For the website-checking software, see Xenu's Link Sleuth.

In Scientology doctrine, Xenu is a galactic ruler who, 75 million years ago, brought billions of people to Earth, stacked them around volcanoes, and blew them up with hydrogen bombs. Their souls then clustered together and stuck to the bodies of the living, and continue to cause people problems today. These events are known to Scientologists as "Incident II," and the traumatic memories associated with them as The Wall of Fire or the R6 implant. L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology, detailed the story in Operating Thetan level III (OT III) in 1967, famously warning that R6 was "calculated to kill (by pneumonia etc) anyone who attempts to solve it." The Xenu story was the start of the use of the volcano as a common symbol of Scientology and Dianetics from 1968 to the present day.

Much controversy between supporters and critics of the Church of Scientology has focused on the story of Xenu. The Church has tried to keep Xenu confidential; critics claim revealing the story is in the public interest, given the high prices charged for OT III. The Church avoids making mention of Xenu in public statements and has gone to considerable effort to maintain the story's confidentiality, including legal action on the grounds of both copyright and trade secrecy. Despite this, much material on Xenu has leaked to the public.

Hubbard later dramatised the Xenu story as a film script, Revolt in the Stars.

Summary of the Xenu story

The story of Xenu is covered in OT III, part of Scientology's secret "Advanced Technology" doctrines taught only to advanced members. It is described in more detail in the accompanying confidential "Assists" lecture of 3 October, 1968. Direct quotes in this section are from these sources. (See also Scientology beliefs and practices)

75 million years ago, Xenu was the ruler of a Galactic Confederacy which consisted of 26 stars and 76 planets including Earth, which was then known as Teegeeack. The planets were overpopulated, each having on average 178 billion people. The Galactic Confederacy's civilization was comparable to our own, with people "walking around in clothes which looked very remarkably like the clothes they wear this very minute" and using cars, trains and boats looking exactly the same as those "circa 1950, 1960" on Earth.

Xenu was about to be deposed from power, so he devised a plot to eliminate the excess population from his dominions. With the assistance of "renegades", he defeated the populace and the "Loyal Officers", a force for good that was opposed to Xenu. Then, with the assistance of psychiatrists, he summoned billions of people to paralyse them with injections of alcohol and glycol, under the pretense that they were being called for "income tax inspections." The kidnapped populace was loaded into space planes for transport to the site of extermination, the planet of Teegeeack (Earth). The space planes were exact copies of Douglas DC-8s, "except the DC-8 had fans, propellers on it and the space plane didn't." DC-8s have jet engines, not propellers, although Hubbard may have meant the turbine fans.

When the space planes had reached Teegeeack, the paralysed people were unloaded and stacked around the bases of volcanoes across the planet. Hydrogen bombs were lowered into the volcanoes, and all were detonated simultaneously. Only a few people's physical bodies survived.

The now-disembodied victims' souls, which Hubbard called thetans, were blown into the air by the blast. They were captured by Xenu's forces using an "electronic ribbon" ("which also was a type of standing wave") and sucked into "vacuum zones" around the world. The hundreds of billions of captured thetans were taken to a type of cinema, where they were forced to watch a "three-D, super colossal motion picture" for 36 days. This implanted what Hubbard termed "various misleading data" (collectively termed the R6 implant) into the memories of the hapless thetans, "which has to do with God, the Devil, space opera, etcetera". This included all world religions, with Hubbard specifically attributing Roman Catholicism and the image of the Crucifixion to the influence of Xenu. The interior decoration of "all modern theaters" is also said by Hubbard to be due to an unconscious recollection of Xenu's implants.

In addition to implanting new beliefs in the thetans, the images deprived them of their sense of identity. When the thetans left the projection areas, they started to cluster together in groups of a few thousand, having lost the ability to differentiate between each other. Each cluster of thetans gathered into one of the few remaining bodies that survived the explosion. These became what are known as body thetans, which are said to be still clinging to and adversely affecting everyone except those Scientologists who have performed the necessary steps to remove them.

The Loyal Officers finally overthrew Xenu and locked him away in a mountain, where he was imprisoned forever by a force field powered by an eternal battery. (Some have suggested that Xenu is imprisoned on Earth in the Pyrenees, but Hubbard merely refers to "one of these planets" [of the Galactic Confederacy]; he does, however, refer to the Pyrenees as being the site of the last operating "Martian report station", which is probably the source of this particular confusion.) Teegeeack/Earth was subsequently abandoned by the Galactic Confederacy and remains a pariah "prison planet" to this day, although it has suffered repeatedly from incursions by alien "Invader Forces" since then.

Xenu in Scientology doctrine

Within Scientology, the Xenu story is referred to as "The Wall of Fire" or "Incident II". Hubbard attached tremendous importance to it, saying that it constituted "the secrets of a disaster which resulted in the decay of life as we know it in this sector of the galaxy".^{[2]. However, it strongly illustrates the crossover between Scientology doctrine and the world of science fiction, visible throughout the organisation's history — Hubbard was originally a pulp science fiction and adventure writer, Dianetics was first publicised through John W. Campbell's magazine Astounding Science Fiction, many of his early followers were recruited from the science fiction milieu and Scientology magazines even now are often illustrated with pictures of spaceships and exploding stars. Hubbard said that the modern-day science fiction genre of space opera is merely an unconscious recollection of events, such as Xenu's mass murder, that really happened millions of years ago. Space opera is defined in the Official Scientology and Dianetics Glossary as follows:}

of or relating to time periods … millions of years ago which concerned activities in this and other galaxies. Space opera has space travel, spaceships, spacemen, intergalactic travel, wars, conflicts, other beings, civilizations and societies, and other planets and galaxies. It is not fiction and concerns actual incidents and things that occurred on the whole track [in the past]. [3]

Hubbard's statements concerning the R6 implant have been a source of enormous friction and conflict between the Church of Scientology and its critics, with many critics and Christians stating that Hubbard's statements regarding R6 prove that Scientology doctrine is incompatible with Christianity [4] [5] [6] [7], despite the Church's claims to the contrary [8]. In "Assists", Hubbard says:

Everyman is then shown to have been crucified so don't think that it's an accident that this crucifixion, they found out that this applied. Somebody somewhere on this planet, back about 600 BC, found some pieces of R6, and I don't know how they found it, either by watching madmen or something, but since that time they have used it and it became what is known as Christianity. The man on the Cross. There was no Christ. But the man on the cross is shown as Everyman.

Origins of the Xenu story

Hubbard wrote OT III in late 1966 and early 1967 in North Africa while on his way to Las Palmas to join the Enchanter, the first vessel of his private Scientology fleet (the "Sea Org").^{[12]. In many respects, OT III is virtually a retelling of this early tape, delivered in the first month of Scientology's existence. Hubbard describes how "entheta beings" defeat mutinuous "theta [good] beings" and decided that "the battleground is too rough and these things have mutinied so let's put 'em all in one place and lock 'em on to Earth." The entheta beings were "controlled over by religion"; Mary Sue Hubbard asks "Is that when Christianity came into being?" to which Hubbard replies, "That's an entheta operation." Communism is also apparently "their great success" — "anybody who thinks in this society is immediately attacked, you're surrounded by Targs." A steady flow of flying saucers is still dropping off more entheta beings. The "Battle of the Universes" tape is no longer available from the Church of Scientology, presumably because of its considerable overlap with OT III.}

The existence of malevolent ancient extraterrestrial civilizations had been a recurring element of Hubbard's doctrines well before OT III. The Galactic Confederacy was first mentioned in a number of lectures in 1963. During the 1950s, Hubbard announced the (re)discovery of a number of other galactic empires, including those of Helatrobus, Espinol and Arslycus (the latter possibly tongue-in-cheek, given it was pronounced as "arse-lickers" and would have originated when Hubbard was in England). Many of these empires had hostile intentions towards Earth, as in the case of Helatrobus, which inflicted a series of Helatrobus implants on the planet, and the five Invader Forces, who were "very strange insect-like creature[s] with unthinkably horrible hands." The Invader Forces are apparently still active on Mars and Venus, controlling "installations in Mongolia … installations in the Pyrenees here on Earth, and there are installations down in the Mountains of the Moon in Africa which pick up, very often, people on death."

Other versions of the Xenu story

Hubbard wrote a film script in the late 1970s, Revolt in the Stars, which is an extended version of the story of OT III, and states Xenu's full name to be Xenu Etrawl. It has not been officially published, although the treatment was circulated around Hollywood in the early 1980s (Young). Copies of the treatment leaked, and Scientology critic Grady Ward published a summary. [13]

Geoffrey Filbert, a Free Zone (non-CoS) Scientologist, wrote a book, Excalibur Revisited, in 1982, containing his own version of OT III. This was the first of several versions available in the Free Zone.

Roland Rashleigh-Berry, an ex-Scientologist, wrote a "Xenu leaflet", popular with critics, that summarizes the story of OT III. The leaflet includes part of the first page of OT III in Hubbard's handwriting, mentioning Xenu.

Critics have mockingly depicted Xenu as a Roswell-style grey alien. However, Hubbard envisaged Xenu's technology to have been very much like our own, and it is reasonable to surmise that he envisaged Xenu as being essentially human or at least humanoid in form.

The influence of OT III on Scientology

In the wake of Hubbard's revelation of the Wall of Fire, aspects of OT III and reflections of the Xenu story were adopted as symbols by the Church of Scientology. Hubbard is reported to have ordered that Scientology books be reissued with covers based on images from OT III [14]. The 1968 and subsequent reprints of Dianetics have had covers depicting an exploding volcano, apparently alluding to the volcanoes in the Xenu story — "Man responds to an exploding volcano" (Hubbard, "Assists"). Other cover images may reference Xenu as well: the cover of the 1972 edition of Dianetics: The Evolution of a Science shows pictures of uniformed men in white helmets carrying boxes in and out of a spaceship, which may refer to the transportation of Xenu's victims. Some of the cover images are more obscure but are conjectured to refer to other elements of OT III:

A special 'Book Mission' was sent out to promote these books, now empowered and made irresistible by the addition of these overwhelming symbols or images. Organization staff were assured that if they simply held up one of the books, revealing its cover, that any bookstore owner would immediately order crateloads of them. A customs officer, seeing any of the book covers in one's luggage, would immediately pass one on through. (Corydon)

Since the 1980s, the volcano has also been depicted in television commercials advertising Dianetics.

Scientology's "Sea Org", an elite group within the church that originated with Hubbard's personal staff aboard his fleet of ships, takes many of its symbols from the story of Xenu and OT III. It is explicitly intended to be a revival of the "Loyal Officers" who overthrew Xenu. Its logo, a wreath with 26 leaves, represents the 26 stars of Xenu's Galactic Confederacy.^{[16], although maintaining that there were nevertheless trade secrets contained in OT III.}

Older versions of OT levels I to VII were later brought as exhibits attached to a declaration by Steven Fishman on 9 April, 1993 as part of Church of Scientology International v. Fishman and Geertz. The text of this declaration and its exhibits were released onto the Internet in August 1995 and are known collectively as the Fishman Affidavit, which was a subject of great controversy and legal battles for several years, notably against Dutch writer Karin Spaink — the Church bringing suit on copyright violation grounds for reproducing the source material, and also claiming rewordings would reveal a trade secret.

The Church's attempts to maintain confidentiality concerning Xenu have been tremendously controversial, particularly given its high price (the 1997 members' price for OT III alone was US$19,500 [17]). In September 2003, a Dutch court, in a ruling in the case against Karin Spaink, stated that one objective in keeping OT II and OT III secret was to wield power over members of the Church and prevent discussion about the Church's teachings and practices.^{[19], a treatment given to no other Scientology term. In the relatively few instances in which it has acknowledged Xenu, the Church has stated that the story is a religious writing that can be seen as the equivalent of the Old Testament, in which miraculous events are described that are unlikely to have occurred in real life, and that it assumes true meaning only after years of study. They complain of critics using it to paint the religion as a science fiction fantasy (Observer, Sun 16 May 2004).}

Rebuttals of the Xenu story

Critics of Scientology have pointed out that there are many factual and scientific problems with the story of Xenu. There is no scientific evidence that the events Hubbard described ever took place, though in fairness Hubbard never did try to put a scientific gloss on the story. Peter Forde's paper A Scientific scrutiny of OT III analyses the matter in detail.

Hubbard did not elaborate on the number of space planes required to transport a population of some 13.5 trillion people. The Douglas DC-8, said to be an exact copy of Xenu's spaceships, seats a maximum of 250 people and has a payload of only around 40–50,000 kg, depending on the specific model. This means that only about 600 to 700 human-sized frozen bodies could have been transported with each trip. It would therefore have required around 54.1 billion trips with everyone seated or 274 million trips with frozen bodies packed more efficiently.

Assuming the Galactic citizens had bodies about the same mass as humans, 76×178 billion×2 ft³ per alien is 184 cubic miles (766 km³). This is about ten percent of the volume of the Chicxulub Crater, the site of the asteroid impact that is credited with having killed the dinosaurs. The frozen bodies would have had to have been stacked a mile (1.6 km) deep, covering an area more than six miles (10 km) across. Even assuming that they were all killed, their fossilised remains would certainly be visible in geological strata today. There is no sign of any such remains.

The energy required to blow up Xenu's victims would also have been colossal. Thousands of hydrogen bombs with a cumulative explosive force equivalent to gigatonnes of TNT would have been needed. This would certainly have left physical traces; Forde lists plausible craters as the Manson crater (35 km, dated at 73.8 million years ago), Eagle Butte (10 km) and Dumas (2 km, both 78–74 MYA).

Such a huge release of energy, more than during a full-scale nuclear war, would have wrecked the Earth's climate, causing a nuclear winter and prompting a mass extinction of terrestrial life. The hydrogen bombs would have left a residue of radioactive isotopes which would have been easily detectable today. It has been suggested that Hubbard meant to explain the extinction of the dinosaurs through the Xenu story but got the dates wrong — 75 MYA as opposed to 65 MYA, when the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event occurred — but this is unproven.

The Xenu mythos includes humanoid Galactic citizens living on Earth at the time; no traces whatsoever of human-style habitation 75 MYA has been noted, nor of mass extinctions.

The volcanoes that Hubbard mentions in the story (notably Las Palmas and Hawaii) did not exist at the time that the events of Incident II are said to have taken place. Forde goes into considerable detail on this point.

Finally, the earlier Incident I is set four quadrillion years ago, which is nearly 300,000 times the currently accepted age of the Universe of 13.7 billion years.

References

1. Hubbard, Scientology: A History of Man
2. ^  Hubbard, Mission into Time
3. ^  Miller, ch. 16, p. 266, "Launching the Sea Org"
4. ^  Corydon, pp58-59, 332-333; letter filed as evidence in Church of Scientology v. Gerald Armstrong, 1984, Los Angeles Superior Court, Case No. C420153
5. ^  Atack, part 4, ch. 1, "Scientology at Sea"
6. ^  Hubbard, "Ron's Talk to Pubs Org World Wide", tape of April 1968
7. ^  "Uit de hiervoor onder 8.3 vermelde teksten blijkt dat Scientology c.s. met hun leer en organisatie de verwerping van democratische waarden niet schuwen. Uit die teksten volgt tevens dat met de geheimhouding van OT II en OT III mede wordt beoogd macht uit te oefenen over leden van de Scientology-organisatie en discussie over de leer en praktijken van de Scientology-organisatie te verhinderen." [20] Translation by Spaink: "The texts prevously quoted show that in its teachings and its structure, Scientology c.s. do not shun the rejection of democratic values. From these texts it is also apparent that one of the objectives of keeping OT II and OT III secret is to wield power over members of the Scientology organisation and to prevent discussion about the teachings and practices of the Scientology organisation."

Sources

• Jon Atack, A Piece Of Blue Sky (Kensington Publishing Corporation, New York, 1990; ISBN 081840499X)
• Bent Corydon and L. Ron Hubbard Jr., L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah Or Madman? (Lyle Stuart, New Jersey, 1987; ISBN 0818404442)
• L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology: A History of Man (American Saint Hill Organization, 1968; current edition Bridge Publications ISBN 0884043061)
• L. Ron Hubbard, Mission into Time (American Saint Hill Organization, 1973; current edition Bridge Publications ISBN 0884040232)
• Russell Miller, Bare-Faced Messiah: The True Story Of L. Ron Hubbard (Henry Holt, New York, 1988; ISBN 1550130277)
• Ron's Journal 67 (testimony under oath by Warren McShane of the Church of Scientology in RTC v. FactNet, Civil Action No. 95B2143, United States Courthouse, Denver, Colorado, 11 September 1995)
• FACTnet report: Hubbard and the Occult (Jon Atack)
• Scientologists Block Access To Secret Documents: 1,500 crowd into courthouse to protect materials on fundamental beliefs (Joel Sappell and Robert Welkos, Los Angeles Times, 5 November 1985)
• Testimony under oath (pp274–275) from Robert Vaughn Young in RTC v. FactNet, Civil Action No. 95B2143, United States Courthouse, Denver, Colorado, 11 September 1995
• Audio extracts from Class VIII "Assists" lecture (3 October, 1968)
• Lure of the celebrity sect (Jamie Doward, The Observer, Sun 16 May 2004)
• Excalibur Revisited: The Akashic Book of Truth (Geoffrey Filbert)

External links

• OT III Released (Church of Scientology)
• OT III original scans (with legality statement)
• OT III Scholarship Page (David S. Touretzky; includes page scans, commentary, audio files)
• Revolt In The Stars summary (Grady Ward)
• Xenu Leaflet (Roland Rashleigh-Berry)
• The Fishman Affidavit: OT III (extracts and synopsis by Karin Spaink)
• A Scientific scrutiny of OT III (Peter Forde, June 1996)