Raël now: What happened to the Alien Prophet subject

The new Netflix docuseries Raël: The Alien Prophet is the type of true-life tale that, like Tiger King, The Tinder Swindler and Bitconned before it, is a slightly unhinged one.

The four-parter unspools how Claude Vorilhon, a French sportswriter and racing driver, claimed to have met with aliens and visited their UFO on a number of occasions, during which time they shared their gospel with him. So was born the Raëlian religion.

The Netflix documentary explains the various atypical beliefs of the flying saucer cult, as well as its downright abusive practices.

The Frenchman, who now goes by Raël, was at the centre of the Raëlian Movement, which traded in a series of seemingly bonkers ideas. Chief among them was the alleged birth of the first human clone, Eve, which was supposedly conducted as part of the belief that cloning would lead to reincarnation.

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The claim from Brigitte Boisselier, who is a Raëlian to this day, was that they had successfully created a clone of her. Despite the lack of any concrete proof, the announcement resulted in both Boisselier and Raël visiting US Congress. The child has never been publicly seen, so it’s either a major scientific breakthrough or a staggering hoax.

The Netflix documentary also tracks the changing tides in opinion of Raël, both within and outside of the cult. The journalist Brigitte McCann, who went undercover to infiltrate the cult, told cameras of the «psychological manipulation, brainwashing and indoctrination strategies» she witnessed.

The documentary ends with snippets of the Frenchman’s life in Japan, where he lives to this day and continues to garner followers.

Where is Raël now?

After first allegedly sighting a green alien with longish hair during a stop at a volcano in Auvergne while commuting to work in 1973, Raël set about spreading the word of the extra-terrestrials called the Elohim, which means «those who came from sky». He said the aliens, who spoke fluent French, had cloned themselves and created human beings 25,000 years ago.

The Frenchman also said he was their elected representative on earth and that during a meeting on their spaceship, he had been instructed to begin his religious movement. All fairly humdrum regular stuff so far.

But amid growing legal problems in France while trying to spread the word on the Elohim, Raël emigrated to Canada. Then, similar issues in the wake of the clone claims led him to leave Canada for Japan in 2007 – supposedly to spread the message «far and wide».

So what does the 77-year-old’s life in Japan now look like? He introduced the Netflix documentary-makers to Sky, a significantly younger woman who he described as «the love of my life».

Greater light was shed on Raël’s life in Japan in the 2021 Vice documentary The Prophet and the Space Aliens, which showed his day-to-day routine on the Japanese island Okinawa. Surrounded by a bodyguard, an assistant and a philosopher, Raël was shown spending his days doing things like meditating on the beach and playing boules.

He also led singalongs on the guitar, singing tunes with lyrics including: «We are one with infinity. We are one with eternity».

As he continued to preach and practice the Raëlian Movement in Japan, he was also seen on video calling a Raëlian village in Burkina Faso, telling the documentarians that the movement was taking off in Africa.

In the Vice film, Raël was seen holding hands with a much younger woman, telling her: «Be careful what you say. Everything is recorded.» It was unclear whether this was Sky.

He was also shown surrounded by a bevy of young women reminiscent of the cult’s so-called Order of Angels, which some of those who participated in the Netflix series likened to «sex slaves».

Raël: The Alien Prophet is available to stream on Netflix.