Council of the Eternals

The Council of the Eternals (also the Grand Council of the Eternals, the Council, the Divine Council, or the Divine Assembly) is the governing body of the Elohim civilization: a 700-member political authority of senior Eternals — individuals who have undergone the cloning-and-memory-transfer technology that produces practical immortality, living on across successive bodies. It sits on the second smaller planet of the alliance home stellar system (the Planet of the Eternals), where its members reside alongside roughly 8,400 resurrected humans selected for the same treatment. Yahweh, the first individual on whom the technology was successfully applied, has presided over it for approximately 25,000 years.

It is the deliberative-and-executive authority for the entire Earth project. From the project's inauguration in the Age of Capricorn (c. 21,810 BCE on the corpus's reckoning) to the present Aquarian-age preparation for the open return, every major Earth-related decision has passed through it: authorizing the biological-synthesis program, distributing the work across seven creator teams, the post-Eden destruction order against the Lucifer faction, the Flood and post-Flood policies, the Tower of Babel scattering and the Sodom strike, the Aries-age discovery that the Elohim themselves had been created and the resulting shift to indirect contact through the prophetic tradition, the Piscean-age universal mission, and the Aquarian-age return. No contemporary Earth body operates on its temporal frame; its members carry personal political experience spanning centuries to millennia.

The reading is contested. Mainstream historical-critical scholarship treats the Hebrew Bible's divine-council material as Israelite religious development out of older ancient Near Eastern divine-assembly traditions — theological content, not an actual political body. Jewish, Christian, and Islamic theology read it variously: as anthropomorphic representation of God's transcendent nature, as the angelic hosts (created beings, not co-existent figures), or as subordinate elements that monotheism must reframe. Ancient-astronaut and reinterpretive traditions hold various positions; the corpus's reading is distinctive in naming the Council as a historical political body with a founding event, membership, operational history, and present continuation. It accepts the scholarly observation that the Hebrew material shares the ancient Near Eastern divine-assembly category, but reframes the ontology: all such material preserves fragmentary memory of the actual Council the Raëlian source identifies.

Etymology and naming

The Council is named under several designations across the Hebrew Bible, the wider ancient Near Eastern tradition, and the modern Raëlian source, each preserving an aspect of the body's character.

Hebrew designations

Several Hebrew terms name what the corpus reads as the Council:

ʿAdat ʾēl (עֲדַת אֵל, "assembly of El") appears at Psalm 82:1: "Elohim stands in the divine assembly (ʿadat ʾēl); he judges in the midst of the elohim." ʿĒdâ derives from the root y-ʿ-d, "to appoint" — a formally convened gathering, "the appointed gathering of El," a deliberative body convened under authority.

Sod Yhwh (סוֹד יְהוָה, "council of Yahweh") appears at Jeremiah 23:18, 22 and Job 15:8, in contexts of prophetic access to divine deliberations. Sôd connotes intimacy and confidentiality — the inner-circle council where weighty matters are settled before being announced.

Benei ha-Elohim (בְּנֵי הָאֱלֹהִים, "sons of Elohim") names the figures who present themselves before Yahweh in the Job heavenly-court scenes (Job 1:6, 2:1, 38:7); it also appears at Genesis 6:1–4 and Psalm 29:1 in other contexts. The corpus reads the Job benei ha-Elohim as Council members — the Eternals belong to the wider Elohim civilization.

Qehal qedoshim (קְהַל קְדֹשִׁים, "assembly of holy ones") appears at Psalm 89:5–7. Qāhāl is the standard Hebrew for "assembly"; qədōšîm ("holy ones") names the Council members.

Har moed (הַר מוֹעֵד, "mount of assembly") appears at Isaiah 14:13, in the satirical lament over the king of Babylon: "I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north." Moed shares the root y-ʿ-d with ʿēdâ and denotes the appointed place — where the Council convenes. The corpus reads har moed as the Planet of the Eternals.

Greek designation

The Septuagint renders the Hebrew council vocabulary variously:

He boulē tōn theōn (ἡ βουλὴ τῶν θεῶν, "the council of the gods") and parallels render several council passages. Boulē is the standard term for a formal deliberative body — the Athenian boulē was the council of 500 in classical democratic government.

He synodos tōn theōn (ἡ σύνοδος τῶν θεῶν, "the synod of the gods") appears in some renderings; synodos (literally "way-with") stresses the gathering-together.

These render the Hebrew material's political-deliberative character in Greek categories. Later Christian use of boulē for ecclesiastical councils carries the same tradition forward.

Other designations across traditions

Other textual traditions supply further designations:

Akkadian puḫru / puḫrum ("assembly," "council") names the Mesopotamian divine councils, which the corpus reads as memory of the same underlying body.

Ugaritic puḫru môʿid ("council of the appointment"), in the Baal Cycle, is the divine assembly convened on Mount Ṣapānu under El's presidency.

Latin concilium deorum ("council of the gods") supplies the parallel Latin term; concilium is the root of the Catholic ecclesiastical "council."

Sanskrit devasabha ("assembly of the gods"), in the Vedic and Puranic traditions, is the cosmic court of Indra and the devas; the sabha is Hindu cosmic governance's central deliberative institution.

This convergence across traditions is part of the framework's evidence that the referent is a real political body preserved fragmentarily across cultures.

The Raëlian designation

The Raëlian source names the body the Council of the Eternals (French: le Conseil des Éternels), the corpus's primary contemporary designation. "Eternals" — those who have achieved practical immortality through cloning-and-memory-transfer — fixes the body's institutional character.

Variants include "the Grand Council of the Eternals" (stressing scale and authority) and, in shorthand, "the Council."

Conventional understanding

Mainstream scholarly and theological traditions treat the divine-council material in distinct ways.

Mainstream historical-critical biblical scholarship

Historical-critical scholarship reads the material as Israelite religious development out of older ancient Near Eastern divine-assembly traditions. Its principal positions:

The Mesopotamian-Ugaritic background. The Israelite material develops from Mesopotamian and Ugaritic divine-assembly traditions. The Ugaritic Baal Cycle is the closest parallel — the assembly under El, its procedures, its court personnel — and is read as the immediate background for the Hebrew material.

The Israelite reformulation. Israelite religion gradually monotheized the inherited polytheistic material, recasting the non-Yahweh council figures as angels or messengers (created beings, not co-existent gods) over the Hebrew Bible's long compositional history. Psalm 82 preserves the older framework in which Yahweh is one elohim among many; the later monotheistic redaction subordinated the council figures to his exclusive divinity.

The post-exilic angelological development. Second Temple literature (1 Enoch, Jubilees, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the apocalyptic tradition) elaborated the material into angelological systems populated by named angels and demons. Scholarship treats this as theological elaboration, not preserved cosmological content. The principal works in this vein — by Mullen, Mark S. Smith, John Day, Patrick D. Miller, and, more popularly, Michael Heiser — are treated below under Modern reinterpretations.

The framework accepts the historical-critical observation that the Hebrew material reflects the ancient Near Eastern divine-assembly tradition. Its extension is to read all of it — Hebrew and wider — as fragmentary memory of the actual Council the Raëlian source identifies.

Christian theological tradition

Christian theology has developed several readings over two millennia. The trinitarian reading takes the plural material (the Genesis 1:26 naʿaśeh ʾāḏām, the "us" passages) as early hints of the trinitarian distinction — the persons of the Trinity in deliberation, not subordinate beings. The angelological reading takes the figures as the angelic hosts, reading benei ha-Elohim, qədōšîm, and the assembly as created servants before God. The mythological-anthropomorphic reading takes the material as anthropomorphism — council imagery for a transcendent nature human authors could not depict directly. The Reformed-covenantal reading places it within covenant theology, treating the members as angelic hosts and as participants in the divine deliberation. The framework adopts none of these. It treats the Council as a historical political body with membership, procedures, and operational history — not a theological category. The Christian readings register as theological developments of the material that have shaped Western religious consciousness.

Jewish theological tradition

Jewish theology engages the material elaborately, diverging across schools.

Rabbinic theology subordinates the material to monotheism, treating the figures as angels, as God's metaphorical attributes, or as deliberately ambiguous to preserve divine unity. The bet din shel maʿalah ("heavenly court") tradition develops the image of God's judicial council without committing to cosmological content.

Kabbalistic and Hekhalot mysticism develop the material into elaborate emanationist and angelological systems — the sefirot, the Lurianic cosmology, the named angels and heavenly-court visions — treated more fully below under Modern reinterpretations.

Modern Jewish thought (Buber, Heschel, others) engages the council content within theological-philosophical frameworks that keep the monotheistic emphasis.

The framework adopts none of these; as with the Christian readings, it registers them as serious intellectual work on the material rather than as its operational reading.

Islamic theological tradition

Islamic theology reads the material chiefly through the malaʾikah (angels) framework, the Qur'anic and hadith material preserving council elements adapted to Islamic terms. The Mala' al-Aʿla ("Highest Assembly," referenced in Qur'an 38:69) is the angels' council-like body, with deliberative content across various texts — paralleling the Jewish and Christian developments.

Composition and structure

Membership: 700 Eternals

The Council has 700 members, all Eternals — Elohim who have undergone the cloning-and-memory-transfer technology that produces practical immortality. The figure is explicit in the "Meeting the Ancient Prophets" passage: "Alongside [the resurrected humans] live the 700 Elohim members of the Council of the Eternals." ^[1]

Council members differ from the wider Elohim civilization in several ways. They persist in one personal identity across successive bodies: against the natural Elohim lifespan of roughly 700–1,200 years, repeated cloning-and-transfer extends them to practical immortality across millennia. Since "only geniuses have the right to eternity," members are those the Council has judged to have contributed enough to warrant continuation as Eternals. They may not have children — immortality is traded for reproduction — and membership carries deliberative authority whose decisions on major matters bind the civilization's institutional actors.

The presidency: Yahweh's continuous role

Yahweh presides — the first individual on whom the cloning-and-memory-transfer technology succeeded. His continuous role is foundational to the Council's identity.

The source states it plainly: "The oldest, the president of the council of the eternals, is 25,000 years old, and you see him before you now. I have lived in twenty-five bodies up to this day, and I was the first one on whom this experiment was successfully carried out." ^[2]

On Yahweh's role, the framework reads: he has presided for roughly 25,000 years, his identity continuous across 25 bodies, giving the Council its principal institutional continuity; as the technology's first beneficiary he holds personal authority beyond the formal presidency; his continuous presidency has made him the principal contact figure for Earth-side operations throughout; and his biological son Jesus and the post-Aquarian-age figure Raël, both Eloha-human descendants, add further connections across the project.

Yahweh's operational career is treated in the Yahweh entry; here the point is that his continuous presidency supplies the Council's institutional continuity across 25,000 years.

Location: the Planet of the Eternals

The Council convenes on the Planet of the Eternals, the second smaller planet in the alliance home stellar system — the site of its deliberations and the Eternals' residence.

It hosts the 700 Council Eternals plus roughly 8,400 resurrected humans, and the source describes it as a "veritable little paradise" with developed infrastructure and advanced biological-scientific research facilities. It holds the resurrected prophets of the various ages — Moses, Elijah, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, and others — brought back after their Earth-side missions, and houses the cloning-and-memory-transfer infrastructure that produces and maintains the Eternals, along with biological robots marked by a small blue stone between the eyes. Relative to the Elohim home world (population ~7 billion), it is the residence and political center of the senior Eternals.

The planet is treated in the Planet of the Eternals entry (when written).

The Eternal-population distinction

The framework separates the Council of the Eternals (the 700-member governing body) from the wider Eternal population (the planet's ~9,100 residents: 700 members plus ~8,400 resurrected humans). All 700 members are Eternals, but not all Eternals are members — the 8,400 resurrected humans are Eternals through cloning-and-memory-transfer yet reside alongside the Council with real individual standing (the prophets especially, as alliance-mediating figures) but no deliberative authority. The Council itself evaluates the deceased for resurrection and Eternal status through its annual "Last Judgment."

Deliberative procedures

The source does not detail the Council's procedures, but the framework reconstructs their character from its scattered references and the Hebrew Bible's preserved council scenes.

The Council convenes on set matters, the Hebrew scenes (Job 1–2, 1 Kings 22:19–23, Isaiah 6) preserving members presenting cases and advocating positions. The framework reads the ha-satan of Job 1–2 as its prosecutor, tasked to argue against proposed courses so no decision is made unchallenged. Major decisions appear to go to a vote — the original Earth-project authorization (the destruction faction winning by a margin), the destruction order, the pardon, and the Sodom strike imply formal votes with recorded outcomes — and Council decisions bind and are implemented through the civilization's institutional mechanisms. Public opinion is a real force: the post-Flood reception of the exiled creators' advocacy — "the home-world population — not just the Council, but the broader civilization — turns its attention to Earth" — shows its weight.

These are the procedures of a mature political institution operating on the temporal frame that practical immortality permits, with more accumulated sophistication than any contemporary Earth body.

Deliberative procedures and authority

Executive authority over the Earth project

The Council is the executive authority for the entire Earth project. Every major operational decision has been deliberated and authorized there, then implemented through its mechanisms — the seven creator teams in the original synthesis program, the scientific and military operations of later ages, the prophetic-mediation infrastructure of the indirect-contact period.

The principal decisions:

The original authorization (c. 22,000 BCE). After a home-world crisis halted the genetic-synthesis program, the Council authorized relocating it to Earth — the compromise, after an earlier vote to halt the program and destroy the specimens, that let the work continue under modified terms far from home.

The seven-team distribution (c. 21,810 BCE onward). The Council split the Earth work across seven creator teams, each assigned a region of the antediluvian supercontinent. See the Antediluvian entry.

The post-Eden destruction order (c. 8,850 BCE). After the Eden disclosure, the Council exiled the Lucifer faction, the verdict delivered through Yahweh's pronouncement at the Eden settlement. See the Lucifer, Serpent, and Eden entries.

The Flood destruction order (c. 6,690 BCE). The Council ordered all life on Earth destroyed by nuclear weapons and carried it out despite the exiled creators' ark project. See the Great Flood entry.

The Tower of Babel scattering (c. 4,800 BCE). The Council moved against the post-Flood Eden lineage's spacecraft project, scattering the scientific elite and dispersing their knowledge across the continents — read as its refusal of the exiled creators' hope of reconciliation.

The pardon of the exiled creators (c. 4,000–3,800 BCE). The Council pardoned the original exiled creators, letting them return home and rejoin the civilization — the moment the Alliance's senior partnership widened to include the home-world Council itself.

The Sodom strike (c. 2,000 BCE). The Council authorized a preventive strike against the rebel movement at Sodom and Gomorrah — a tactical intervention against a human-led conspiracy. See the Sodom and Gomorrah entry (when written).

The Aries discovery and the shift to indirect contact (c. 2,160–1,200 BCE). Having discovered that the Elohim themselves had been created (see the Cosmic Chain entry, when written), the Council moved Earth policy from direct contact to mediated communication through the prophetic tradition.

The Piscean-age universal mission (c. 0–700 CE). The Council authorized the intervention through Jesus, a pluriform missionary strategy to carry the Aries-age Hebrew content to the rest of humanity through many cultural channels.

The Aquarian-age open return (1945–present). The Council authorized renewed contact through Raël, with the embassy preparation and the planned open return as its current work.

This 25,000-year record is itself the principal evidence for the Council's continuous existence — decisions cohering as one body adjusting policy on accumulated experience.

The annual Last Judgment

The Council runs an annual procedure the source calls the Last Judgment (jugement dernier), deciding which of the past year's dead is resurrected on the Planet of the Eternals:

"Once they have died, a grand council of the eternals assembles to decide in a 'last judgement', who among those who died during the year deserves to live another life. For a period of three lifetimes, the eternal is on probation, and at the end of this time, the council of the eternals reconvenes to judge who, in the light of their work, deserves to join the council of the eternals as a perpetual member." ^[3]

The Council meets each year to weigh the past year's dead for resurrection, judgment turning on the life lived — open-mindedness toward the infinite; contributions to human progress through discoveries, writings, and ways of organizing society; and "exemplary acts of fraternity, love or selflessness." The resurrected serve three further lifetimes before the Council reconvenes to decide on permanent membership; successful candidates become formal members, feeding the body's continuing development.

The framework reads this as the mechanism behind biblical and theological references to divine judgment. The Christian "Last Judgment" tradition — patristic, then medieval and modern — preserves fragmentary memory of the actual annual procedure, its doctrine an interpretive development rather than a direct description.

The relationship to broader Elohim civilization

As the civilization's principal political authority, the Council holds executive responsibility for major decisions; the ~7 billion on the home world stand in a citizen-population relationship to it, with rights and responsibilities like any mature polity; public opinion is a real force, with popular movements swaying decisions across the historical period; and specialized actors — scientific institutions, military forces, the creator teams — operate under its authority but with professional autonomy. In outline this resembles mature Earth institutions; what sets the Council apart is its temporal frame and its basis in cloning-and-memory-transfer eternalization.

History and continuity

The Council's roughly 25,000-year history falls into distinct phases.

Foundation and pre-Earth-project phase (c. 25,000–22,000 BCE)

The Council was founded when Yahweh became the first successful beneficiary of the technology. Before his eternalization the civilization had governing institutions but no Council-of-the-Eternals; his success made the category "Eternal" operational, the technology spread to others, and the Council formed around the growing Eternal population with Yahweh as continuing president. For roughly 3,000 years before the Earth project's authorization it served as the home world's principal political body on its political and scientific questions.

Earth-project authorization phase (c. 22,000–21,810 BCE)

Authorization followed serious political conflict at home. The genetic-synthesis program had reached advanced, politically controversial capabilities; a crisis produced a Council vote to halt it and destroy existing specimens; a large faction opposed this and won relocation of the work to a distant site — Earth — under modified terms. Yahweh, as president, took personal charge and traveled to Earth to lead it. This is the decision that set the whole corpus narrative in motion: without it, no Earth synthesis; with it, the arc from the Capricorn-age site survey to the Aquarian-age return.

Pre-Eden Earth-project phase (c. 21,810–8,850 BCE)

Across the seven precessional ages from Capricorn through Leo, the Council supervised the synthesis work through the seven creator teams — deliberating on progress, reviewing the teams' reports, authorizing the synthesis stages and the human-creation, and maintaining the project's political framework. The age-specific entries treat the detail; here the point is that it kept continuous oversight from the home world while deployed personnel worked on Earth.

Post-Eden conflict phase (c. 8,850–6,690 BCE)

The Eden disclosure and its settlement opened a long conflict between the Council and the exiled Lucifer faction: the post-Eden destruction order, continued observation of the antediluvian Earth, the decision to destroy the human creation in the Flood and its execution, then the post-Flood Babel intervention. Throughout, the Council was not in cooperation with the Earth-side Lucifer faction but in opposition, which drove the era's interventions and counter-interventions.

Pardon and reintegration phase (c. 4,000–3,800 BCE)

The Taurus-age pardon transformed the Council's position. It received the exiled creators' advocacy at the home world, weighed the human creation's demonstrated value, issued the formal pardon, and reintegrated the exiled Lucifer-faction members into the civilization. This reversed its relation to the Alliance: once its adversary, it now joined as senior partner — with the reintegrated Lucifer faction among its members and the human-side Eden-lineage descendants as junior partner.

Aries-discovery and indirect-contact phase (c. 2,160 BCE – 1945 CE)

The Aries-age discovery that the Elohim themselves had been created transformed the Council's understanding of its own work. It shifted from direct to indirect contact, built the prophetic-mediation infrastructure, and authorized the Aries-age missions (Moses, the Hebrew prophets, Buddha, Zoroaster, the wider Axial Age coordination), the Piscean-age universal mission through Jesus and Muhammad, and later periodic interventions (Joseph Smith, the Bab, Baha'u'llah, others), keeping a minimal presence through the Piscean-age silence. For roughly 4,000 years its mode was prophetic mediation from the home world, sharply different from direct contact.

Aquarian-age phase (1945–present)

The atomic threshold of 1945 marked the Council's recognition that humanity's technological maturity required renewed direct engagement. It resumed contact through an Aquarian-age inaugural figure, Raël, authorized the 1973 Clermont-Ferrand and 1975 Périgord contacts and the embassy project as the mechanism for the open return, and now oversees the preparation through the Raëlian movement. This is the current phase, the open return its projected next transformation. See the Apocalypse entry.

In primary sources

The Council appears across many primary sources, preserved fragmentarily in ancient texts and directly in the modern Raëlian source.

The Hebrew Bible divine-council passages

Several Hebrew Bible passages preserve council material the framework reads as the Council of the Eternals:

Psalm 82:1–8 is the most direct reference to the divine assembly:

"Elohim has taken his place in the divine council (ʿadat ʾēl); in the midst of the elohim he holds judgment: 'How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked?'... I say, 'You are elohim, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, like men you shall die, and fall like any prince.'" ^[4]

The corpus reads it as the Hebrew Bible's most direct preservation of the Council's procedures: the plural elohim names the many members, not one deity; the "judgment in the midst of the elohim" is deliberation within the Council; and the "you shall die" — despite the Eternals' practical immortality — reads either as a penalty for members who fail in their duties or as recognition that even Eternals are not absolutely immortal, since the cloning technology must keep running and an Eternal can be terminated for cause.

1 Kings 22:19–23 records Micaiah's vision of the council:

"I saw Yahweh sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven (kol-ṣəbāʾ ha-šāmayim) standing beside him on his right and on his left; and Yahweh said, 'Who will entice Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?'... Then a spirit came forward and stood before Yahweh, saying, 'I will entice him.'" ^[5]

The corpus reads it as an actual Council deliberation recorded accurately by the prophetic witness — Yahweh calling for volunteers, a member coming forward with a proposal. The "host of heaven" is the membership; the volunteering spirit, a member with an operational role.

Job 1:6–12 and 2:1–6 record the heavenly-court scenes:

"Now there was a day when the sons of Elohim (benei ha-Elohim) came to present themselves before Yahweh, and ha-satan came also among them. Yahweh said to ha-satan, 'Whence have you come?' Ha-satan answered Yahweh, 'From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.' And Yahweh said to ha-satan, 'Have you considered my servant Job?'..." ^[6]

The corpus reads these as actual Council procedures, with ha-satan the institutional prosecutor whose role is to test and argue against the Council's confident plans. The framework keeps ha-satan — the prosecutor role within Council deliberations — distinct from Satan, the Elohim figure who led the abolitionist faction. Satan as a figure is treated in the Satan entry.

Daniel 7:9–14 records the Ancient of Days enthroned with the heavenly court:

"As I looked, thrones were placed and one that was ancient of days took his seat... A thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him; the court sat in judgment, and the books were opened." ^[7]

The corpus reads it as preserving the Council's institutional features — the formal seating of members, the procedures, and the recorded documentation ("the books were opened").

Isaiah 6:1–8 records Isaiah's commissioning:

"I saw Yahweh sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and his train filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim... And I heard the voice of Yahweh saying, 'Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?' Then I said, 'Here am I! Send me.'" ^[8]

The corpus reads it as an actual commissioning: the deliberative question ("whom shall I send?") and Isaiah's answer ("send me") reflect the Council's procedure for dispatching prophetic missions, the plural "for us" preserving its collective character in the Hebrew.

Isaiah 14:13 preserves the satirical lament's reference to the Council's convening location:

"You said in your heart, 'I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly (har moed) in the far reaches of the north.'" ^[9]

The "far reaches of the north" preserves the direction of the Planet of the Eternals relative to Earth.

Genesis 1:26 preserves the plural self-address at the human creation:

"Then Elohim said, 'Let us make humanity (naʿaśeh ʾāḏām) in our image, after our likeness.'" ^[10]

The corpus reads the plural self-address as the Council's deliberative character at the human-creation authorization: "let us make" implies multiple parties, consistent with the collective body.

The Raëlian source material

The principal passage appears in Extra-Terrestrials Took Me to Their Planet (1975), in "Meeting the Ancient Prophets":

"In my first message I told you of a residence located on our planet where people from Earth can continue to live thanks to the scientific secret of eternity that is based on a single cell. Among those people are Jesus, Moses, Elijah and so on. This residence is, in fact, very large, since it is an entire planet where the members of the Council of the Eternals live as well. My name is Yahweh, and I am the president of that Council of the Eternals. There are currently 8,400 people from Earth living on the planet where we are at this moment... Alongside them live the 700 Elohim members of the Council of the Eternals." ^[11]

It establishes the Council's principal features: 700 Elohim members, Yahweh's presidency, and the ~8,400 resurrected humans on the Planet of the Eternals.

The first volume, The Book Which Tells the Truth (1974), grounds Yahweh's 25,000-year continuous existence and his role as the technology's first beneficiary, with the Council's operations developed across the later corpus. ^[12]

Other primary sources

The Council is referenced in other primary sources:

• 1 Enoch preserves council material in the Watchers narrative and the Apocalypse of Weeks ^[13]
• The Dead Sea Scrolls preserve council material (the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice / Shirot ʿOlat ha-Shabbat, and other angelological texts)
• The Mesopotamian Atra-ḫasīs and Enuma Elish preserve the parallel divine-assembly traditions ^{[14] [15]}
• The Ugaritic Baal Cycle preserves the Canaanite council material at El's mountain

The framework reads all of them as fragmentary memory of the actual Council.

The framework's reading

The Council as continuing political body

The framework reads the Council as a historical political body that has existed continuously for roughly 25,000 years and still operates — departing from the theological readings (council as cosmological category, not institution) and the mythological ones (council as religious narrative, not an actual body). Its evidence: the Raëlian source's explicit membership, leadership, location, and procedures; the Hebrew Bible's council material, consistent with that operational character; the wider ancient Near Eastern traditions, preserving the same body in distinct cultural frames; and the coherence of its decisions across 25,000 years, implying institutional continuity.

The Council as the executive of the Earth project

The framework reads the Council as the executive authority for the entire Earth project — every major decision a Council decision. So Yahweh's Earth-side operations are the president exercising Council authority, not autonomous acts, his presence across the Aries-Pisces period the presidential role rather than a separate function; the Lucifer faction's exile and reintegration are Council decisions, making the conflicts intra-civilizational disputes within the Elohim civilization (and later the Alliance), not clashes with separate bodies; the prophetic missions are Council-authorized projects, the prophets (Moses, the Hebrew prophets, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, Raël) commissioned agents rather than autonomous religious figures; and the Aquarian-age operations are Council-directed, the Raëlian movement and the embassy project their current manifestations.

The Council and the broader political-structural taxonomy

The Council must be kept distinct from adjacent categories: it is not the Elohim civilization itself (the ~7 billion on the home world), the Eternals as a population (the ~9,100 on the planet), the Alliance (the cross-civilizational body that emerged after the Noahic covenant, of which it is one component), the Lucifer faction (the originally dissenting subset of the Israel team), or the prophetic tradition (its mechanism for indirect-contact missions). These distinctions are detailed in the The Alliance entry's "Distinguishing from adjacent concepts" section.

What the framework does not claim

It does not claim the Council is divine in the theological sense: its members are advanced biological beings (Eternals of the Elohim civilization), not supernatural deities, and the framework does not treat the trinitarian, angelological, or Kabbalistic elaborations as accurate to the body.

It does not claim absolute moral authority: the Council's decisions have been contested — by public opinion, by minority factions within it, by the human-side Alliance partners. Its authority is political-institutional, not absolute, its decisions the product of deliberation rather than divine fiat.

It does not claim the decisions were morally optimal: the Flood order, the Babel scattering, the Sodom strike, and the Aries-age withdrawal carried real costs the framework registers honestly rather than treating as obviously right — a political body with limits and trade-offs, not an infallible authority.

Modern reinterpretations

Modern reinterpretation of the council material runs across several strands.

Mainstream divine-council scholarship

Mainstream scholarship has developed over recent decades through several principal works.

E. Theodore Mullen's The Assembly of the Gods: The Divine Council in Canaanite and Early Hebrew Literature (1980) is the foundational treatment, taking the assembly as a conceptual category that emerged in Canaanite religion and was adapted by Israel — theological, not a historical body.

Mark S. Smith (The Origins of Biblical Monotheism, 2001; The Early History of God, 1990) reads the material as older polytheistic frameworks that Israel progressively monotheized over its long compositional history.

John Day's Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan (2000) reads the material as continuous between the Canaanite and Israelite contexts, the reformulation a matter of theological adaptation rather than complete transformation.

Patrick D. Miller's work on Israelite religion places the council material within the project of understanding that religion in its historical setting.

Michael Heiser's The Unseen Realm (2015), a more popular treatment that has shaped evangelical engagement, argues the material preserves genuine cosmological content and treats the council figures as actual cosmic-political beings rather than concepts. The corpus reads him as the closest mainstream antecedent to its Council-of-the-Eternals reading, differing on ontology: Heiser stays within an evangelical frame, the framework within the Eloha-civilization one.

The framework aligns with that scholarly observation, and with Heiser that the material preserves genuine content, but is distinct in naming the body as the Council of the Eternals with its membership, leadership, and operational history.

Mesopotamian and Ugaritic divine assembly research

Assyriological and Ugaritic-studies research supplies textual-historical context. The principal work:

Thorkild Jacobsen (The Treasures of Darkness, 1976) develops the Mesopotamian assembly in detail, treating the puḫrum as the central political-deliberative institution of the Mesopotamian framework, with the Anunnaki and Igigi as its principal members.

Wolfgang Heimpel and other Assyriologists have worked on aspects of the council material across the cuneiform record.

Mark S. Smith's The Ugaritic Baal Cycle (1994, 2009 with Pitard) treats the Ugaritic material comprehensively: elaborate council scenes at the source of the rivers under El's presidency, deliberating major cosmic-political questions by set procedures.

Further Ugaritic scholarship (Marvin Pope, Frank Moore Cross, others) develops the Ugaritic context in which the Hebrew council material took shape.

Gnostic elaborations

Gnostic Christianity developed its own council material with distinct cosmological content: the Pleroma tradition casts the divine fullness as emanated aeons in syzygic pairs, structurally parallel to the council tradition; the Sethian tradition names specific figures (the Father, Barbelo, the Autogenes, the Four Luminaries, the aeons); the Valentinian tradition develops an elaborate emanationist cosmology including the fall of Sophia and her restoration. The corpus takes these as theological elaborations, not accurate cosmology, rejecting their specific claims (the demiurgic Yahweh, the pleromatic emanations, the Sophia fall).

Kabbalistic elaborations

Kabbalah developed council material across the medieval and early-modern periods: the Sefirot tradition has the cosmos emanate through ten divine attributes (Keter, Chokhmah, Binah, Chesed, Gevurah, Tiferet, Netzach, Hod, Yesod, Malkhut), folding the biblical figures into an emanationist cosmology; the Hekhalot tradition preserves angelological material with named angels and visionary access to the heavenly court; Lurianic Kabbalah adds elaborate frameworks (Tzimtzum, Shevirat ha-Kelim, Tikkun). The corpus respects the intuition that the material preserves real cosmological content but does not endorse the apparatus built around it.

The ancient-astronaut tradition

The ancient-astronaut tradition has engaged the material variously:

• Erich von Däniken (Chariots of the Gods, 1968, and after) takes the material as memory of advanced-technology beings rather than deities, but does not reach the corpus's Council-of-the-Eternals reading
• Zecharia Sitchin (The 12th Planet, 1976, and after) reads the council as the Anunnaki operating from the planet Nibiru. The corpus does not adopt his Anunnaki-Nibiru cosmology, but his treatment of the council as an actual political body aligns with the framework
• Mauro Biglino's strict-translation reading of the Hebrew material treats the figures as physically embodied beings in political-operational arrangements ^{[18] [19]}
• Paul Anthony Wallis treats the material as preserving accurate operational content within the alliance-mediated history ^{[20] [21] [22]}

The corpus aligns with the tradition's basic direction — council as actual political body — while diverging on specifics, its Council-of-the-Eternals reading distinct from Sitchin's Anunnaki-Nibiru reading and von Däniken's more general framework.

Sendy on the divine council

Jean Sendy developed the principal scholarly antecedent of the framework's reading. His Ces dieux qui firent le ciel et la terre (1969) and La lune, clé de la Bible (1968) treat the Hebrew council material as actual political bodies of advanced biological beings, not theological categories. ^{[16] [17]} His contributions include the philological-historical reading of the ʿadat ʾēl and sod Yhwh terminology, the recognition that the material preserves operational content, and its placement within the alliance-mediated history he reconstructed. The framework aligns with Sendy's approach and extends it through the Raëlian source's specifics.

The framework's relationship to the broader landscape

In sum: aligned with mainstream scholarship textually and with Heiser, Sendy, Biglino, and Wallis on the material's genuine operational content; aligned with the ancient-astronaut tradition's direction but not with Sitchin's Anunnaki-Nibiru cosmology; respectful of the Gnostic and Kabbalistic intuitions without endorsing their elaborations. Its distinctive contribution is the Council-of-the-Eternals reading itself.

Comparative observations

Divine-council bodies appear across many cultural-religious traditions, with structural and detailed parallels to the Council of the Eternals. The corpus reads the pattern as evidence of a real body preserved fragmentarily across them.

Mesopotamian divine assemblies: the Anunnaki and Igigi

The Mesopotamian tradition preserves the most developed assembly material. The puḫrum, its principal deliberative body, is attested in Sumerian and Akkadian texts across the third and second millennia BCE. The Anunnaki / Igigi distinction separates two classes: the Anunnaki (originally "princely seed" or "offspring of An") are the senior deities; the Igigi are the working deities who, in Atra-ḫasīs, first did the agricultural labor later handed to humans — a distinction Assyriology reads variously, some as functional rather than ontological. The Enuma Elish preserves council material in the Tiamat-Marduk conflict, Marduk's fifty concluding names including council titles that acclaim him chief deity of the Babylonian council. The Atra-ḫasīs epic records council deliberation on the human creation and the flood across its three tablets.

The corpus reads this as memory of the body the Hebrew parallels preserve — the structural parallels a common historical reality, the Mesopotamian framing (the Anunnaki-Igigi distinction, the Tiamat-Marduk conflict, the named deities) its cultural elaboration.

The Anunnaki tradition is detailed in the Anunnaki entry (when written).

Ugaritic council of El

The Ugaritic tradition preserves council material in the Baal Cycle and related texts. The council convenes at the source of the rivers — El's mountain dwelling, where it deliberates under his presidency; the framework reads the location as memory of the Planet of the Eternals. Its members are the Ugaritic deities — El (presiding), Asherah (consort and member), Baal (the storm god whose ascent drives the Baal Cycle), Mot (death), Yam (sea), and others — their procedures and authority paralleling the Mesopotamian and Hebrew material. The puḫru môʿid ("council of the appointment") is the technical term for the convened assembly, its link to "appointment" (parallel to Hebrew moed in har moed) marking the body's formal-political character.

Its geographic and chronological proximity to the Hebrew tradition makes it the closest parallel to the Bible's council passages, the Israelite material drawing on — or paralleling — the same historical reality.

The Hellenic Olympian council

The Greek tradition preserves the Olympian council as its principal divine-political body:

Mount Olympus is the convening location, the twelve principal Olympians (Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Ares, Aphrodite, Hephaestus, Hermes, and either Hestia or Dionysus) its membership.

Zeus's presidency organizes it: he convenes the council, presides, and holds executive authority over cosmic-political matters.

The deliberative procedures, recorded across the Greek tradition (Hesiod's Theogony, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, the mythographers), show the gods convening on cosmic-political questions and deciding by formal procedure. ^[23]

The subordinate deities — Titans, lesser gods, nymphs, and other beings — sit in a wider cosmic-political structure under the Olympian council's authority.

The corpus reads the Olympian council as the same body in Greek framing, its elaborations (the Olympian-Titan distinction, the named deities, the myths) that tradition's development.

Hindu sabha tradition

The Hindu tradition preserves council material in the sabha (assembly) tradition. Indra's assembly (sudharma), across Vedic and Puranic literature, is the principal cosmic-political body, presided over by Indra (king of the devas) and including devas, gandharvas, apsaras, and others; Brahma's council, in some Puranic texts, is a higher body where Brahma (the creator) convenes the cosmic principles for major decisions; and the wider devasabha references preserve procedures, role distributions, and operational decisions. The corpus reads the tradition as the same body in Hindu framing, its elaborations (the devas-asuras opposition, the named deities, the cyclical narratives) that tradition's development.

Buddhist sangha-like cosmic bodies

The Buddhist tradition preserves cosmic-political material with some council elements: the Trāyastriṃśa heaven's council of thirty-three gods under Indra (Sakka in Buddhist tradition); the Mahāyāna cosmic councils of buddhas and bodhisattvas across the sutras; and the Pure Land councils in Sukhāvatī (Amitābha's Pure Land) and the other Pure Lands across East Asian Buddhism. The corpus reads these as memory of similar bodies in Buddhist framing, noting that its commitments — no creator deity, the stress on individual enlightenment — yield a markedly different elaboration.

Norse Aesir council

The Norse tradition preserves council material in the Aesir council at Asgard. Odin, the All-Father, convenes it and holds executive authority; its membership is the principal Aesir (Thor, Frigg, Tyr, Heimdall, Baldr, and others) plus the Vanir who joined them and lesser beings; it meets in the council hall (Gladsheim or Valhöll); and its procedures are preserved across the Poetic Edda, Prose Edda, and sagas.

The convergence

The corpus's working position is that the global recurrence of council bodies is meaningful evidence of a genuine underlying reality — the mainstream explanation (independent conceptual development plus diffusion) being insufficient for the breadth, the structural parallels, and the consistent functional features (executive authority, deliberative procedures, role distribution, responsibility for cosmic-political matters) across separated traditions.

The framework reads the pattern as common memory of the actual Council: the Mesopotamian and Ugaritic traditions preserve it most directly, by proximity to the alliance's principal Earth-side operations; the Hebrew tradition through the Eden-lineage Alliance partnership; the rest through their own cultural channels.

The corpus does not require rejecting the mainstream framework wholesale: diffusion certainly occurred, and the traditions show both common structure (the original body) and local elaboration. What the framework adds is the historical-political body behind the commonalities — one the mainstream, lacking the corpus's cosmology, cannot identify and so attributes to independent development plus diffusion.

Identifications and conflations

The Council must be kept apart from several adjacent figures and bodies, whose conflation has shaped the material's reception.

The Council vs. Yahweh personally

The Council and Yahweh are related but distinct. Yahweh is its continuous president (roughly 25,000 years) but not coextensive with it: the Council has 700 members and he is one — the senior member. Its decisions are collective; his role in them is presidential, not dictatorial.

Conventional readings often conflate the two, taking "Elohim" as either Yahweh personally (the monotheistic reading) or the Council collectively (the framework's). The framework reads the Hebrew's grammar — plural Elohim with singular verbs, the plural self-address at Genesis 1:26, the plural pronouns in the council passages — as preserving the original distinction between Yahweh the president and the wider membership.

Yahweh as a figure is treated in the Yahweh entry.

The Council vs. the angels

Conventional theology often folds the Council members into "angels" — created servants rather than co-existent figures. The framework distinguishes the Council members, senior Eternals of the Elohim civilization with full standing as deliberative-executive authorities, from the angels (Hebrew malʾāḵîm, "messengers"), operational agents in alliance-mediated communication and intervention — not a separate ontological category but Elohim individuals in operational roles, often junior to Council members. It reads the conflation as a post-biblical development, the angelological tradition treating all heavenly beings as one category of "created spirits" serving the singular God.

The Council vs. the Trinity

Christian theology has often read the plural material (especially the Genesis 1:26 naʿaśeh ʾāḏām) as early signs of the trinitarian distinction. The framework rejects this: the Council is a 700-member political body, while the Trinity is a Christian development that does not match its structure and reframes the material away from its original political-historical referent.

The Council vs. the Pleroma / Sefirot

Gnostic and Kabbalistic systems (the Pleroma; the Sefirot) include council elements but build them into theological-cosmological frameworks. The framework rejects these conflations too: the Council is a 700-member political body of senior Eternals on the Planet of the Eternals; the Pleroma is a Gnostic category; the Sefirot are Kabbalistic emanationist principles. They are not coextensive.

The Council vs. the broader Alliance senior partnership

After the Taurus-age pardon and reintegration, the Council became one part of the Alliance's senior partnership rather than its whole — alongside the Eloha population on the home world (~7 billion), the exiled-creator personnel now operational on Earth, and the resurrected prophets on the Planet of the Eternals. See the The Alliance entry.

See also

• Yahweh
• Elohim
• The Alliance
• Lucifer
• Satan
• Tree of Life
• Planet of the Eternals
• Sons of Elohim
• Plurality of Gods
• Anunnaki
• Prophet
• Apocalypse
• Embassy
• Cosmic Chain
• Genesis
• Hebrew Bible
• Antediluvian
• Great Flood
• Adam and Eve
• Eden
• Jesus
• Moses
• Raël
• Jean Sendy
• Mauro Biglino
• Paul Anthony Wallis
• The Archdeacon and the Dragon (the El-Ba'adat council-of-factions convergence)

References

Vorilhon, Claude (Raël). The Book Which Tells the Truth (1974); collected in Message from the Designers.

Vorilhon, Claude (Raël). Extra-Terrestrials Took Me to Their Planet (1975); collected in Message from the Designers. The "Meeting the Ancient Prophets" passage is the principal source for the Council's specific membership and structural details.

Sendy, Jean. Ces dieux qui firent le ciel et la terre. Robert Laffont, 1969. English: Those Gods Who Made Heaven and Earth. Berkley, 1972.

Sendy, Jean. La lune, clé de la Bible. Julliard, 1968.

Biglino, Mauro, and Giorgio Cattaneo. The Naked Bible: The Truth About the Most Famous Book in History. Uno, 2022.

Wallis, Paul Anthony. The Eden Conspiracy. 6th Books, 2024.

Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 4th rev. ed., 1997.

Mullen, E. Theodore. The Assembly of the Gods: The Divine Council in Canaanite and Early Hebrew Literature. Harvard Semitic Monographs 24. Scholars Press, 1980.

Smith, Mark S. The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts. Oxford University Press, 2001.

Smith, Mark S. The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel. Eerdmans, 2nd ed., 2002.

Smith, Mark S. The Ugaritic Baal Cycle. Vols. 1–2. Brill, 1994 and 2009 (with Wayne T. Pitard).

Day, John. Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan. Sheffield Academic Press, 2000.

Heiser, Michael S. The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible. Lexham Press, 2015.

Miller, Patrick D. The Religion of Ancient Israel. Westminster John Knox, 2000.

Cross, Frank Moore. Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic. Harvard University Press, 1973.

Pope, Marvin H. El in the Ugaritic Texts. Brill, 1955.

Jacobsen, Thorkild. The Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian Religion. Yale University Press, 1976.

Jacobsen, Thorkild. The Sumerian King List. Assyriological Studies 11. University of Chicago Press, 1939.

Lambert, W. G., and A. R. Millard. Atra-ḫasīs: The Babylonian Story of the Flood. Oxford University Press, 1969.

Foster, Benjamin R. Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature. CDL Press, 3rd ed., 2005.

Heimpel, Wolfgang. Letters to the King of Mari: A New Translation with Historical Introduction, Notes, and Commentary. Eisenbrauns, 2003.

Mark S. Smith and Wayne T. Pitard, eds. The Ugaritic Baal Cycle. Brill, 2009.

Charles, R. H. The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament. Oxford University Press, 1913.

Vermes, Geza. The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English. Penguin, 7th ed., 2011.

Scholem, Gershom. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. Schocken, 1941.

Zohar. Pritzker Edition, trans. Daniel Matt et al. Stanford University Press, 2003–2017.

Layton, Bentley. The Gnostic Scriptures. Doubleday, 1987.

Robinson, James M., ed. The Nag Hammadi Library in English. HarperSanFrancisco, 3rd rev. ed., 1988.

Pagels, Elaine. The Gnostic Gospels. Random House, 1979.

von Däniken, Erich. Chariots of the Gods? Trans. Michael Heron. Putnam, 1968.

Sitchin, Zecharia. The 12th Planet. Stein and Day, 1976.

Hesiod. Theogony and Works and Days. Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press.

Homer. Iliad and Odyssey. Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press.

Doniger, Wendy. Hindu Myths: A Sourcebook. Penguin Classics, 1975.

Williams, Paul. Mahāyāna Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations. Routledge, 2nd ed., 2008.

Lindow, John. Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs. Oxford University Press, 2001.

Brown, Francis, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs. A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB). Oxford, 1907.

The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (HALOT), Koehler-Baumgartner. Brill, 2001.

"Divine Council." Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Council

"Heavenly host." Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavenly_host

"Sons of God." Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sons_of_God

"Anunnaki." Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Anunnaki

"Mount Olympus." Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/place/Mount-Olympus

Council of the Eternals. (2026). Wheel of Heaven. https://www.wheelofheaven.world/wiki/council-of-the-eternals/

"Council of the Eternals." Wheel of Heaven, 2026, https://www.wheelofheaven.world/wiki/council-of-the-eternals/.

"Council of the Eternals." Wheel of Heaven, 2026. https://www.wheelofheaven.world/wiki/council-of-the-eternals/.

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  author       = {{Wheel of Heaven}},
  title        = {Council of the Eternals},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://www.wheelofheaven.world/wiki/council-of-the-eternals/}},
  note         = {CC0-1.0 public domain}
}