Satanism Today - An Encyclopedia of Religion, Folklore and Popular ...

R
Rabid Grannies
At a family gathering in this 1989 film, two sweet
old grandmothers are transformed into flesheating
monsters after opening a surprise birthday
gift from a devil-worshiping nephew. It’s enough
to make you wonder when those darned Satanists
will ever learn some manners.
Raelian Movement
The Western religious tradition’s conceptualization
of divinity as a sky god gives us a predisposition
to view unusual flying objects—as well as
beings from outer space—in spiritual terms. In
other words, the God of the Bible is, in a certain
sense, an extraterrestrial being. Not all spiritual
beings are, however, beneficent. A more negative
interpretation of UFOs is evident in alien abduction
narratives.
If in earlier contactee literature flying saucers
were “technological angels” (an expression coined
by the influential psychologist Carl G. Jung), in
abductee literature ufonauts are technological
demons. During their brief captivity, abductees
often report having been tortured in the form of a
painful examination. Some observers have
pointed out the crypto-religious imagery in such
accounts. Specifically, capture and torment by
demonic beings is an initiatory motif. More literal
demonologies have been proffered by conservative
221
Christian observers of the UFO scene, many of
whom view ufonauts as demons in disguise (see
the “UFOs and Demons” entry).
Yet another arena in which images of the
demonic find their way into UFO literature is in
UFO religions. An interesting case study is the
Raelian Movement, founded in France in 1973 by
Claude Vorilhon, better known as Rael. Like the
“classic” UFO contactees, Rael claimed to have
encountered humanoid space aliens. These beings
explained to Rael that the human race had been
created with sophisticated genetic engineering
techniques by extraterrestrial scientists (the
Elohim, meaning, literally, “those who came from
the sky”) in their laboratories. The Elohim further
explained that Rael himself was the offspring of a
mortal woman and an alien named Yahweh.
The Raelian Movement perceives itself as a
scientific religion, founded to spread the truths
revealed to Rael. One of the major goals of the
movement is to build an extraterrestrial embassy
in Israel in order to receive the Elohim when they
land in 2035. Rael denies the existence of a “spiritual”
realm, including the existence of the soul and
of any immaterial god or devil. Members of the
movement may, however, look forward to immortality
in the form of cloning by alien scientists.
According to the Elohim, the world’s religions
were founded as a result of their direct communication
with a series of human prophets, for the