Heaven's Gate Cult Analysis

On March 26, 1997, the bodies of 38 members of a religious cult that would come to be known as “Heaven’s Gate” were found decomposing on a large San Diego estate.1 Heaven’s Gate was a millenarian cult that operated from 1974 -1997 under the leadership of Marshall Applewhite and his wife, Bonnie Nettles. At its peak, this group recruited over one-hundred members who all believed in Applewhite’s theory that the world was going to be “recycled,” ending all human life on Earth.2 The cause that drove these members to commit suicide was Applewhite’s promise of the entrance to the kingdom of heaven, but the basis for this promise was a lot more complicated. In fact, this basis was a result of the leader’s own guilt— his sexuality. Marshall Applewhite’s insistent denial of his

homosexuality ultimately culminated in his denial of all elements of his Earthly life, forcing him to resort to extraterrestrial solutions to escape his human misery, and establishing the foundation of Heaven’s Gate. The Heaven’s Gate cult was able to attract followers for the same reason: through promising an escape from this world into a stage of higher human evolution in outer space.

This paper will lay the foundations of the infamous cult through discussing Applewhite’s backstory and how he encountered the inspirations that would later prompt him to form and develop the cult that would become Heaven’s Gate.
To understand the purpose of the cult, it is necessary to understand the creator’s motives and background. Son of a former soldier and Presbyterian minister, Marshall Herff Applewhite grew up in an extremely religious household. He was born on May 17, 1931, in Spur, Texas and seemed to have led a fairly normal life before founding the religious cult.3 He was a man who had many talents: he was an opera singer, an actor, a public speaker, an academic.4 In addition, the co-leader of the Heaven’s Gate cult was described by his family to have a charismatic character and a caring soul. In a 1997 interview with CNN, his sister recalls that “[Applewhite] was always a born leader and very charismatic. He could get people to believe anything."5 She also says about his personality that "He was quite the

family comic at times. He knew how to do something he called an elephant walk that would always get everyone laughing."6 He was also a devout Christian and he wanted to make his father proud. He had followed him into the seminary, led choruses at churches, and later taught music at the University of St. Thomas, a Catholic college in Houston.7 All in all, his life seemed fairly normal except Applewhite was harboring a huge secret: his homosexuality. He tried his best in his early life to suppress his urges when he married and had two children. It was reported, however, that he had a series of homosexual relationships in secret, as he was not able to suppress his desires completely. The event that derailed him from his conventional life occurred in early 1970, when he got fired from his job as a music professor at the University of St. Thomas. Administrators discovered that Applewhite was in a relationship with a male student, though they labeled the reason for firing as “health problems of an emotional nature.”8 In guilt of this own doings and his own desires, Applewhite had a mental breakdown and checked himself into a psychiatric hospital in hope to find a “cure” for his homosexuality. At the hospital, he met a 44 year-old nurse, Bonnie Lu Nettles, who was arguably the single most important person responsible for inspiring Applewhite with the ideas that would result in Heaven’s Gate.
Nettles had a strong interest in theosophy, which is a “philosophy maintaining that a knowledge of God may be achieved through spiritual ecstasy, direct intuition, or special individual relations” and biblical prophecy, and she shared those interests with Applewhite while he was staying at the hospital. She was raised by a baptist family before becoming a nurse, and married her husband Joseph Segal Nettles. Their marriage quickly deteriorated, however, because Nettles believed in the teachings of Brother Francis, a 19th century monk. Subsequently, she grew interested in conducting seances using mediums which led her to her future involvement in theosophy. Applewhite and Nettles quickly became friends, and she told him that their union was predicted and had been foretold to her by a divine being— an extraterrestrial— and that they had been given a divine assignment that they had to uncover.9 Applewhite came to the hospital to find a cure for his homosexuality, and Nettles’ prophecies and her knowledge gave him a comfortable explanation. Maybe he had been meant to come to the hospital to talk to her and that is why God made him homosexual. With that justification, Applewhite sank deeper and deeper into Nettles’ obsession and her predictions. The two read multiple works by Helena Blavatsky, the founder of the Theosophical Society.10 Applewhite and Nettles also studied the New Testament Bible closely, specifically focusing on the elements of asceticism and eschatology, and the two came to a conclusion. They believed that they had been called upon in the Bible. The two future co-leaders of Heaven’s Gate convinced themselves that they were the two witnesses in the Book of Revelation and that they were on an important spiritual mission. By June of 1974, they had solidified a basic outline for their beliefs: they must fulfill their biblical prophecies, as they had been given higher-level minds than other people by God. Or as Applewhite would put it, they had achieved “The Evolutionary Level Above Human” (TELAH).10