1. Vorilhon translates Elohim as “those who came from the sky” and uses “Eloha” for a single one of the Elohim. See Raël (Claude Vorilhon), Intelligent Design: Message from the Designers (np: Nova Distribution, 2005), p. 11.
2. On the rhetorical strategy of the self-effacing narrator, see Stephen O’Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse: A Theory of Millennial Rhetoric (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 78.
3. See Rodney Stark, “How New Religions Succeed: A Theoretical Model,” in David G. Bromley and Phillip E. Hammond, eds., The Future of New Religious Movements (Mercer, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987), pp. 11–29, quotation from p. 13;
4. see also Rodney Stark, “Why Religious Movements Suceed or Fail: A Revised General Model,” Journal of Contemporary Religion 11 (1996): 133–146.
5. On the concept of “charismatic persona,” see David G. Bromley and Rachel S. Bobbit, “Challenges to Charismatic Authority in the Unificationist Movement,” in James R. Lewis and Sarah M. Lewis, eds. Sacred Schisms: How Religions Divide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 129–146;