Riding A Comet Through Heaven's Gate, Again
A reuploaded essay on Christianity, Theosophy, and the flying saucer apocalypse
I had this promotional post scheduled months ago when a comet showed up and history rhymed with my topic. I cannot claim any foresight, it is just a complete accident that 3I/Atlas gave us another wave of revivalism for the cult of the extraterrestrial right as I was ready to unlock the audio version of my essay on the Heaven’s Gate cult at YouTube.
Cult founders Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles were interested in all the same occultism that had shaped Emanuel Swedenborg, while their cosmology bore all the familiar hallmarks of his influence and his spiritual heirs. Their take on Protestant Christian Dispensationalism was stamped with the hallmarks of Theosophy. Even the Art Bell radio broadcast which sparked the cult’s final decision to commit mass suicide told a story they already believed: the comet was a spaceship bringing a spiritual upheaval to earth.
This narrative is very common in the “bricolage” of New Age beliefs, and we see it with the new spiritual leaders of the extraterrestrial cult and this comet. There is Avi Loeb, living proof of the limits of expertise, saying it might be aliens. He put the chances at 40 percent shortly after the comet was observed and reported in the media.
Loeb is the tenured Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science at Harvard University and the founder of the Sol Foundation, an organization of UAP cultists. David Grusch, their 2023 headline guest, spoke of a “spiritual awakening” that will follow the disclosure of alien technology in government hands. He appeared only months after testifying to Congress that someone, somewhere definitely has a flying saucer.
In fact 3I/Atlas is an interstellar traveller, though anything it carried here would have to survive hundreds of millions of years just to get to our solar system. The supposed “anomalies” Loeb points out are actually normal comet stuff. Dashing the hopes of Joe Rogan, easily the most prominent podcast platforming latter-day Theosophy, the comet is in fact producing exactly the radio noise that scientists expect. Nothing is out of order.
As I have explained in this essay series on the cult of the extraterrestrial, every would-be prophet of the stars goes wrong by relying on ‘the science’. Actual scientific data changes over time, ultimately disproving flawed hypotheses and exposing bad ideas. Furthermore, in the age of mass entertainment, these cults always incorporate some measure of science fiction. Heaven’s Gate deliberately used a patois of terms and phrases borrowed from the genre, mainly Star Trek, to enhance their ingrouping experience.
Having examined a number of these cults, the ones that turn violent and suicidal share an observable turn towards gnosticism as they perceived the end approaching. Outside pressure, such as attention from law enforcement, can serve as an excuse for a catastrophic cascade of violence. But if there is no outside pressure, as with the Heaven’s Gate cult, then believers will intentionally create their opposition to justify doomsday.
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Riding A Comet Through Heaven's Gate
During the afternoon of 26 March 1997, San Diego sheriff’s deputies responding to a 911 call discovered 39 bodies decomposing at a residence in the suburb of Rancho Santa Fe, California. The dead wore black uniforms: Nike Decades sneakers, sweat pants, and shirts with patches reading “Heaven’s Gate Away Team.” Purple shrouds covered their faces. Everyone had $5.75, a five dollar bill and three quarters, in their shirt pocket.