The three books of the Raëlian canon — The Book Which Tells The Truth (1974), Extra-Terrestrials Took Me To Their Planet (1975), and Let's Welcome The Extra-Terrestrials (1979) — do not present themselves as derived from earlier writings. They present themselves as direct revelation from the Elohim, with prior religious literature treated as imperfect records of earlier Elohim contact. Within that frame, however, the canon engages a substantial body of pre-existing material. This entry maps that engagement in two tiers: a primary tier of texts and figures the canon names or quotes, and a secondary tier of traditions, languages, and motifs it invokes by allusion.
\nA note on terminology before the catalogue. Within the Wheel of Heaven reading, the texts listed below are not sources of the Raëlian canon in the philological sense; the canon claims revelation, not derivation. The accurate description is that these texts make up the canon's reference corpus — the body of prior writing the canon reads, re-reads, and asks its reader to re-read alongside it.
\nThis article catalogues what the canon itself names and engages, not the broader corpus of materials a reader might bring to interpret it. Three distinctions structure the catalogue:
\nThe cut between (1) and (2) is not always sharp. Where the canon names a tradition but cites no specific text — for instance \"Greek mythology\" or \"Mormons\" — the entry sits in the secondary tier. Where the canon quotes verbatim or supplies a chapter-and-verse, it sits in the primary tier.
\nThe text base for this catalogue is the 2005 English-language omnibus edition Intelligent Design — Message From the Designers[1]\n[1]\n, which combines all three canonical books. Where the original French editions differ from the English translation in their handling of biblical quotations, the canon itself notes the divergence: the French volumes rely chiefly on the Édouard Dhorme translation of the Bible[2]\n[2]\n, while the English omnibus uses the Restored Name King James Version (RNKJV)[3]\n for most quotations, with occasional use of the New King James Version, the American Standard Version, the Webster Bible, the Hebrew Names Version, and the Darby Translation. These editorial choices are themselves direct references to specific text-traditions and are catalogued below.
\nThese are texts, figures, and traditions the canon names explicitly, quotes from with chapter-and-verse precision, or treats as proper subjects of interpretation in their own right.
\nThe canon's largest and most precisely cited body of reference is the Hebrew Bible. Quoted books, with characteristic loci:
\nThe Pentateuch and the prophetic books are the densest sites of citation. The Song of Songs (called by the canon the Canticle of Canticles) is named in a specific cosmological reading concerning the \"height of the creator\" measured in parasangs.
\nThe canon engages not only the biblical text but specific translations of it, treating translation choices as interpretively decisive:
\nThe canon names a roster of historical and traditional religious figures and identifies them as messengers (\"prophets\") sent by the Elohim. The recurring list:
\nAdditional figures named within biblical quotations and given Wheel-of-Heaven-relevant interpretation include Adam, Eve, Seth, Enos, Enoch, Noah, Lot, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Samson, Ezekiel, John (the seer of Patmos), Peter, and Joseph (husband of Mary). These are not in themselves source-traditions but characters whose biblical narratives the canon re-reads.
\nThe canon names specific religious traditions and engages them on doctrinal or comparative grounds rather than only in passing:
\nThese are texts, traditions, languages, and motifs the canon engages without formal citation. They are named, alluded to, or treated as carrying \"traces\" of the Elohim story, but the canon does not quote from them directly or supply specific references.
\nIn the chapter At the Root of All Religions (and the closely related commentary section Yes... I am Raelian), the canon and its early followers enumerate traditions in which \"testimonies can be found\" but from which no specific text is cited:
\nThe Yes... I am Raelian list is a commentary by a follower rather than a statement by Rael, but it appears within the canonical omnibus and articulates the same reading the canon establishes in At the Root of All Religions[3]\n.
\nThe canon performs sustained etymological readings, treating word-histories as testimonies in their own right[5]\n. The languages explicitly drawn on include:
\nBeyond named texts, the canon points to physical sites and regions as locations where the Elohim are said to have had bases or left material evidence:
\nThe canon also alludes to the Atlantis and Mu legends, but specifically as misremembered traces of an antediluvian single continent — that is, as legends the canon explains rather than texts it consults.
\nA small set of comparative motifs surface in the canon without specific textual citation:
\nThese are catalogued in the secondary tier because the canon engages them through interpretation of its primary citations rather than by naming a separate body of literature.
\nA few clean tensions are worth flagging for future Wheel of Heaven work.
\nThe Dhorme / RNKJV divergence. The French canon and the English omnibus do not always quote the same biblical wording. The editorial notes acknowledge this explicitly, but the practical consequence is that some Wheel of Heaven readings are sensitive to which translation a reader has in front of them. The canon's choice of Dhorme is itself an interpretive position — Dhorme's rendering tends to demystify, and the canon depends on that demystification.
\nThe status of the Yes... I am Raelian enumeration. The list of \"traces\" (Kojiki, Popol Vuh, Akakor, Gilgamesh, Mahābhārata) appears in a commentator's contribution to Let's Welcome The Extra-Terrestrials, not in Rael's own voice. The list has been canonised by being preserved across editions, but it is a follower's synthesis rather than a direct revelation claim. Whether to weight it equally with the primary tier is an open editorial question.
\nThe \"Kabbalah\" reference. The cosmological passage attributed to the Kabbalah in The End of the World — with the parasangs measurement and the \"height of the creator\" / \"height of his heels\" formula — matches motifs from the Shi'ur Qomah tradition rather than the Zohar proper. The canon names the Kabbalah generically. This raises the question of whether the canon's \"Kabbalah\" should be glossed as the Shi'ur Qomah corpus specifically, or left at the more general level the canon itself uses.
\nThe Chronicle of Akakor problem. The Chronicle of Akakor, published in 1976 by Karl Brugger from a purported indigenous Amazonian source, has been widely treated as a literary hoax by subsequent scholarship. Its appearance in the canon's \"traces\" list — published only a few years after Brugger's book — sits awkwardly with the rest of the catalogue, which is composed of texts with deep traditional pedigrees. How to handle this in a serious Wheel of Heaven framing is unresolved.
\nDirect vs. indirect, again. Some of the categorisation above is borderline. Joseph Smith is named directly, but no Mormon scripture is quoted — so the Mormon tradition sits in the secondary tier even though the figure of its founder is primary. Conversely, the Kabbalah is named generically (secondary-tier language) but a specific cosmological passage is engaged (primary-tier behaviour). These are flagged for future refinement.
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