Rael's Mysterious Manuscript of 1974

Rael maintains that he had an encounter with an extraterrestrial, named Yahweh, on 13 December 1973 (Intelligent Design, p. 3) near his hometown of Clermont-Ferrand, France.

Rael claims that he meet Yahweh, the president of ETs known as the Elohim of the Bible, at the same place for six consecutive days, for about one hour each time, who dictated to Rael the fantastic revelations of his first book, The Book Which Tells The Truth (Intelligent Design, p. 136). Yahweh allegedly revealed to him that the Elohim created all life on Earth through genetic engineering.

Rael wrote:

For the first few days following this experience I must confess I wondered if I would dare tell anyone at all about it. The first thing I did was to make a neat copy of the notes that I had taken as best I could, although far too quickly as my interlocutor spoke to me. When this was finished, I sent the original manuscript to a serious publisher who to my knowledge did not publish esoteric works or science fiction. (Intelligent Design, p. 137)

 Rael's first book didn't roll off the printing press until the autumn of 1974 (the oldest version of his book was published in 5 November 1974). That's almost eleven months after his alleged encounter!

In order to explain away why it took so long for his book to come out, Rael elaborated a conspiracy theory claiming the publisher to whom he sent his manuscript probably wanted to repress his work by telling him it had been mislaid. After finally retrieving his manuscript, Rael alleges that his wife at the time, Marie-Paule Christini, had left her nursing job to help him with the publishing and distribution of this exceptional document (Intelligent Design, p. 138).

Oddly enough, in an interview with a French journalist, Marie-Paule iterated that she had been unaware of his extraterrestrial encounters until the book came out (Aliens Adored, p. 36).

Rael himself had given up publishing his sports magazine, AutoPop, by that time. The last edition of his magazine was published in September 1974. It should be noted that in "on November 30, 1973, French prime minister Pierre Messmer announced on TV a series of drastic measures to limit speed on French roads and to suspend all automobile races and rallies. [Rael's] sources of funding, both his journal, Auto Pop, and his test driving, were cut off." (Aliens Adored, p. 34)

To date, Rael has failed to produce his neat handwritten notes and the original manuscript.

There is, however, anecdotal evidence of Rael concocting an ET encounter hoax over drinks with some friends in 1973, which lead to the genesis of his elaborate Elohim story. One of his friends claimed that Rael then went to his hometown's news publication, La Montagne, to tell his story. After being dismissed, Rael allegedly went to Paris where he somehow got in touch with Marcel Jullian, who ran a publishing house. Through him, Rael was introduced to Jacques Chancel, who hosted a popular TV show called Le Grand Échiquier (Great Chess Board).

On 13 March 1974, Rael appeared on that show and officially kicked off his public career as the Messenger of the Elohim.

It's very curious to note that, between 1 to 10 March 1974, Clermont-Ferrand hosted the First National Congress of Science Fiction (Premier Congres National de Science-Fiction). One of the speakers was Jean Sendy, a famous author of esoterica and UFOlogy and a proponent of the ancient astronaut theory, who gave a lecture about his book, The Moon: Key to the Bible. Sociologist Susan Palmer notes:

The ancient astronaut theory was already very much in vogue in France by the time Rael’s first book came out in 1974. Jean Sendy in 1968, Serge Hutin in 1970, and Jaques Bergier in 1970 all wrote books pursuing the notion that planet earth was an ancient colonial outpost of an extraterrestrial civilization. Sendy’s book, La lune: Clé de la Bible (The moon: Key to the Bible), is perhaps the seminal influence, but Sendy himself (1972, 53) credits Voltaire as being the first to insist that the God of Genesis, who made heaven and earth, should be translated as “gods.” Sendy (7–8) also points out that in Hebrew “Elohim” is the plural form of “Eloha” and suggests that the Elohim were not immaterial beings but “physical angels with sexes.” With this premise in mind, he concludes that “Genesis becomes a perfectly consistent story of a colonization of Earth by astronauts who came from the sky” and became “angels in human memory.” Yahweh, Sendy suggests, was not an immaterial principle but rather the leader of the Elohim (63) (Aliens Adored, p. 28)

It has been demonstrated that the majority of Rael's first book was plagiarized from Jean Sendy's works. Nowhere except in Sendy's writings do we find the notion of a plural Elohim and singular Eloha equating to "Those who came from the sky" prior to Rael's books.

Rael admits in his book that he had always believed in extraterrestrials, UFOs and telepathy (Intelligent Design, pp. 5-7). So, one wouldn't be surprised if Rael was already aware of Sendy's as well as other's works on the ancient astronaut theory before coming out in public claiming to be a bona fide ET contactee.

It wasn't before appearing on TV that Rael thought he could make a career of being a UFO cult leader. It isn't a coincidence that Jean Sendy's lecture was delivered on 4 March 1974 and Rael's TV appearance on 13 March 1974. With the realization of his AutoPop and hopes of becoming a racing car driver dying, Rael must have had some months to toy around the notion of becoming a cult leader before finally publishing his first book on 5 November 1974 by himself.

Any respectable author would preserve his notes, let alone his original manuscript of a book he claims to be one containing the extraordinary TRUTH.

Advocatus Diaboli