Heaven's Gate

by Benjamin E. Zeller

  7. Hugh B. Urban, “The Devil at Heaven’s Gate: Rethinking the Study of Religion in the Age of Cyber-Space,” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 3, no. 2 (2000): 270. This article, and several other ones cited (Chryssides, “Come on up, and I will show thee”; Zeller, “Scaling Heaven’s Gate”), is also easily accessible in George D. Chryssides’s anthology of the major essays most recently written on Heaven’s Gate, George D. Chryssides, ed., Heaven’s Gate: Postmodernity and Popular Culture in a Suicide Group (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2011).

  8. Urban, “The Devil at Heaven’s Gate,” 269.

  9. For an excellent example of Christian yoga, see Thomas Ryan, Prayer of Heart and Body: Meditation and Yoga as Christian Spiritual Practice (New York: Paulist Press, 1995).

  10. Susan K. Roll, Toward the Origins of Christmas (Kampen, Netherlands: Kok Pharos, 1995); Mark Connelly, Christmas: A Social History (London: I.B. Taurus, 2001). For a consideration of more recent pastiche and innovations, see Penne E. Restad, Christmas in America: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).

  11. See, for example, Françoise Dunand, Isis: Mère Des Dieux (Paris: Errance, 2000); Sabrina Higgins, “Divine Mothers: The Influence of Isis on the Virgin Mary in Egyptian Lactans-Iconography,” Journal of the Canadian Society for Coptic Studies 3–4 (2012).

  12. Urban, “The Devil at Heaven’s Gate,” 279–80.

  13. George D. Chryssides, “‘Come on up, and I Will Show Thee’: Heaven’s Gate as a Postmodern Group,” in Controversial New Religions, ed. James R. Lewis and Jesper Aagaard Petersen Petersen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 365. Also available in Heaven’s Gate: Postmodernity and Popular Culture in a Suicide Group, ed. Chryssides.

  14. Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, U.S. Religious Landscape Survey: Religious Affiliation: Diverse and Dynamic.

  15. Angela A. Aidala, “Social Change, Gender Roles, and New Religious Movements,” Sociological Analysis 46, no. 3 (1985).

  16. Glock and Bellah, The New Religious Consciousness.

  17. Dick Anthony and Thomas Robbins, “Cultural Crisis and Contemporary Religion,” in In Gods We Trust, ed. Thomas Robbins and Dick Anthony (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1981), 28.

  18. Balch, email to author, September 14, 2013.

  19. Balch, “The Evolution of a New Age Cult,” 4.

  20. Balch and Taylor, “Seekers and Saucers,” 840.

  21. Ibid., 852.

  22. James R. Lewis, “Legitimating Suicide: Heaven’s Gate and New Age Ideology,” in UFO Religions, ed. Christopher Partridge (London: Routledge, 2003), 106.

  23. Ibid.

  24. Chryssides, “‘Come on up, and I Will Show Thee’,” 359.

  25. Ibid., 362.

  26. Susan J. Palmer, Aliens Adored: Raël’s UFO Religion (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004).

  27. Christopher Partridge, “The Eschatology of Heaven’s Gate,” in Expecting the End: Millennialism in Social and Historical Context, ed. Kenneth G. C. Newport and Crawford Gibbens (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2006), 49.

  28. Ibid., 65.

  29. For more on hermeneutics, see Van A. Harvey, “Hermeneutics,” in Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Lindsay Jones (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005). For the background and history of various approaches of biblical hermeneutics, see Stephen R. Haynes and Steven L. McKenzie, eds., To Each Its Own Meaning: An Introduction to Biblical Criticisms and Their Application (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1993).

  30. For more on the idea of extraterrestrial biblical hermeneutics, see my book chapter Benjamin E. Zeller, “Apocalyptic Thought in UFO Religions,” in End of Days: Understanding the Apocalypse from Antiquity to Modernity, ed. Karolyn Kinane and Michael A. Ryan (Jefferson, NC: McFarland Press, 2009). My consideration of extraterrestrial biblical hermeneutics and Heaven’s Gate was also laid out in Benjamin E. Zeller, “Extraterrestrial Biblical Hermeneutics and the Making of Heaven’s Gate,” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 14, no. 2 (2010).

  31. Chryssides, “Approaching Heaven’s Gate,” in Heaven’s Gate: Postmodernity and Popular Culture in a Suicide Group, 2.

  32. Arthur Versluis, Magic and Mysticism: An Introduction to Western Esotericism (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 1. See also Antoine Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994).

  33. Brenda Denzler, The Lure of the Edge: Scientific Passions, Religious Beliefs, and the Pursuit of UFOs (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 46.

  34. Ibid., 122.

  35. Pia Andersson, “Ancient Alien Brothers, Ancient Terrestrial Remains: Archeology or Religion?” in Alien Worlds: Social and Religious Dimensions of Extraterrestrial Contact, ed. Diana Tumminia (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2007).

  36. Denzler, Lure of the Edge, 110.

  37. Andersson, “Ancient Alien Brothers, Ancient Terrestrial Remains”; Anne Cross, “A Confederacy of Fact and Fiction: Science and the Sacred in UFO Research,” in Alien World, ed. Tumminia.

  38. See Richard Vitzthum, Materialism: An Affirmative History and Definition (New York: Prometheus Books, 1995).

  39. Benjamin E. Zeller, Prophets and Protons: New Religious Movements and Science in Late-Twentieth Century America (New York: New York University Press, 2010).

  40. Steven M. Tipton, Getting Saved from the Sixties: The Transformation of Moral Meaning in American Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 2–3.

  41. John A. Saliba, “Religious Dimensions of UFO Phenomena,” in The Gods Have Landed: New Religions from Other Worlds, ed. James R. Lewis (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 54–55.

  42. Christopher Partridge, ed., UFO Religions (London: Routledge, 2003); Zeller, Prophets and Protons; Carl Gustav Jung, Ein Moderner Mythus (Stuttgart: Rascher, 1958).

  43. Heaven’s Gate, “Planet About to Be Recycled—Your Only Chance to Survive—Leave with Us [Edited Transcript],” http://www.heavensgate.com/misc/vt100596.htm.

  44. Human Individual Metamorphosis, “Statement #1,” “Statement #2,” “Statement #3.”

  45. Jnnody, “Incarnating and Discarnating,” in How and When “Heaven’s Gate” May Be Entered, A:89; Heaven’s Gate, “’95 Statement by an E.T. Presently Incarnate,” in How and When “Heaven’s Gate” May Be Entered, 1:7; Lvvody, “Ingredients of a Deposit—Becoming a New Creature,” in How and When “Heaven’s Gate” May Be Entered, A:8; Jwnody, “Ti and Do as ‘Smelling Salts’,” in How and When “Heaven’s Gate” May Be Entered, A:2.

  46. Notably, this website is not stored on the Wayback Machine (archive.org), the usual repository for such defunct websites.

  47. Heaven’s Gate, “Connecting Links,” http://www.heavensgate.com/misc/link.htm. For Glnody’s role on editing the website, see DiAngelo, Beyond Human Mind, 74.

  48. Applewhite and Nettles, “Bo and Peep Interview with Brad Steiger, January 7, 1976,” 137.

  49. Jwnody, “Religions Are Humans’ #1 Killers of Souls,” A65.

  50. The ellipses are from the original. Jwnody, “Religions Are Humans’ #1 Killers of Souls,” A:67.

  51. Jwnody, “Religions Are Humans’ #1 Killers of Souls,” A:67.

  52. Stmody, “Evolutionary ‘Rights’ for ‘Victims’,” in How and When “Heaven’s Gate” May Be Entered, A:75.

  53. Stmody, “Evolutionary ‘Rights’ for ‘Victims’.”

  54. See Snnody, “Deposits,” in How and When “Heaven’s Gate” May Be Entered, A:80; Anlody, “Investments,” in How and When “Heaven’s Gate” May Be Entered, A:98.

  55. Mikael Stenmark, “What Is Scientism?” Religious Studies 33(1997): 19.

  56. Heaven’s Gate, “’88 Update,” 3:15.

  57. Amy Harmon, “Escaping to Other Worlds,” Los Angeles Times, April 2, 1997, A1.

  58. Paul Kurtz, “Perspective on the Media: A Marriage Made in Heaven’s Gate,” Los Angeles Times, May 19, 1997, B5.


  59. McCloud, Making the American Religious Fringe.

  60. Benjamin E. Zeller, “Heaven’s Gate, Science Fiction Religions, and Popular American Culture,” in Handbook on Hyper-Real Religions, ed. Adam Possamai (Leiden: Brill, 2012); Carole M. Cusack, Invented Religions: Imagination, Fiction and Faith (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2010).

  61. Zeller, “Heaven’s Gate, Science Fiction Religions, and Popular American Culture.”

  62. Rkkody, interview with author, November 19, 1997.

  63. Heaven’s Gate, “‘UFO Cult’ Resurfaces with Final Offer [USA Today Advertisement],” in How and When “Heaven’s Gate” May Be Entered, 6:7. See also an unused presentation written in 1993 and preserved in the group’s 1997 anthology, which offers another example: Heaven’s Gate, “Extraterrestrials Return with Final Warning,” 5:4–5.

  64. Heaven’s Gate, “‘UFO Cult’ Resurfaces with Final Offer [USA Today Advertisement]”, 6:7.

  65. Leonard Nimoy, director, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (Paramount Pictures, 1986).

  66. Heaven’s Gate, “‘UFO Cult’ Resurfaces with Final Offer [USA Today Advertisement],” 6:7.

  67. Heaven’s Gate, “Crew from the Evolutionary Level above Human Offers—Last Chance to Advance Beyond Human,” in How and When “Heaven’s Gate” May Be Entered, 6:4; Heaven’s Gate, “Exit Press Release: Heaven’s Gate ‘Away Team’ Returns to Level above Human in Distant Space,” http://www.heavensgate.com/pressrel.htm.

  68. Crlody, “The Aftermath of Heaven’s Gate.”

  69. Jwnody, “‘Away Team’ from Deep Space Surfaces before Departure.”

  70. Jwnody, “Overview of the Present Mission,” in How and When “Heaven’s Gate” May Be Entered, vii.

  71. DiAngelo, Beyond Human Mind, 30.

  72. Cusack, Invented Religions, 141.

  NOTES TO CHAPTER 4

  1. For more on the critique and reshaping of the field, see David D. Hall, ed., Lived Religion in America: Toward a History of Practice (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).

  2. One notable example is Mary Farrell Bednarowski, New Religions & the Theological Imagination in America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989).

  3. Jim Rutenberg, “Mediatalk: AOL Sees a Different Side of Time Warner,” New York Times, March 19, 2001, C11.

  4. Drrody, Exit Video (Rancho Santa Fe, CA, 1997), Video (VHS).

  5. I received a photocopy of the marked pages of this Bible from Robert W. Balch. I am extremely grateful to him for sharing the text with me, and for his general willingness to share his thoughts and knowledge of the movement with myself and others.

  6. Athalya Brenner and Jan W. van Henten, eds., Bible Translation on the Threshold of the Twenty-First Century: Authority, Reception, Culture and Religion (New York: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 1–7.

  7. Rosamond Rodman, “Heaven’s Gate: Religious Otherworldiness American Style,” in The Bible and the American Myth: A Symposium on the Bible and Constructions of Meaning, ed. Vincent K. Wimbush (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1999).

  8. For more on the scholarly treatment of Luke, see the summary included in Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 96–114.

  9. Human Individual Metamorphosis, “Statement #1.”

  10. Ibid.

  11. Heaven’s Gate, “Bible Quotes Primarily from Previous Representatives to Earth from T.E.L.A.H.,” http://www.heavensgate.com/b-2.htm.

  12. Heaven’s Gate, “Undercover ‘Jesus’ Surfaces before Departure.”

  13. On the 1975 debates, Balch, email to author, September 14, 2013. On the claims of Jesus aboard a UFO, “Bo and Peep Interview with Brad Steiger, January 7, 1976,” in UFO Missionaries Extraordinary, ed. Hayden Hewes and Brad Steiger (New York: Pocket Books, 1976), 82–3.

  14. Heaven’s Gate, “Undercover ‘Jesus’ Surfaces before Departure.”

  15. Heaven’s Gate, “He’s Back, We’re Back, Where Will You Stand? [Poster].”

  16. Balch, email to author, September 14, 2013; Mrcody and Srfody, oral history and interview, September 30–October 1, 2013.

  17. Heaven’s Gate, “’88 Update.”

  18. Human Individual Metamorphosis, “Statement #1,” “Statement #2,” “Statement #3.”

  19. Human Individual Metamorphosis, “Statement #1.”

  20. Smmody, “T.E.L.A.H. – the Evolutionary Level above Human,” in How and When “Heaven’s Gate” May Be Entered, A:22.

  21. Jwnody, “‘Away Team’ from Deep Space Surfaces before Departure.”

  22. Smmody, “T.E.L.A.H. – the Evolutionary Level above Human.”

  23. Mrcody and Srfody, oral history and interview.

  24. The Hills reported experiencing their abduction account in 1961, but it was not reported publicly in the newspaper until 1965, and in book form until 1966. Strieber similarly reports a 1985 visitation in his 1987 book. Sylvia Fuller and John Levi Martin, “Women’s Status in Eastern NRMs,” Review of Religious Research 44, no. 4 (2003); Whitney Strieber, Communion: A True Story (New York: Beach Tree Books, 1987).

  25. DiAngelo, Beyond Human Mind, 25.

  26. David Keck, Angels & Angelology in the Middle Ages (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 1.

  27. Jwnody, Exit Video (Rancho Santa Fe, CA, 1997).

  28. Heaven’s Gate, “‘UFO Cult’ Resurfaces with Final Offer [USA Today Advertisement].”

  29. This is Clarke’s Third Law, laid out in Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future: An Enquiry into the Limits of the Possible (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1984), 36.

  30. Anlody, “Investments,” in How and When “Heaven’s Gate” May Be Entered, A:98.

  31. Tim F. LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth’s Last Days, ed. Left Behind (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1995).

  32. Human Individual Metamorphosis, “Statement #1.”

  33. Human Individual Metamorphosis, “Statement #2,” “Statement #3,” 2.

  34. Human Individual Metamorphosis, “What’s Up?” (American Religions Collection, ARC Mss 1, Department of Special Collections, University Libraries, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1975).

  35. For the earliest accounts of the Two’s meetings, see “20 Missing in Oregon after Talking of a Higher Life”; Muss, “No Disease Promised”; Williamson, “‘It Was a Sham’”; McGrath, “UFO ‘Lost Sheep’ Tell Cult Secrets.” The Oregon Journal published an edited version of the transcript of the Waldport meeting, which also did not mention the demonstration: Muss, “‘Grave Not Path to Heaven,’ Disciples Told.” (Photocopy of article available in American Religions Collection, ARC Mss 1, Department of Special Collections, University Libraries, University of California, Santa Barbara.) Nearly all the publications after October 18, 1975 mention the Two’s belief in their impending demonstration, e.g., Austin Scott, “Music Teacher, Nurse Led Search for ‘Higher Life’,” Washington Post, October 18, 1975; “Cults: Out of This World,” TIME, October 20, 1975; James R. Gaines, “Cults: Bo-Peep’s Flock,” Newsweek, October 20, 1975; Simross, “Invitation to an Unearthly Kingdom.” For the Two’s discussion of the demonstration in their interviews, see Phelan, “Looking For: The Next World,” 58; Hayden Hewes and Brad Steiger, UFO Missionaries Extraordinary (New York: Pocket Books, 1976), 70; Hewes and Steiger, “UFO Missionaries Extraordinary,” 96–97.

  36. See Williamson, “‘It Was a Sham’,” 2; McGrath, “UFO ‘Lost Sheep’ Tell Cult Secrets,” 26.

  37. Hewes and Steiger, “UFO Missionaries Extraordinary,” 96. For the New Testament’s treatment of the three days preceding the resurrection, see Matthew 27:57–28:7, Mark 15:40–16:8, Luke 23:50–24:5, and John 19:38–20:18.

  38. Phelan, “Looking For: The Next World,” 58.

  39. This episode is retold in Hewes and Steiger, UFO Missionaries Extraordinary, 18.

  40. As cited in Hewes and Steiger, UFO Missionaries Extraordinary, 16.

&nbs
p; 41. Human Individual Metamorphosis, “What’s Up?”

  42. For the historical development of dispensationalism, including an institutional and cultural history of its spread through nineteenth-century evangelicalism, see George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth Century Evangelicalism, 1870–1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980). For more on the twentieth century, see A.G. Mojtabai, Blessed Assurance: At Home with the Bomb in Amarillo, Texas (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986).

  43. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 51.

  44. See C. I. Scofield, The Scofield Reference Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1917), p. 1349, n. 1 (commenting on Rev. 19:19); p. 1269, n. 1 (on 1 Thess. 4:17); and p. 1228, n. 1 (on 1 Cor. 15:52).

  45. Descriptions of the first through fifth dispensations appear in Applewhite and Nettles, “A Statement Prepared by the Two,” 164–68. I cite the discussion of the sixth dispensation, Applewhite and Nettles, “A Statement Prepared by the Two,” 168.

  46. Applewhite and Nettles, “A Statement Prepared by the Two,” 169.

  47. Ibid., 159.

  48. Ibid.

  49. I refer to chapter 11 of the text, “The Ultimate Trip.” Hal Lindsey, The Late Great Planet Earth (New York: Bantam Books, 1970). For comparison purposes, consider also the more recent dispensationalist fiction series Left Behind, the first of which was published shortly before the Heaven’s Gate suicides in 1997, which not only assumes the concept of the rapture but also begins with a depiction of it. LaHaye and Jenkins, Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth’s Last Days.

  50. For a treatment of how Applewhite and Nettles might have encountered premillennial dispensationalism, see Benjamin E. Zeller, “Scaling Heaven’s Gate: Individualism and Salvation in a New Religious Movement,” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 10, no. 2 (2006).

  51. “Bo and Peep Interview with Brad Steiger, January 7, 1976,” 82–83.

  52. Muss, “‘Grave Not Path to Heaven,’ Disciples Told.” n.p.

  53. Applewhite and Nettles, “Bo and Peep Interview with Brad Steiger, January 7, 1976,” 129.

  54. In addition to the already cited statement in the Hewes and Steiger book, see the first statement’s closing paragraph, “Those who can believe this process and do it will be ‘lifted up’ individually and ‘saved’ from death – literally.” Human Individual Metamorphosis, “Statement #1.”