Revelations 3:22

Disclaimer: Beyond what Rolling Stone tells me (and my friend whose last roommate grew up in the fold), I really don't know much about Scientology.

It seems to have something to do with alien bits living inside you, excessive tithing, forced separation from friends and family who aren't OK with your expensive new spiritual lifestyle, entrepreneurial sci-fi authors, Tom Cruise, and Beck. I also heard somewhere that L. Ron Hubbard was quoted in the 1940s as saying that writing is fine, but the real money is in inventing a new religion.

So, we've established I'm no expert, but the whole thing seems pretty sketchy. And now I have this new theory: I believe L. Ron Hubbard stole the premise of his so-called religion from the plot of The Snow Queen.

In case your childhood was a while back, let me refresh your memory. Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale begins with an evil demon:

"One day, when he was in a merry mood, he made a looking-glass which had the power of making everything good or beautiful that was reflected in it almost shrink to nothing, while everything that was worthless and bad looked increased in size and worse than ever."

The naughty students at the demon's school decide to take this mirror up to heaven to mock the angels, but it slips out of their hands and shatters, and the pieces fly all over the world. One shard winds up in the eye of a little boy named Kay, and another shard pierces his heart. Drama ensues, and he spends the rest of the book trapped in a castle, trying to escape the curse the glass has placed on him. He shuns his friends and family. His heart must be melted to be healed.

Now let's take a look at the basic premise of Scientology, as stated on a list of FAQs for newcomers to the religion:

Your soul, called a thetan, has a problem. It has several (perhaps millions) of unwanted house guests stuck to it. These other souls, called Body Thetans (or Clusters if they are in a bunch), are stuck to your soul and must be removed to enable your own thetan to function properly.

I could do a quote-by-quote comparison between the text of Andersen's story and texts pertaining to Scientology, but I don't have time and you probably aren't that interested. But the parallels are very present and very . . . I already said sketchy, right? Well, I'll say it again. Sketchy sketchy sketchy.

The whole thing just sets off alarms for me, especially the part where followers have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to achieve the highest stages of Scientologist "enlightenment."

Which leads to my other theory: The reason celebrities and other super-rich folks are so into this religion is because they think anything they have to pay for must be higher quality than what they can get for free. The more expensive, the better.

Amen! Wait—no.