Heaven's Gate
Page 18
Members of Heaven’s Gate not only mapped the Next Level onto physical space and created dwellings out of physical materials, such as automobile tires, they also mapped the Next Level onto the self and created a sense of identity and community in which they could dwell. Tweed invokes the metaphors of watch and compass, indicating how religions and religious people seek to create meaningful time and space. As he notes, “[r]eligions construct the body as watch and compass by figuring, regulating, and modifying” the cultural flows of people and ideas.31 Such practices position the body in space and time, Tweed explains.
Figure 5.1. Heaven’s Gate member Jmmody helping to build the “Earth ship” structure in Manzano, New Mexico. Image © TELAH Foundation.
The primary way that members of Heaven’s Gate engaged in this sort of dwelling involved renaming themselves as members of the Next Level and recreating their community as the crew of a Next Level spaceship. The practice of renaming of course has parallels in many other religious groups. As a monastic community, the most obvious parallel to Heaven’s Gate is Christian monastic orders, specifically Catholic or Eastern Orthodox monasteries or convents wherein individuals assume a new name and new identity upon joining. Referring to the renaming ritual within the context of the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church, Kurt A. Bruder calls this “deconstructing and reconstructing the self,” and notes that it functions to reinvent the identity of the monastic within the context of his or her new community of practice.32 One finds similar practices among monastics in other religious communities, and of course converts to new religions. Writing of the contemporary conversion of Saami—natives of Lapland—from Christianity to reconstructed versions of pre-Christian Saami religiosity, Norwegian historian of religion Lars Ivar Hansen explains that a renaming ritual results in the “washing-off” of the Christian name given by baptism and the assigning of a “proper Saami name” to the individual.33 Such rituals function to cement new identities.
Upon joining, Heaven’s Gate members adopted new names. In the first few months of the movement, names varied and different people recounted different means of receiving them, either through their own choices or being given them by other members or the group’s founders. Two amateur investigators who infiltrated the group in September 1975 found that the members they met were still using their birth names, but Balch and Taylor reported other members using new names when they joined the group at nearly the same time.34 Given the social disorganization within this inchoate new religious movement, clearly its founders had not codified any particular practice at that time, and ex-members reports vary.
In late 1977, while the group was camping in Canyon Lake, Texas, a large reservoir between Austin and San Antonio, Nettles and Applewhite instituted a new approach to naming, and formalized the style of names given. Calling the members of their class one-by-one into the large green tent in which the group would occasionally assemble, Nettles and Applewhite renamed each member with a three-letter single syllable, followed by the suffix “–ody.” In some cases, members simply shortened names they had already been using, and added the new suffix, for example Surri who became known as Srrody, or Seraph, who became Srfody. In other cases, individuals were given completely new names, for example the then-member who had been using the name “Philip” became Mrcody.35
Adherents and leaders both saw the renaming as an important act. In a much later source dating from the 1990s, Applewhite explained his understanding of the practice, indicating it served a role of helping the convert focus on the Next Level,
[a] funny thing here about using the name “Thompson,” [for example] when you’re in the process of overcoming, one of the things that helps you is to take a new name. This is adopted in a way in the Catholic church [sic] when nuns and some of the monks or hermits—some of the ones who isolate themselves more in thoughtful, studying conditions—they take another name. They take the name of a saint or some Biblical name and it helps disassociate them from the family tree. It helps get their mind more on their pursuit of their concept of God.36
For Applewhite, the practice of renaming helps an adherent shift their attitude and perspective—their habitus—from the circumstances of their birth and life before joining the movement to a new frame of reference emphasizing their membership in Heaven’s Gate and striving toward the Next Level. In the words of Anlody, reflecting on her experience of renaming, “My name I got from my older member. . . . When you first join the class you try to separate yourself from the vehicle, so you take another name so you are not being called from what the vehicle is being called.”37
Yet the specific form the new name took offers relevance on its own within the context of renaming as a religious practice. If practice serves to embed an individual within a religious community and recreate their identity within the context of that community, then the “-ody” names of Heaven’s Gate reveal a specific way of doing so. Nettles and Applewhite did not decide upon “–ody” randomly, nor did they assign the syllable preceding that suffix willy-nilly. Ex-members have provided two different explanations for the meanings of the “–ody” suffix. Mrcody and Srfody, who were present at the renaming and therefore serve as reliable witnesses as to how it was initially explained, indicate that “–ody” meant “child of God.” Under Nettles’s and Applewhite’s rationale, “–od” served as a contraction to represent “of God” and “–y” functioned as a diminutive, much like “Jimmy” is a diminutive of Jim/James. Accepting this new name ending in “–ody” therefore marked adherents as children of God. Mrcody and Srfody—who had left in September 1987—indicate that members told them that they had considered dropping the final “–y” from the suffix in the final two or three years of the group’s existence to indicate that they had matured and were ready for graduation, but apparently this did not occur.38
Neoody, who was present in these final years, offers a second meaning of the “–ody” suffix, indicating either that members’ understandings had changed, or at least that idiosyncratic interpretations also existed within the movement. Neoody explained that “-ody” reflected the names of Applewhite (“Do”) and Nettles (“Ti”), merged into one suffix “-DoTi,” which under the phonetic principle of natural relaxed pronunciation became vocalized and subsequently spelled as “-ody.”39 Under this interpretation, by renaming themselves with reference to the names of their religious leaders, members of Heaven’s Gate engaged in a religious practice meant to bind themselves to the community and its founders. No less than a Catholic monastic adopts the patron saint associated with his or her new name, adherents of Heaven’s Gate marked themselves as disciples of Applewhite and Nettles as Do and Ti, and reframed their identities in that light. The movement later developed a thorough theology of “grafting” wherein members of the group believed they had grafted themselves onto the Next Level through attaching themselves to the rootstock of Ti and Do, though the Two had mentioned this idea as early as 1976.40 Heaven’s Gate member Brnody describes this as a chain or link between the most basic “human plants” up the “chain of command” to the heavens.41
If the suffix of the new name represented the member’s new identity within the movement (under either of the two interpretations offered by ex-members), the name’s prefix or first syllable symbolized the individual identity. Members used these first syllables as a sort of first name, sometimes referring to each using them rather than the full forms of their names.42 On formal occasions, such as in writing or the Exit Videos, members always used the full versions of their names with both prefix and suffix, effectively first and last names. This prefix took different forms, sometimes reflecting a physical characteristic of the member, or sometimes a personality quirk or reference from their past. For example, Applewhite gave Tllody his name because he was physically tall.43 Drrody reports his pride that Ti and Do named him because of his personality and spiritual strength, “What does Drrody mean? It is kind of a funny name. Drrody is a name that was given to me by my older members. And simply it wa
s a name meaning being durable . . . they chose that name for me and I appreciate it very much,” he explains.44 In Drrody’s case, his durability referred to his persistence in having left and subsequently rejoined the group years later.
The act of renaming therefore functioned not just to solidify the member within the community, but to link the old and new identities through a specific religious practice. On a theological or ideological level, the doctrine of Heaven’s Gate rejected the value or relevance of the physical human body or the experiences of that body, and therefore any intrinsic value of the life led by a convert before joining the movement unless that experience or condition led to the individual’s trajectory into Heaven’s Gate. Hence, Applewhite recognized Drrody’s durability as a quality that assisted him in his spiritual quest and entrance back into the movement, and named him accordingly. Yet adherents believed that the body functioned as a mere set of clothing that the true self possessed or wore for a limited time, and likewise the experiences of that body before the true self emerged after meeting and joining the movement served little purpose. Previous experiences were those only of the body or vehicle, not the true soul or individual. In the words of Nrrody, “When I met Ti and Do, my life in this generation started.” Nrrody describes “taking over (incarnating into) a 32-year old vehicle (body),” and throughout the material she produced she endeavored to avoid associating herself with that body.45 Nrrody did not indicate why she chose or received her new name, but obviously she saw it is disconnected to her old name and identity before joining the group. Ironically, Nrrody’s birth name was Nora, making Nrrody not a radical departure. Yet the change itself represented the meaning, not the actual shift in letters.
Neoody similarly reports his experience with the religious practice of renaming, but in his case he experienced this not in 1977 with other members of the group, but when he joined in 1994. His first-person account emphasizes the religious practices of receiving a new name, new clothing, new vocabulary, and a new set of social norms. It was a rebirth into a new life:
I was told that everyone is asked to choose a new name while in the monastery. “You don’t want to use your human name because it is easier to excel in the non-human lessons if you identify with the new you.” They said, “Each name would be represented by three letters.” I felt new, so I chose NEO. This was years before the sci-fi movie Matrix came out [in 1999] with the lead character named NEO.46
Neoody writes that he received the “-ody” portion of his name only after he had proven his commitment to the group, approximately three months later, and that this represented his new “family name.” Like the family names (“last names”) of most American people, this family name indicated Neoody’s membership in a kinship network of supportive individuals, and the value that Heaven’s Gate placed on the group as a form of family.
Beyond the step of renaming themselves, members of the movement also engaged in practices meant to remold themselves into a Next Level spacecraft crew rather than a gathering of human spiritual seekers. These practices included rhetorical ones of referring to themselves as a crew, as well as social practices meant to reinforce crew consciousness. Most notable of the latter practices, members adopted identical diets, uniform clothing, and grooming. Famously, members of the group wore uniforms during their final acts of suicide. Yet this practice extended well before the 1997 suicides. Members shown in the 1992 video series wore uniforms as well, though of a different style. Neoody recounts that when he joined, uniforms served the simple purpose of “making the laundry easier,” but the first uniforms were more a dress code than an actual uniform, indicating appropriate clothing to emphasize modesty, comfort, and utilitarian value.47 Members of the group never actually indicated why they wore uniforms or why they chose the ones they did, but clearly wearing the uniforms functioned to make Earth more akin to the Next Level. The specific uniforms that the movement chose reflected this attempt to orient themselves toward the Next Level, to use religious practice as a “compass,” as Tweed would say. During the 1992 video series, members wore simple grey Oxford-style shirts, fully buttoned to the top. At the time of the suicides, members wore identical black pants and shirts, and black Nike shoes. Members of the San Diego Sheriff’s department who found the remains described these as “track suit”-style uniforms, and reported that all members of the group wore identical clothing, and had draped identical purple shrouds over themselves. Famously, each carried a roll of quarters and a five-dollar bill in their pocket. (Ex-members report that this was a sort of inside joke recalling how members brought small change for bus fares whenever they traveled.48)
Figure 5.2. Video snapshot from Do’s Exit Video showing the uniforms of members of Heaven’s Gate on March 19, 1997. Image © TELAH Foundation.
Members of Heaven’s Gate did not choose these uniforms randomly. Avid viewers of the science fiction television series Star Trek, the members of Heaven’s Gate had intentionally modeled their uniforms on the ones worn by characters in this show who serve as members of Starfleet, the fictional military order who explore, police, and adventure throughout the universe. Heaven’s Gate members idolized this vision of the cosmos, and saw the characters of Star Trek as models for how the Next Level functioned. They therefore adopted uniforms that mimicked those worn by the characters of Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation. The practice of wearing the specific uniforms that members did served to unite the adherents of Heaven’s Gate with their ideal understanding of the Next Level, in this case through mimesis of popular culture.
Remaking the Self for the Next Level: Crossing
Heaven’s Gate members did not simply want to dwell on Earth. They ultimately envisioned themselves as seeking to overcome the planet and their humanity and to reach the Next Level. This idea of transcendence fits within what Tweed would call “crossing.” Recall that the adherents of Heaven’s Gate who planned and built the multi-structure community in New Mexico on the “Earth ship” model called their dwelling the “launch pad.” The members who chose this name made an interesting choice. Launch pads, like airports, train stations, or harbors, are a specific type of space: space intended to enable movement away from itself, and toward a new space. Cultural theorist Marc Augé calls such locations “non-places,” and writes that such non-places “cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity,” and exist only to ferry individuals somewhere else.49 Emblematic of crossing, a non-place ushers individuals through and onto their next destination. This represents precisely how members of Heaven’s Gate came to view their terrestrial lives, earthly abodes, and domestic situation. Recreating their home as a no-place “launch pad” therefore made perfect sense to them. They wanted to cross over and transcend the human level, and such crossing served as an integral part of Heaven’s Gate’s religious practices.
Tweed envisions three types of crossing, all of which are present to some degree in Heaven’s Gate: “I argue that religions enable and constrain terrestrial crossings, as devotees traverse natural terrain and social space beyond the home and across the homeland, corporeal crossings, as the religious fix their attention on the limits of embodied existence, and cosmic crossings, as the pious imagine and cross the ultimate horizon of human life.”50 Making use of the idea of crossing as Tweed has developed it, one finds that Heaven’s Gate members engaged in extensive acts of terrestrial crossing as forms of religious practice, in hopes of preparing themselves for what was literally a cosmic crossing. What Tweed calls a corporeal crossing, namely the transitions through human life, is precisely what members of Heaven’s Gate sought to avoid by cleaving to Next Level consciousness.
In keeping with Tweed’s approach, one can understand the frenetic wandering of Heaven’s Gate members itself as a sort of religious practice. Not wanting to attach themselves to any particular physical space or create too permanent a home here on Earth, members of this movement engaged in wandering as a form of religious practice. Before Heaven’s Gate even existed as a m
ovement, its founders Nettles and Applewhite had engaged in a similar journey of self-discovery that physically, psychologically, and spiritually moved them away from Texas and their family and friends, brought them to new physical and mental places, and broadened their horizons. In the words of Applewhite, recounting the experience in the third person a decade later: