Claude Vorilhon (Raël) contact at Puy de Lassolas

Claude Vorilhon was born in Vichy on 30 September 1946. In 1973 he was 27, a motoring journalist and test driver who had founded the motorsport magazine Autopop. Before that he had tried singing, recording acoustic songs in the style of Jacques Brel.

Accounts differ on why he went to the volcanoes near Clermont-Ferrand that morning. An unexplained urge, a hike, or a drive.

13 December 1973. The crater of Puy de Lassolas, an inactive volcano paired with Puy de la Vache. There was mist. Vorilhon saw a flashing light in the fog. Then something like a bell of shiny metal came down. Slowly. Without any noise.

He described a flattened bell shape, very bright, with no portholes. About 7 metres across and 2.5 metres high. It floated silently above the crater floor. A trapdoor opened underneath and a stairway unfolded to the ground. Down it came a small being, about four feet tall. "His eyes were slightly almond-shaped, his hair was black and long, and he had a small black beard." His skin was white with a slightly greenish tinge. He wore a green one-piece suit marked with interlaced triangles and a swastika, the same sign engraved on the craft. He spoke French. His face, Vorilhon said, was full of love.

The being said he had come solely to meet Vorilhon and give him a message for humanity. The instructions were simple. Return the next day and the days after. Bring a Bible and a notebook. Wear no metal. Tell no one.

For six consecutive days they met for about an hour. Vorilhon was told that "Elohim" in Genesis means "those who came from the sky." Extraterrestrial scientists had made humans in laboratories about 25,000 years ago. He was to be their messenger, Raël, and prepare an embassy for their return.

A regional paper, La Montagne, reportedly turned the story down. National attention came on 13 March 1974, reportedly on Jacques Chancel's Le Grand Échiquier, and letters poured in by the thousands. On 13 December 1974, 170 members met at Puy de Lassolas and founded MADECH, the first form of the Raëlian movement.

No photograph, film, radar return or physical trace exists. Vorilhon was the only witness. No investigation of the sighting by GEIPAN or the gendarmerie has been found. Official attention went to the movement instead: a police seizure of documents in December 1977, and a 1995 parliamentary inquiry that listed it as a cult.

Doubts came from those close to him. Journalist Jean-Jacques Arène says the story began as a hoax dreamed up after a boozy dinner. His ex-wife Marie-Paule Cristini said he at first did not believe what he was saying, then got caught up in his own game. Jean-Denis Saint-Cyr, his right-hand man for about 14 years, says Vorilhon admitted he never met aliens. Maryse Péloquin argues he borrowed from ancient-astronaut writers, and the dialogue has been compared with George Adamski's 1952 contact story. The Raëlians dispute the plagiarism charge.

The account became Le Livre qui dit la vérité in 1974, later republished as Intelligent Design: Message from the Designers. Sociologist Susan Palmer studied the movement in Aliens Adored. Michel Houellebecq drew on Raël for the prophet in La Possibilité d'une île, and Netflix released Raël: The Alien Prophet in 2024. Every 13 December, Raëlians celebrate the First Encounter.