ABSTRACT
In March 1997, police in the posh San Diego suburb of Rancho Santa Fe, California, burst into a sprawling mansion in a luxurious gated community to discover 39 decomposing bodies, the earthly remains of the members of a group soon dubbed Heaven’s Gate.1 In ritual precision, the members of the group had orchestrated a mass suicide, the ultimate terminus of a new religious movement founded two decades earlier. A media circus ensued, each new story describing an even more bizarre “religious cult.” The popular media linked Heaven’s Gate2 to the rise of the
Internet and the appearance of the Hale-Bopp comet, but in fact, it had little to do with either. Beneath the apparent incoherence of the group’s eccentric views lay an internally consistent set of religious beliefs. Examining the group’s doctrines throughout its history indicates a progression of religious conceptualizations, which, despite changing over time, demonstrate a high level of consistency.
