Talk:Raëlism

Swastika

"a symbol that had been prominently used by Germany's Nazi..."

Ignorance! that symbol is thousands of years old. The Ukrainians too used is to paint on their Easter eggs! So what!?

That just does paint the right picture of this age old symbol. Stjohn1970 (talk) 16:29, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

prominently used. Not exclusively used. Its connotations, however, are mostly anti-Semitic and is primarily associated with Nazis. — VORTEX³⁴²⁷ (Talk!) 05:43, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

Its connotations, however, are mostly anti-Semitic and is primarily associated with Nazis...in the western world. This doesn't necessarily hold true in other parts of world, e.g. Asia. Beware systemic bias. 73.239.149.166 (talk) 21:18, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

Old Logo at article beginning

The symbol at the beginning of this article includes the Swastika variant of the logo, captioned "The Raëlan symbol". However, later in the article it clearly states that they switched from the old logo (containing the Swastika) to a new logo (containing a spiral) in order to avoid false assumptions towards their religion. Not only is the header image for this article outdated, it may lead to some false and hasty assumptions regarding the "symbol that had been prominently used by Germany's Nazi[s]..." being embedded at the center of their logo. Infectiontag (talk) 03:31, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Both https://www.rael.org/ and https://raelusa.org/symbol-of-infinity/ use the version with the Swastika. I don't know if the Raelian movement switched back to this, or if the version with the spiral only ever was an alternate option, but not the main symbol. Anyway, I've changed the image and caption so that now both symbols are shown. --Jonas kork (talk) 14:50, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

This is covered quite plainly in the article, with sources:

From 1991 to 2007, the official Raëlian symbol in Europe and America did not have the original swastika, but Raël decided to make the original symbol, the Star of David intertwined with a swastika, the only official symbol of the Raëlian Movement worldwide.

Source: [1] 73.239.149.166 (talk) 20:07, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

The Swastika-containing logo was changed because at the time they (the Raelians) were trying to establish an embassy in Jerusalem and for obvious reasons this was a non-starter. Note however, that other religious movements such as Theosophy that also use the Swastika have a presence in Israel. The latter is tolerated I think because these movements pre-date Nazism and the Swastika in these contexts don't hold the same type of negative connotation. It seems foolish and antagonistic to chose this symbol in the modern era though, if one were choosing a symbol for a new religion. Valgrus Thunderaxe (talk) 12:00, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

Pronunciation

The page currently gives "/ˈreɪlɪzəm/", "/reɪl/". As I just brought up on Raël's talk page, I see no reason why the English pronunciation of this name should be homophone with "rail", when it clearly has a diaeresis over the e and thus should be pronounced homophone with "ra el" (like the two gods Ra and El), or like the last part of "Israel"—from which it is allegedly derived. However, I accept sometimes English pronunciations are just wacky. So, it seems to me like we need some good and representative sources for this part... Dingolover6969 (talk) 11:39, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

This is a REALLY good question. I went digging and I'll be damned if I can find a WP:RS on this. No dictionary seems to have it, YouTube pronunciation videos (which aren't RS anyway) are all over the place, and the Raelism website doesn't explicitly say. The best I could do was dig up some videos of Claude Vorilhon doing seminars and it would SEEM like he's saying /ˈreɪlɪən/ when speaking English, but I'm also hearing it through a thick French accent. Frankly, given that there are no WP:RS I can find on this, I would be just fine if the IPA just disappeared. 24.22.161.114 (talk) 21:17, 18 May 2023 (UTC)