Sampling religions like some spiritual Beck, the UFO Cult headed by the man who called himself "Do" is a Santería of the '90s, its philosophy drawn from a weird amalgam of ancient belief systems, modern pop culture, and millennial fever.
Insights into the group's philosophy, and some now-chilling forecasts of this week's events, can be gleaned from the following excerpts found in the bizarre self-portrait offered on the Heaven's Gate Web site.
A page titled "'95 Statement by an E.T. Presently Incarnate" offers a preview of the apparent mass suicide:
The final act of metamorphosis or separation from the human kingdom is the "disconnect" or separation from the human physical container or body in order to be released from the human environment and enter the "next" world or physical environment of the Next Level. This will be done under the supervision of Members of the Next Level in a clinical procedure. We will rendezvous in the "clouds" (a giant mothership) for our briefing and journey to the Kingdom of the Literal Heavens.
According to that same '95 Statement, the group's gender neutrality apparently extended beyond the unisex clothing described in press reports:
"(Some in the class have chosen on their own to have their vehicles neutered in order to sustain a more genderless and objective consciousness.)"
X-Files producer Chris Carter may also have been influenced by the group's manifestoes - there are weird echoes of Agent Scully's recent travails with alien implants in the following:
"Those with souls - who fall away - become a part of the opposition to the Next Level. Once, in a prior civilization, records suggest that a third of the class fell and the strongest, and thereby leader of those fallen, was called 'Lucifer' (or Satan). Even today they occupy the near heavens as what humans refer to as 'space aliens.' They also burrow in bases underground and participate in genetic manipulation and hybridization with humans, and attempt to recruit (while remaining among the 'unseen') those humans with souls who are unstable or weak in their pursuit of the true Kingdom of Heaven."
The UFO Cult's references to "levels," and its use of triangular or pyramidal symbols, carry echoes of L. Ron Hubbard's Scientology writings.
Even that bogeyman of the the far-right militia movement - the Trilateral Commission - makes a veiled appearance:
"Where the space aliens have a major stronghold in playing 'God' is through those humans with the most power. The power is the strongest among the very rich and the very righteous (their self-styled religion) who accept that it is their ('God-given') responsibility to maintain the world's stability - judged, of course, by whatever actions are necessary to maintain and increase that power. These powerful individuals have a loose-knit world-wide 'club' that for the most part dictates who their primary 'monopoly' players are - those leaders in the 'significant' or strong societies or cultures. Government leaders, the very rich, and the world's righteous or 'moral' leaders, need each other to accomplish their desired ends.
There are also overtones of Gnosticism (the site's "Other Links" section links to Gnostic Web pages), and millennialism:
"Since this is the close of the Age, the battle in the Heavens with their servants on Earth will be the means of that closing and the spading under of the plants (including the humans) of this civilization. 'Weeds' are now getting rid of weeds - from gang wars to nations involved in ethnic cleansing. This is simply a part of the natural recycling process which precedes a restoration period of the planet in preparation for another civilization's beginning."
Even Star Trek makes an appearance, in what is described as an attempt to ground the movement's philosophy in the vernacular of science fiction:
"An 'away team' from an Evolutionary Level Above Human, an 'Admiral,' and His 'Captain' and crew, during the 1920s to 1950s picked and prepped the human bodies which they would wear for the task we are about to describe. They came into those bodies in the 1970s - the Admiral and Captain first."
The cut-and-paste nature of the group's Pynchonesque travels through our media consciousness over the past 20 years is encapsulated in more than 200 words hidden in the source code at Heaven's Gate, in an attempt to attract attention from search engine spiders - including such disparate terms "Abductees," "Heavenly Kingdom," "Non-Perishable," "Reincarnation," and "Yoda."
It's tempting to laugh at such odd juxtapositions, which are, after all, typical of many a homepage on the Web - until you remember that in this case, the people who created this site are likely among the 39 dead in Rancho Santa Fe.
