In 1983, Edward Mielnik, a 42-year-old Polish boiler stoker, claimed to have had a vision of the Virgin Mary, who urged him to save the Slavic people with the assistance of extraterrestrials. He began spreading his message in his native city of Wrocław and eventually expanded his activities to other cities.
Mielnik taught that Slavs came to Earth from a planet called Atlantea eight billion years ago and settled in what is now Poland. At the same time, settlers from a planet called Hebro arrived on this planet and became the Hebrews. They were at odds with the Atlanteans in a struggle that had been going on since the beginning of Earth’s history.
Mielnik said that the Earth was in its seventh and final phase of civilization and that a global cataclysm would take place before the end of the century. He said that 144,000 white people and 600,000 people of other races would survive the catastrophe and would make their way to Ślęża Mountain in Poland, where they would be evacuated aboard spacecraft and taken to a planet called Mirinda. Poles would take precedence in the evacuation, which was expected to take place on May 15, 1992.
Mielnik also taught that Jesus was half Polish and half Hebrew and chose to side with the Slavs. The Slavs produced the bioenergy needed to power the spaceships for their voyage to Mirinda after arriving on Earth, and Mielnik said that the Hebrews intentionally instigated the rise of Adolf Hitler and his alliance with Stalin in order to kill as many Poles as possible to wipe out the supply of Slavic bioenergy and make the exodus impossible.
By the early 1990s, Mielnik’s loose-knit group became the International Center for the Renewal of People and Earth Antrovis, active throughout Poland and with a few supporters in Germany and The Netherlands. Mielnik claimed that several key members of the group had already been evacuated from Earth, selected because they had strong bioenergy, in order to help prepare for the larger evacuation. Mielnik began presenting himself as a “bioenergy therapist.”
After May 15, 1992, came and went, Mielnik revised the date of arrival to 1994, also predicting the assassination of Pope John Paul II, a Pole, that year. Mielnik also instructed his followers that they needed to start physically collecting bioenergy from their bodies to power the soon-to-arrive spaceships. Some male members reportedly removed their testicles to serve as fuel. In April 1995, the body of a former member of Antrovis was discovered in a river. The middle-aged male had been killed by repeated blows to the head and his testicles had been removed. Two surgeons who were members of Antrovis were questioned but released without charge.
Former Antrovis member Andrzej Cielecki disappeared at age 18 in 1993. He had become obsessed with Antrovis after reading about it in a UFO-themed magazine and began to take part in its activities. He stopped going to school and locked himself in his bedroom for hours to meditate. He became disillusioned with Antrovis after the May 1992 deadline passed, but his mental health continued to deteriorate. He refused to ever take off his hat and would only eat oranges, claiming that other food was poisonous. He vanished on March 1, 1993. A 16-year-old with ties to Antrovis would go missing in August of that same year, but neither disappearance was ever conclusively linked to Antrovis.
Antrovis officially disbanded in 1993, but Mielnik stated that this was because its mission was complete, not because of growing public scrutiny. In fact, the group continued its operations underground until at least the end of that decade. There is no direct evidence of Antrovis activity since 1998, though in 2018, an obscure blog was discovered that purported to be maintained by a small group of remaining devotees.
Antrovis was included in a government report on cults operating in Poland in 2006, but the report was criticized for its lack of any recent information on Antrovis and for including groups that had never operated in Poland, such as the American Branch Davidians. Mielnik has not been heard from since the 1990s and it is unknown if he is still alive.
Key Sources:
Cheriton, J. (2024, March 26). The bizarre secrets of the UFO murder cult of “Antrovis.” Tesla Telegraph.
Du Toit, F. (2023, August 4). Antrovis cult: Space Slavs. Wolfenhaas.
Wright, A. (2023, June 27). The Antrovis Cult. Mysterious Universe.
Encyclopedia of Cults, Sects, and New Religious Movements 