Definition of "Xemu"

Publication of secret documents blaming the world's troubles on an interplanetary tyrant named Xemu has held the Church of Scientology up to public ridicule. But church officials insist the disclosure will leave no long-term scars, and they predict the controversial organization will continue to gain members and to prosper.

1985 November 17, Miami Herald staff, “Scientology battered but not bowed in row over secret papers”, in Miami Herald, page 12A

Xemu ruled the 90-planet Galactic Confederation 75-million years ago, when overpopulation was a problem. So Xemu solved the problem: He trapped selected beings and flew them to volcanoes on Earth, then called Teegeeach. He then dropped powerful H-bombs on the volcanoes. The beings were destroyed in a wall of fire. However, their spirits, or "thetans," weren't. Gathering them into clusters, Xemu trapped the thetans in frozen alcohol and glycol.

1988 December 23, Stephen Koff, “Xemu's Cruel Response To Overpopulated World”, in St. Petersburg Times, page 10A

After the explosions, the Thetan spirits, deprived of bodies, were packaged by Xemu and electronically implanted so they would reproduce in later generations of human beings. Each human today is a cluster of Thetans with one dominant. This is the cause of aberration, internal conflict and unhappiness. Only through paying for the costly further Scientology training could humans break through the wall of fire, revisit the Xemu incident, have their less dominant Thetans removed and at last become unaberrated, mentally healthy.

1998, Robert Cogan, Critical Thinking: Step By Step, University Press of America, page 226

A more elaborate version of the Xenu/Xemu story appears in a lecture attributed to Hubbard from September 1968, also now widely available online. This provides further details of Xemu's evil plot: apparently, the thetans were packed into refrigerated units, put onto DC 8 planes, and then blown up in volcanoes. After that, the disembodied thetans were collected, packed into boxes, and forced to watch 3-D movies. Meanwhile, a group of loyal officers revolted and captured Xemu, locking him in the center of a mountain with an electric fence.

2011, Hugh B. Urban, The Church of Scientology: A History of a New Religion, Princeton University Press, page 103