Heaven's Gate (Religious Group)

Heaven's Gate (religious group) - Wikipedia, the f...
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Heaven's Gate (religious group)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Heaven's Gate was an American UFO religious Millenarian group based in San Diego, California, founded in the early 1970s and led by Marshall Applewhite (19311997) and Bonnie Nettles (19271985).[1] On March 26, 1997, police discovered the bodies of 39 members of the group who had committed mass suicide[2] in order to reach what they believed was an alien space craft following the Comet HaleBopp, which was then at its brightest.[3]
The logo used by the Heaven's Gate group
Contents
1 History 2 Belief system 3 Structure 4 Mass suicide and aftermath 5 Media coverage prior to suicide 6 See also 7 References 8 Bibliography 9 Further reading 10 External links
History
According to Jacques Valle in his 1979 book Messengers of Deception, [4] the group began in the early 1970s when Marshall Applewhite was recovering from a heart attack during which he claimed to have had a near-death experience. He came to believe that he and his nurse, Bonnie Nettles, were "the Two", that is, the two witnesses spoken of in the Book of Revelation 11:3 in the Bible. After a brief and unsuccessful attempt to run an inspirational bookstore, they began traveling around the United States of America giving talks about their belief system. As with some other New Age faiths[5][6] they combined Christian doctrine (particularly the ideas of salvation and apocalypse) with the concept of evolutionary advancement and elements of science ction, particularly travel to
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other worlds and dimensions. Applewhite and Nettles used a variety of aliases over the years, notably "Bo and Peep" and "Do and Ti" (pronounced doe and tea). The group also had a variety of namesprior to the adoption of the name Heaven's Gate (and at the time Valle studied the group), it was known as Human Individual Metamorphosis (HIM). The group re-invented and renamed itself several times and had a variety of recruitment methods.[7][8] Marshall believed that he was directly related to Jesus, meaning he was an "Evolutionary Kingdom Level Above Human".
Belief system
Heaven's Gate members believed the planet Earth was about to be "recycled" (wiped clean, renewed, refurbished, and rejuvenated), and the only chance to survive was to leave it immediately. While the group was formally against suicide, they dened "suicide" in their own context to mean "to turn against the Next Level when it is being oered"[9] and believed their "human" bodies were only vessels meant to help them on their journey. In conversation, when referring to a person or a person's body, they routinely used the word "vehicle"; when shown a picture of his son in an interview, Rio DiAngelo commented, "Look, there's the little vehicle."[citation needed] The group believed in several paths for a person to leave the Earth and survive before the "recycling", one of which was intentioning love to this world strongly enough: "It is also possible that part of our test of faith is our loving of this world, even our esh body, to the extent to be willing to leave it without any proof of the Next Level's existence."[citation needed] The members of the group added to the rst names they adopted in lieu of their original given names, which denes "children of the Next Level". This is mentioned in Applewhite's nal video, Do's Final Exit, lmed March 1920, 1997, just days prior to the suicides.[citation needed] They believed "to be eligible for membership in the Next Level, humans would have to shed every attachment to the planet". This meant all members had to give up all human-like characteristics, such as their family, friends, sexuality, individuality, jobs, money, and possessions.[10] These basic beliefs of the cult stayed generally consistent over the years; however, "the details of their ideology were exible enough to undergo modication over time."[11] There are many examples of the cult's adding or slightly changing their beliefs over time, such as: modifying the way one can enter the Next Level, changing the way they described themselves, placing more importance on the idea of Satan, and adding several other New Age concepts.
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One of these concepts was the belief of extraterrestrial walk-ins; when the cult began, "Applewhite and Nettles taught their followers that they were extraterrestrial beings. However, after the notion of walk-ins became popular within the New Age subculture, the Two changed their tune and began describing themselves as extraterrestrial walk-ins."[11] The idea of walk-ins is very similar to the concept of being possessed by spirits. A walk-in can be dened as "an entity who occupies a body that has been vacated by its original soul". Heaven's Gate came to believe an extraterrestrial walk-in is "a walk-in that is supposedly from another planet."[12] The concept of walk-ins aided Applewhite and Nettles in personally starting from clean slates. They were no longer the people they had been prior to the start of the group, but had taken on a new life; this concept gave them a way to "erase their human personal histories as the histories of souls who formerly occupied the bodies of Applewhite and Nettles."[12] Another New Age belief Applewhite and Nettles adopted was the ancient astronaut hypothesis. The term "ancient astronauts" is used to refer to various forms of the concept that ufonauts[citation needed] visited our planet in the distant past.[11] Applewhite and Nettles took part of this concept and taught it as the belief that "aliens planted the seeds of current humanity millions of years ago, and have to come to reap the harvest of their work in the form of spiritual evolved individuals who will join the ranks of ying saucer crews. Only a select few members of humanity will be chosen to advance to this transhuman state. The rest will be left to wallow in the spiritually poisoned atmosphere of a corrupt world." [13] Only the individuals who chose to join Heaven's Gate, follow Applewhite and Nettle's belief, and make the sacrices required by membership would be allowed to escape human suering.[citation needed]
Structure
Group members gave up their material possessions and lived a highly ascetic life devoid of many indulgences. The group was tightly knit and everything was shared communally. Eight of the male members of the group, including Applewhite, voluntarily underwent castration in Mexico as an extreme means of maintaining the ascetic lifestyle.[14] The group earned revenues by oering professional website development for paying clients under the name Higher Source.[15] The cultural theorist Paul Virilio has described the group as a cybersect, due to its heavy reliance on computer mediated communication as a mode of communication prior to the group's collective suicide.[16]
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Mass suicide and aftermath

On March 1920, 1997, Marshall Applewhite taped himself speaking of mass suicide and asserted "it was the only way to evacuate this Earth." After claiming that a spacecraft was trailing the comet HaleBopp, Applewhite convinced 38 followers to commit suicide so that their souls could board the supposed craft. Applewhite believed that after their deaths, a UFO would take their souls to another "level of existence above human", which he described as being both physical and spiritual. This and other UFO-related beliefs held by the group have led some observers to characterize the group as a type of UFO religion. In October 1996, the group purchased alien abduction insurance to cover up to 50 members at a cost of $10,000.[17] The cult rented a 9,200-sq.-ft. mansion, located at 18241 Colina Norte (later changed to Paseo Victoria) in a gated community of upscale homes in the San Diegoarea community of Rancho Santa Fe, from Sam Koutchesfahani, paying $7,000 per month in cash.[18] Thirty-eight Heaven's Gate members, plus group leader Applewhite, were found dead in the home on March 26, 1997. In the heat of the California spring, many of the bodies had begun to decompose by the time they were discovered. Autopsies were carried out on the corpses, and medical examiners found the people had taken cyanide and arsenic. The bodies were later cremated. The members took phenobarbital mixed with apple sauce, washed down with vodka. Additionally, they secured plastic bags around their heads after ingesting the mix to induce asphyxiation. Authorities found the dead lying neatly in their own bunk beds, faces and torsos covered by a square, purple cloth. Each member carried a ve-dollar bill and three quarters in their pockets-- said to be for interplanetary toll. All 39 were dressed in identical black shirts and sweat pants, brand new black-and-white Nike Decades athletic shoes, and armband patches reading "Heaven's Gate Away Team" (one of many instances of the group's use of the Star Trek ctional universe's nomenclature). The adherents, between the ages of 26 and 72, are believed to have died in three groups over three successive days, with remaining participants cleaning up after each prior group's deaths. [19] Fifteen members died on March 24, fteen more on March 25, and nine on March 26. Leader Applewhite was the third to last member to die; two women remained after him and were the only ones found without bags over their heads. Among the dead was Thomas Nichols, brother of the actress Nichelle Nichols, who is best known for her role as Uhura in the original Star Trek television series. [20] Only one of the group's members, Rio DiAngelo/Richard Ford, did not kill himself: weeks before the suicides, in December 1996, DiAngelo agreed with Applewhite to leave the group so he could ensure future dissemination of Heaven's Gate videos and literature. He videotaped the mansion in Rancho Santa Fe; however,
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the tape was not shown to police until 2002, ve years after the event. The mass death of the Heaven's Gate group was widely publicized in the media as an example of cult suicide.[21] Two former members of Heaven's Gate, Wayne Cooke and Charlie Humphreys, later committed suicide in a similar manner. Humphreys survived a suicide pact with Cooke in May 1997, but ultimately killed himself in February 1998. [22][23]
Media coverage prior to suicide

Known to the mainstream media (though largely ignored through the 1980s and 1990s), Heaven's Gate was better known in UFO circles as well as a series of academic studies by sociologist Robert Balch. Heaven's Gate received coverage in Jacques Valle's book Messengers of Deception (1979), in which Valle described an unusual public meeting organized by the group. Valle frequently expressed concerns within the book about contactee groups' authoritarian political and religious outlooks, and Heaven's Gate did not escape criticism.[24] The lm Mysterious Two (1982)[25] was loosely based on reports of the cult's activities during the 1970s, which had received extensive media coverage at the time.[citation needed] Applewhite and his co-founder would go on to occasionally use the name "The Mysterious Two" in their website's materials. [citation needed] In January 1994, the LA Weekly ran an article on the group, then known as The Total Overcomers.[26] Through this article Rio DiAngelo discovered the group and eventually joined them.[27] Louis Theroux contacted the Heaven's Gate group while making a program for his BBC Two documentary series, Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends, in early March 1997. In response to his e-mail, Theroux was told that Heaven's Gate could not take part in the documentary as "at the present time a project like this would be an interference with what we must focus on."[28] Rio DiAngelo, a surviving member of the group, was the subject of LA Weekly's 2007 cover story on the group.[29]
See also
Cult suicide
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Hale-bopp Jonestown UFO cult
References
1. ^ Hexham, Irving; Poewe, Karla (7 May 1997). "UFO Religion - Making Sense of the Heaven's Gate Suicides" (http://www.ucalgary.ca/~nurelweb/papers/irving /HGCC.html). Christian Century. pp. 439440. Retrieved 2007-10-06. 2. ^ "Mass suicide involved sedatives, vodka and careful planning" (http://www.cnn.com /US/9703/27/suicide/index.html). CNN. Retrieved 2010-05-04. 3. ^ AYRES Jr, B. DRUMMOND (March 29, 1997). "Families Learning of 39 Cultists Who Died Willingly" (http://query.nytimes.com /gst/fullpage.html?res=9400E7DB133AF93AA15750C0A961958260&sec=health& spon=&pagewanted=all). New York Times. Retrieved 2008-11-09. "According to material the group posted on its Internet site, the timing of the suicides were probably related to the arrival of the HaleBopp comet, which members seemed to regard as a cosmic emissary beckoning them to another world." 4. ^ Vallee, Jacques, Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults. Ronin, 1979. 5. ^ Partridge, Christopher, Introduction to World Religions (Fortress, 2005), entry on "UFO Religions, Human Potential and the New Age", p. 444. 6. ^ Wojik, Daniel, "Apocalyptic and Millenarian Aspects of American UFOism", in Partridge, Chistopher, ed., UFO Religions. Routledge, 2003, p. 274. 7. ^ Ryan J. Cook, Heaven's Gate (http://www.anthroufo.info/un-hgate.html), webpage retrieved 2008-10-10. 8. ^ Steven Mizrach, Heaven's Gate? (http://www.u.edu/~mizrachs/heavensgate.html), Fortean look at facts vs. media hype.page found 2008-10-10. 9. ^ "Our Position Against Suicide" (http://www.heavensgate.com/misc/letter.htm). Heaven's Gate Web Site. Retrieved 2007-08-23. 10. ^ Balch, 2002, p. 211 11. ^
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Lewis, 2001, p. 16
12. ^ Lewis, 2001, p. 368 13. ^ Lewis, 2001, p. 17 14. ^ Rick Ross, "'Heaven's Gate' Suicides" (http://www.culteducation.com/hgate.html), October 1999, The Rick A. Ross Institute 15. ^ Weise, Elizabeth (1997-03-28). "Internet Provided Way To Pay Bills, Spread Message Before Suicide" (http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi /web/vortex/display?slug=2531080&date=19970328). Associated Press. Seattle Times. Retrieved 2007-12-30. 16. ^ Paul Virilio, The Information Bomb (Verso, 2005), p. 41. 17. ^ Edith Lederer, "Alien Abduction Insurance Cancelled!" (http://www.artgomperz.com /newse/abd.html), Associated Press, 2 April 1997, Retrieved March 12, 2008
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18. ^ "The Marker We've Been... Waiting For" (http://www.time.com/time/magazine /article/0,9171,986136-4,00.html), by Elizabeth Gleick, Cathy Booth and James Willwerth (Rancho Santa Fe); Nancy Harbert (Albuquerque); Rachele Kanigal (Oakland) and Richard N. Ostling and Noah Robischon (New York). Time. Monday, April 7, 1997. 19. ^ Ramsland, Katherine. "Death Mansion" (http://www.crimelibrary.com /notorious_murders/mass/heavens_gate/5.html). All about Heaven's Gate cult (CourtTV Crime Library). Retrieved 2006-09-20. 20. ^ "Some members of suicide cult castrated" (http://www.cnn.com/US/9703 /28/mass.suicide.pm/). CNN. 21. ^ "First autopsies completed in cult suicide" (http://www.cnn.com/US/9703 /28/mass.suicide/index.html). CNN. 28 March 1997. Retrieved 2007-10-06. 22. ^ "Heaven's Gate: A timeline" (http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070318 /news_lz1n18timelin.html). The San Diego Union-Tribune. 18 March 2007. Retrieved 2007-10-21. 23. ^ Purdum, Todd S. (May 7, 1997). "Ex-Cultist Dies In Suicide Pact; 2d Is 'Critical' " (http://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/07/us/ex-cultist-dies-in-suicide-pact-2dis-critical.html). The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-10-21. "A former member of the Heaven's Gate cult was found dead today in a copycat suicide in a motel room near the scene of the group's mass suicide in San Diego County, and another former member was found unconscious in the same room, the authorities said." 24. ^ Vallee, Jacques (1979). Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults. Ronin. 25. ^ Mysterious Two (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084375/) at the Internet Movie Database 26. ^ Dave Gardetta (21 January 1994). "They Walk Among Us" (http://www.laweekly.com /general/features/they-walk-among-us/15922). LA Weekly. Retrieved 2007-08-23. 27. ^ Bearman, Joshuah (21 March 2007). "Heaven's Gate: The Sequel" (http://www.laweekly.com/2007-03-22/news/heaven-s-gate-the-sequel/). LA Weekly. 28. ^ Louis Theroux. Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends: UFO (http://www.veoh.com/videos /v266439DxcWKyTx). Veoh. 29. ^ Bearman, Joshuah (21 March 2007). "Heaven's Gate: The Sequel" (http://www.laweekly.com/2007-03-22/news/heaven-s-gate-the-sequel/). LA Weekly.
Bibliography
Investigative Reports: Inside Heaven's Gate[citation needed] Balch, Robert W. (1982). "Bo and Peep: a case study of the origins of messianic leadership". In Wallis, Roy Wallis. Millennialism and charisma (Belfast: Queens' University). Balch, Robert W. (1985). "When the Light Goes Out, Darkness Comes: A Study of Defection from a Totalistic Cult". In Rodney Stark. Religious Movements: Genesis, Exodus and Numbers (Paragon House Publishers). pp. 1163. Balch, Robert W. (1995). "Waiting for the ships: disillusionment and revitalization of faith in Bo and Peep's UFO cult". In James R. Lewis. The
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Gods have Landed: New Religions from Other Worlds (Albany: SUNY). DiAngelo, Rio (2007). Beyond Human Mind-The Soul Evolution of Heaven's Gate. RIODIANGELO PRESS. Lalich, Janja (2004). Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-23194-5. Theroux, Louis (2005). The Call of the Weird. Pan Macmillan. pp. 207221.
Further reading
Chryssides, George D., ed. (2011). Heaven's Gate: Postmodernity and Popular Culture In A Suicide Group. Ashgate Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7546-6374-4.
External links
"Ocial Website" (http://www.heavensgate.com/). Heavensgate.com. "How and When HEAVEN'S GATE May Be Entered (the cult book)" (http://www.press1.com/current/hgate/mirror/book/book.htm). Press1. "Proles: Heaven's Gate Timeline" (http://www.has.vcu.edu/wrs/proles /Heaven'sGate.htm). Ramsland, Katherine. "All about Heaven's Gate cult" (http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/mass/heavens_gate /1.html?sect=8). The Crime Library. "Some members of suicide cult castrated" (http://www.cnn.com/US/9703 /28/mass.suicide.pm/). CNN. Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org /w/index.php?title=Heaven%27s_Gate_(religious_group)&oldid=604625536" Categories: Apocalypticists Cult suicides Heaven's Gate Mass suicides UFO religions This page was last modied on 17 April 2014 at 18:16. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-prot organization.
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Heaven's Gate (Religious Group)

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Heaven's Gate (religious group) - Wikipedia, the f...