it — solid lines are descent; dotted lines are resemblance only, ideas held in common across unrelated faiths. Click a node to recenter; ✕ returns here. All 171 faiths →

Core Tenets

2 — a sample of the center, never the sum Enter →
Life here was designed, in a laboratory, by people. Not created and not evolved without help: the Elohim, a species from another world, engineered terrestrial life and recorded the work. Raëlism reads Genesis as a lab notebook. Go deeper — context →
There is no god and no soul, and that is the good news. The movement is atheist by its own insistence. What survives death is the genetic code, which can be recorded and re-expressed — which is why cloning became the movement's public cause. Go deeper — context →

Figures

who it looks to — gods, spirits, ancestors; some rooms are empty on principle Enter →
T The Elohim — those who came from the sky. The movement reads the Hebrew plural as a plural: not God, but the people who made us, and to whom an embassy is owed. They are owed hospitality, not worship. Domain The design of terrestrial life; the promise of returnStanding Not gods and not worshipped — an older species with better laboratories, owed hospitality rather than reverence Meet them — context & 1 source →

Rites & Ritual

what its people do — and when Enter →
The transmission of the cellular plan. Water on the forehead, on one of four fixed dates a year, understood to place the person's genetic code in the makers' records. It requires formal apostasy from any previous religion first. When Four fixed dates a yearWho Anyone who has renounced their previous religion Go deeper — context →

Where next

the museum exit — every door leads deeper in
The Bahá'í Faith — 8 shared ideas, a different faith Judaism — 7 shared ideas, a different faith Buddhism — 6 shared ideas, a different faith Islam — 6 shared ideas, a different faith Branch Raëlism — inherit everything, change what you must The library of ideas — what Raëlism shares with every other faith A faith at random — somewhere you have never been

Sources

1 cited texts
  1. Rael, Le Livre qui dit la verite (1974) (rendered) where it is cited →

These citations identify texts used in the linked passages. Follow each passage to read its quotation and context. A tradition’s own texts explain its teachings; historical claims may also require independent scholarship. Translations marked (rendered) are our own plain-English wording, not a standard edition; where a passage matters, read it in a full translation.

Numbers count Panfaith activity only — never real-world adherence.

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