The New Commandments are, in the Wheel of Heaven framework, the seven\npolitical-religious-cultural directives that Yahweh delivered to\nClaude Vorilhon during the December 1973 contact at the\nPuy-de-Lassolas crater and set out across the Raëlian source corpus\n(1974–1979, consolidated in 2005). They are Geniocracy, Humanitarianism, World\nGovernment, Demilitarization, Science as Religion, Telepathic Cultivation, and\nthe Metaphysical Clarifications — and together they form the program the\nElohim propose for the Age of Aquarius:\na direction for humanity's long-term political and religious development rather\nthan a set of rules for immediate adoption. The corpus reads them as the\nsuccessor, for the incoming age, to the Mosaic Decalogue that Yahweh gave\nMoses for the Age of Aries — the same source, a new age, and a\nshift in emphasis from individual prohibition to collective construction.\nBecause the Raëlian material is presented as Yahweh's own first-person account,\nthe corpus treats the program as the Elohim's stated intentions for the age\nrather than as Vorilhon's private political philosophy.
\nThe seven are meant to be read as one integrated program, not seven separate\nproposals. Each names a dimension of the same Aquarian-age reorganization, and\neach has, or will have, its own dedicated entry; the summaries below give only\nenough to place them.
\n1. Geniocracy — governance. A \"selective democracy\" that\nties political eligibility to measured intelligence: voting for those at least\nten percent above the population average, eligibility for office for those at\nleast fifty percent above. The source argues the case through the\ncells-of-the-body metaphor — the foot does not vote on what the hand should\nlift — and through the example of Copernicus, condemned by a majority that\nlacked the knowledge to judge him.
\n2. Humanitarianism — property and inheritance. The\nabolition of outright ownership in favour of forty-nine-year rental tenures,\nand the end of inheritance beyond the family home. The forty-nine-year term is\ndrawn explicitly from the Jubilee of Leviticus 25; the doctrine is offered as a\nthird way that keeps individual reward (against Communism) while ending the\nintergenerational concentration of wealth (against Capitalism).
\n3. World Government — coordination. A single\nplanetary political authority, with one world currency and a common second\nlanguage kept alongside local mother tongues, to handle the questions that can\nonly be settled at the planetary scale. The proposal is not the erasure of\nregional and cultural difference but a single coordinating centre for\nplanetary problems; the corpus reads the founding of the United Nations in 1945\nas a first step toward it, and Isaiah's vision of \"all nations flowing to the\nmountain of Yahweh's house\" (Isaiah 2:2–4) as its prophetic anticipation.
\n4. Demilitarization — peace. The end of national\nmilitary service and the dismantling of national armed forces, with career\nsoldiers repurposed as a global peace corps under the World Government. The\nsource reads Isaiah's \"swords into plowshares\" (Isaiah 2:4) as the same\ninstruction, and names France — as it moves to help unite Europe — as the\ncountry that might set the example by becoming the first without an army.
\n5. Science as Religion — the religious dimension.\nThe reorientation of religious commitment toward scientific inquiry itself:\n\"Science should be your religion, for the Elohim created you scientifically.\"\nThe traditional supernatural cosmologies give way to a religious life whose\ncontent is the pursuit of understanding and whose ethic is the use of that\nunderstanding for human benefit rather than destruction — the position the\nRaëlian tradition has taken in describing itself as \"an atheist religion.\"
\n6. Telepathic Cultivation — the cognitive dimension. The\ndeliberate development, from early childhood, of a latent faculty of\nmind-to-mind communication: \"Telepathy enables us to communicate directly with\nour creators, the Elohim.\" The source treats it as an inherited human capacity\nthat has atrophied for want of cultivation, and that a mature humanity would\nrecover through education, meditation, and the encouragement of the relevant\nhabits of mind.
\n7. The Metaphysical Clarifications — the\ndoctrinal dimension. A correction of inherited religious metaphysics: there is\nno immortal soul in the traditional sense — the principle of life is the genetic\ncode, a physical structure — and no original sin, so the moral machinery built\nto address these supposed conditions falls away. Continued existence remains\npossible, but as a technical achievement (cloning, the transfer of memory)\nwithin the material world rather than as a supernatural guarantee.
\nThe sevenfold list is a consolidation, and the corpus is candid about that.\nThe Book Which Tells the Truth (1974), in the Sixth Chapter titled \"The New\nCommandments,\" sets out four sections: Geniocracy, Humanitarianism, World\nGovernment, and \"Your Mission.\" The first three are structural directives\naddressed to human civilization at large. The fourth is different in kind — it\nis the Raëlian Mission itself: the diffusion of the message, the\nbuilding of the Embassy, and the development of the movement. It\nis an institutional task set apart from the commandments proper, and it is\ntreated in its own entry.
\nThe remaining commandments — Demilitarization, Science as Religion, Telepathic\nCultivation, and the Metaphysical Clarifications — are drawn from the wider\ncorpus, principally the \"The Keys\" material of Extra-Terrestrials Took Me to\nTheir Planet (1975) and the later clarifications of Let Us Welcome the\nExtra-Terrestrials (1979), all consolidated in the 2005 Message from the\nDesigners. The sevenfold enumeration is therefore a systematic reading of the\nwhole body of Vorilhon's teaching rather than a numbered list in the 1974 text.\nThe corpus presents the difference as a matter of later organization, not of\ndoctrinal disagreement: the content of the four added commandments is present\nacross the source material even where it is not set out as a chapter section.
\nTwo features of the program matter most to the way the corpus reads it: its\npairing with the Decalogue, and its long time horizon.
\nA paired succession. The New Commandments stand in deliberate parallel with\nthe Mosaic Decalogue (Exodus 20:1–17; Deuteronomy 5:6–21). Both are given by\nYahweh; both orient a precessional age; both are addressed to the developmental\nstage the age has reached. The Decalogue, given for the Age of Aries, is\nindividual and prohibitive — a set of \"thou shalt nots\" fitted to a tribal\ncivilization learning its ethical foundations. The New Commandments, given for\nthe Age of Aquarius, are collective and constructive — \"you shall develop\" in\nplace of \"you shall not\" — fitted to a planetary civilization ready to build on\nthose foundations. The corpus reads the Decalogue's individual ethics not as\nsuperseded but as the prerequisite work the Aquarian program builds upon: one\nage preparing the next along a single trajectory (Aries → Pisces → Aquarius).
\nA direction, not a deadline. The corpus is insistent that the program is a\nlong-term orientation rather than a mandate for tomorrow. Its own summary is\nexplicit:
\n\n\n\"These seven commandments — geniocracy, humanitarianism, world government,\ndemilitarization, science as religion, telepathic cultivation, and the\nmetaphysical clarifications — constitute the specific political and religious\nprogram the alliance has proposed for the Aquarian age. Their full\nimplementation is a long-term project, extending across centuries rather than\nyears. The corpus presents them not as immediate mandates but as the\ndirectional orientation the age is to develop in.\"
\n
Implementation is spread across the whole Aquarian age (c. 1950 to c. 4110 on\nthe corpus's chronology), and current institutions fall short of the program in\nnearly every dimension. Naming the program, on this reading, is a way of\nidentifying the direction of travel — not a rod for measuring present\narrangements against.
\nAn integrated system. The commandments presuppose one another. Geniocracy\nis treated as foundational: the source expects that \"if geniuses are admitted\nto power, they will understand the usefulness of these reforms,\" so the later\ncommandments assume the kind of leadership Geniocracy is meant to produce. World\nGovernment is the coordinating precondition for the rest — Humanitarianism\ncannot hold in one jurisdiction while capital flees to another, and\nDemilitarization cannot be safely unilateral — with Demilitarization as its\nnatural complement. Science as Religion supplies the cultural reorientation\nwithin which scientifically-grounded institutions become legitimate; Telepathic\nCultivation and the Metaphysical Clarifications reshape, respectively, the\ncognitive and doctrinal ground the program stands on. Implementing any one\ncommandment well requires progress across the others.
\nIts place in the wider program. The New Commandments are the\nsocio-political-cultural core of a larger Aquarian-age plan that also includes\nthe Mission and Embassy (the institutional task\nset apart in 1974), the Apocalypse as the threshold the age\nmust navigate, and the Golden Age as the form of life that\nfull implementation is meant to produce. The related doctrines of\nParadism and Cyberparadism work out the\npost-scarcity, post-money end-state toward which Humanitarianism points.
\nComprehensive religious-ethical-political programs of this kind are common\nacross traditions, and the corpus reads the New Commandments alongside them\nrather than in isolation.
\nThe closest antecedent within the canon's own lineage is the Decalogue, which\nthe Hebrew Bible itself extends in the Holiness Code (Leviticus 17–26) and the\nDeuteronomic Code (Deuteronomy 12–26). Beyond it, the pattern recurs widely: the\nSermon on the Mount in the Christian tradition, the Five Pillars and the wider\nSharia in Islam, the Eightfold Path and Five Precepts in Buddhism, the Hindu\npurusharthas, and the Confucian Five Relationships each set out an integrated\nethical-social program in their own idiom. In the philosophical register,\nPlato's Republic and Laws supply the principal Western antecedent for\ncomprehensive civic design, and the modern utopian tradition — More's Utopia,\nBacon's New Atlantis, Campanella's City of the Sun — carries it into the\nearly-modern period, followed by the Enlightenment, socialist, and democratic\nprograms and, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the Universal\nDeclaration of Human Rights (1948) and the UN Sustainable Development Goals\n(2015). These are offered as parallels, and the irreducible differences between\nthe traditions are not flattened: each program answers to its own sources and\nits own civilization.
\nMainstream comparative religion and political philosophy generally explain this\ncross-cultural recurrence through some mixture of shared social-cognitive needs,\ncultural diffusion, and the independent elaboration of common organizational\nproblems — and the corpus does not dispute that these factors operate. Its own\nreading adds a further claim, offered as interpretation: that the recurring\npattern also preserves the memory of programs articulated by the Elohim across\nsuccessive ages — Aries, Pisces, Aquarius — of which the New Commandments are\nthe current instance. That synthesis is speculative where it goes beyond what\nany single source states, and is labelled as such.
The individual commandments carry their own controversies, treated in their\ndedicated entries rather than here. Geniocracy in particular draws sustained\ncriticism — over the validity of intelligence measurement, over the historical\nrecord of intelligence-based political proposals, and over its departure from\ndemocratic-egalitarian commitments — and the Geniocracy entry\nsets out that critical engagement in full. The point for the umbrella concept is\nonly that the program's most contested element is not incidental to it but\nfoundational, and that the corpus presents the whole as a direction for debate\nacross centuries rather than a settled blueprint.
\nVorilhon, Claude (Raël). Le Livre qui dit la vérité. 1974. The principal source articulation in Chapter VI (The New Commandments).
\nVorilhon, Claude (Raël). Les Extra-Terrestres m'ont emmené sur leur planète. 1975. Substantial subsequent corpus engagement, particularly \"The Keys\" section.
\nVorilhon, Claude (Raël). Accueillir les Extra-Terrestres. 1979. Substantial FAQ engagement and subsequent doctrinal development.
\nVorilhon, Claude (Raël). Géniocratie. 1977. Dedicated systematic articulation of Geniocracy.
\nVorilhon, Claude (Raël). Message from the Designers. Tagman Press, 2005. The consolidated English-language edition.
\nThe Hebrew Bible. Exodus 20:1-17, Deuteronomy 5:6-21. Various translations and editions.
\nChilds, Brevard S. The Book of Exodus: A Critical, Theological Commentary. Westminster Press, 1974.
\nMiller, Patrick D. The Ten Commandments. Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.
\nGreenberg, Moshe. The Decalogue Tradition Critically Re-Examined. In Decalogue Through the Centuries, ed. Jeffrey P. Greenman and Timothy Larsen. Westminster John Knox, 2012.
\nPlato. Republic. Trans. G. M. A. Grube and C. D. C. Reeve. Hackett, 1992.
\nPlato. Laws. Trans. Trevor J. Saunders. Penguin Classics, 2004.
\nConfucius. The Analects. Trans. D. C. Lau. Penguin Classics, 1979.
\nMencius. Mencius. Trans. Irene Bloom. Columbia University Press, 2009.
\nXunzi. Xunzi: The Complete Text. Trans. Eric L. Hutton. Princeton University Press, 2014.
\nMore, Thomas. Utopia. 1516. Trans. Paul Turner. Penguin Classics, 2003.
\nBacon, Francis. New Atlantis. 1626. Various editions.
\nCampanella, Tommaso. La Città del Sole. 1623. Trans. Daniel J. Donno. The City of the Sun. University of California Press, 1981.
\nBellamy, Edward. Looking Backward, 2000-1887. Ticknor, 1888.
\nMorris, William. News from Nowhere. Reeves & Turner, 1890.
\nRousseau, Jean-Jacques. Du contrat social. 1762. Trans. The Social Contract. Various editions.
\nCondorcet, Marquis de. Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain. 1795.
\nPaine, Thomas. Rights of Man. 1791-1792.
\nSaint-Simon, Henri de. Various works. 1810s-1820s.
\nFourier, Charles. Théorie des quatre mouvements. 1808.
\nMarx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei. 1848. Trans. The Communist Manifesto. Various editions.
\nLenin, V. I. State and Revolution. 1917.
\nUniversal Declaration of Human Rights. United Nations, 1948.
\nRawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Harvard University Press, 1971.
\nUnited Nations. Sustainable Development Goals. 2015. https://sdgs.un.org/.
\nThe New Testament. Matthew 5-7, Luke 6:20-49. Various translations and editions.
\nAllison, Dale C. The Sermon on the Mount: Inspiring the Moral Imagination. Crossroad, 1999.
\nEsposito, John L. Islam: The Straight Path. Oxford University Press, 5th ed., 2016.
\nHallaq, Wael B. An Introduction to Islamic Law. Cambridge University Press, 2009.
\nBhikkhu Bodhi. The Noble Eightfold Path: The Way to the End of Suffering. Buddhist Publication Society, 1984.
\nDoniger, Wendy. The Hindus: An Alternative History. Penguin Press, 2009.
\nWallace, Paul A. W. White Roots of Peace: Iroquois Book of Life. Clear Light Publishers, 1994.
\n\"Ten Commandments.\" Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments.
\n\"Five Pillars of Islam.\" Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Pillars_of_Islam.
\n\"Noble Eightfold Path.\" Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_Eightfold_Path.
\n\"Sustainable Development Goals.\" Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goals.
\n", "extra": {"alternative_names":["the New Commandments","the Aquarian-age program","the seven commandments","the Raëlian socio-political-religious doctrine"],"category":"Raëlism","claim_type":"framework","editorial_pass":"2026-07","entry_type":"concept","infobox":{"contingent_implementation":"Not an immediate institutional change but a direction to grow toward across centuries; long-term socio-political-cultural reorganization at planetary scale","distinguished_from":"the Mosaic Decalogue (the Aries-age paired articulation); the Raëlian Mission (the institutional task set apart in the 1974 'Your Mission' section); the Embassy (the specific building requirement); the Apocalypse (the threshold moment); the Golden Age (the form of life full implementation is meant to produce)","mosaic_decalogue_parallel":"Paired with the Aries-age Mosaic Decalogue (Exodus 20:1-17; Deuteronomy 5:6-21) as the Aquarian-age successor articulation; both delivered by Yahweh; the shift is from individual-ethical prohibition ('thou shalt not') to collective-civilizational construction ('you shall develop')","parallel_traditions":"The Mosaic Decalogue; the Holiness and Deuteronomic Codes; the Sermon on the Mount; the Islamic Five Pillars; the Buddhist Eightfold Path and Five Precepts; the Hindu purusharthas; the Confucian Five Relationships; Plato's *Republic* and *Laws*; the utopian tradition (More, Bacon, Campanella); Enlightenment, socialist, and democratic programs; the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948); the UN Sustainable Development Goals (2015)","principal_source":"*The Book Which Tells the Truth* (Vorilhon, 1974), Sixth Chapter; *Extra-Terrestrials Took Me to Their Planet* (Vorilhon, 1975), 'The Keys' section; *Let Us Welcome the Extra-Terrestrials* (Vorilhon, 1979); consolidated in *Message from the Designers* (2005)","source_textual_structure":"Original 1974 Chapter VI: four sections (Geniocracy, Humanitarianism, World Government, Your Mission), with Your Mission setting out the Raëlian institutional task apart from the structural commandments; the sevenfold enumeration is a later consolidation faithful to the wider corpus","status_in_framework":"Foundational umbrella concept gathering the seven Aquarian-age program elements; load-bearing for the corpus's eschatological and cosmological architecture","the_seven_commandments":"(1) Geniocracy — political-governance; (2) Humanitarianism — property-and-inheritance; (3) World Government — political-coordination; (4) Demilitarization — peace; (5) Science as Religion — religious-cultural; (6) Telepathic Cultivation — cognitive-developmental; (7) Metaphysical Clarifications — doctrinal-cosmological","type":"Raëlian umbrella concept; the seven principal political-religious-cultural directives Yahweh delivered to Vorilhon during the December 1973 contact"},"lang":"en","lang_prefix":"","see_also":[{"description":"Mediator of the paired Aries-age Decalogue these commandments succeed for the Aquarian age.","path":"wiki/moses","title":"Moses"},{"description":"The first commandment — the governance dimension of the seven-part program.","path":"wiki/geniocracy","title":"Geniocracy"},{"description":"The second commandment — the property-and-inheritance dimension of the program.","path":"wiki/humanitarianism","title":"Humanitarianism"},{"description":"The form of life that full implementation of the program is meant to produce.","path":"wiki/golden-age","title":"Golden Age"},{"description":"The building requirement set apart in the original Your Mission section.","path":"wiki/embassy","title":"Embassy"},{"description":"The threshold moment opening the age these directives orient toward.","path":"wiki/apocalypse","title":"Apocalypse"}],"timeline":["age-of-aquarius"]} }, "links": { "self": "/v1/wiki/new-commandments/", "canonical_html": "https://www.wheelofheaven.world/wiki/new-commandments/", "index": "/v1/wiki/", "schema": "/v1/schema/wiki-entry/", "related": [{"slug": "moses", "title": "Moses", "kind": "WikiEntry", "type": "see_also", "url": "/v1/wiki/moses/" },{"slug": "geniocracy", "title": "Geniocracy", "kind": "WikiEntry", "type": "see_also", "url": "/v1/wiki/geniocracy/" },{"slug": "humanitarianism", "title": "Humanitarianism", "kind": "WikiEntry", "type": "see_also", "url": "/v1/wiki/humanitarianism/" },{"slug": "golden-age", "title": "Golden Age", "kind": "WikiEntry", "type": "see_also", "url": "/v1/wiki/golden-age/" },{"slug": "embassy", "title": "Embassy", "kind": "WikiEntry", "type": "see_also", "url": "/v1/wiki/embassy/" },{"slug": "apocalypse", "title": "Apocalypse", "kind": "WikiEntry", "type": "see_also", "url": "/v1/wiki/apocalypse/" }] } }