In Scientology doctrine, Xenu (also Xemu) is a galactic ruler (of the "Galactic Confederacy") 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 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. The story of Xenu is part of a much wider range of Scientology beliefs in extraterrestrial civilizations and alien interventions in Earthly events, collectively described as space opera by L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology.
Hubbard 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 of the criticism of the Church of Scientology focuses 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, part of Scientology's secret "Advanced Technology" doctrines taught only to members that have already contributed large amounts of money to the organization.
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.
Summary of the Xenu story
Seventy-five 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).
When the space planes had reached Teegeeack/Earth, 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.
Simultaneously, the planted charges erupted. Atomic blasts ballooned from the craters of Loa, Vesuvius, Shasta, Washington, Fujiyama, Etna, and many, many others. Arching higher and higher, up and outwards, towering clouds mushroomed, shot through with flashes of flame, waste and fission. Great winds raced tumultuously across the face of Earth, spreading tales of destruction. Debris-studded, and sickly yellow, the atomic clouds followed close on the heels of the winds. Their bow-shaped fronts encroached inexorably upon forest, city and mankind, they delivered their gifts of death and radiation. A skyscraper, tall and arrow-straight, bent over to form a question mark to the very idea of humanity before crumbling into the screaming city below...
Revolt in the Stars treatment
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.
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. 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 that time.
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] The broad outlines of the story that 75 million years ago a great catastrophe happened in this sector of the galaxy which caused profoundly negative effects for everyone since then are publicly admitted to lower-level Scientologists. However, the details are kept strictly confidential, at least within the Church.
Hubbard claimed to be the first to map a precise route through the Wall of Fire, "probably the only one ever to do so in 75,000,000 years". He first publicly announced his "breakthrough" in Ron's Journal 67 (RJ67), a tape Hubbard recorded on 20 September 1967 to be sent to all members of the Church. According to Hubbard, his research was achieved at the cost of a broken back, knee and arm. OT III contains a warning that the R6 implant is "calculated to kill (by pneumonia etc) anyone who attempts to solve it." In RJ67, Hubbard also alludes to the devastating effect of Xenu's genocide:
And it is very true that a great catastrophe occurred on this planet and in the other 75 planets which formed this [Galactic] Confederacy 75 million years ago. It has since that time been a desert, and it has been the lot of just a handful to try to push its technology up to a level where someone might adventure forward, penetrate the catastrophe, and undo it. We're well on our way to making this occur.
The Church has objected to the Xenu story being used to paint Scientology as a mere science fiction fantasy [2]. However, it strongly illustrates the crossover between Scientology doctrine and the world of science fiction, visible throughout the organisation's history.
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 [3] [4] [5] [6], despite the Church's claims to the contrary [7]. 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.
The idea that Earth is a "prison planet", maintained by "entheta [evil] beings" or Targs who dumped their enemies on Earth, was first publicly put forward in an obscure taped demonstration of Scientology auditing recorded in April 1952 and released as "Electropsychometric Scouting: Battle of the Universes"
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.
Although the Xenu story first leaked in 1972 and was widely publicised on the Internet and hence in news stories from 1995 onwards, it only achieved currency in popular culture in mid-2005, when Tom Cruise changed publicists and actively promoted Scientology while doing publicity for War of the Worlds; press reaction was to include a summary of the Xenu story in almost every article at the time.
In November 2005, South Park episode "Trapped in the Closet" satirised Scientology, including an animated retelling of the Xenu story. During most of the retelling, the words "THIS IS WHAT SCIENTOLOGISTS ACTUALLY BELIEVE" appeared onscreen.
Apparently as a result of this episode, Isaac Hayes (the voice of the character 'Chef' in the series and himself a Scientologist) made a statement that he would no longer perform on the series because certain jokes in the series would be inapproriate and insulting to religions in general. He was released from his contract at his request. There have been allegations that Scientologists released the statement on behalf of Hayes, who is recovering from a stroke.
The episode was scheduled to be rerun on 15 March 2006; however Comedy Central didn't air this specific episode, instead running an old episode which featured 'Chef' as the main character (Chef's Salty Chocolate Balls). According to the TV channel, the substitution was intended to pay tribute to Isaac Hayes. According to the makers of South Park (Matt Stone and Trey Parker), Viacom (the corporation that owns Comedy Central) replaced the episode because Scientology intervened and more specifically, because Tom Cruise (himself a Scientologist who is lampooned in the episode for other reasons as well), threatened distributor Paramount (also a Viacom affiliated company) with refusal to cooperate with the promotional campaign on the upcoming film Mission Impossible 3. This was denied by Cruise's representative. The following written statement by Parker and Stone was published in the entertainment newspaper, "Daily Variety":
"So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun! Temporarily anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies. Curses and drat! You have obstructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail! Hail Xenu!!!"
They signed it, "Trey Parker and Matt Stone, servants of the dark lord Xenu."