We leave this Earth to rediscover, with all clarity and in all freedom, a Dimension of Truth and the Absolute, far from the hypocrisies and the oppression of this world, to realize the seed of our future Generation
—Transit to the Future
Death is the same for us all.
It is how we leave Life that makes the difference.
You must be able to die to the profane world
In order to be born again to the Cosmic World.
—Ritual for the Donning of the Talar and the Cross
The Order of the Solar Temple (Ordre du Temple Solaire, or OTS), is usually referred to as one of the “Big Five,” that is, together with Peoples Temple, the Branch Davidians, Aum Shinrikyo, and the Heaven’s Gate the most well-known New Religious Movements that are connected to the use of violence (see, for example, Lewis 2011). The first murders committed by the OTS occurred on September 30, 1994, when a three-month-old baby (Christopher Emmanuel) was killed, together with his parents, who were ex-members of the group.1 A wooden stake had been driven through his heart, as the OTS leaders apparently believed that the baby was none other than the Antichrist. Four days later, on October 4, five persons were stabbed to death at the villa of the group’s leader, Joseph Di Mambro, and the villa was destroyed by fire. Another fire started at 1:00 AM on October 5 at an OTS center in Ferme des Rochettes, in the canton of Fribourg, Switzerland. The authorities later discovered 23 bodies, some of which had been shot, while others had been suffocated by plastic bags placed over their heads. A few hours later, three additional vacation chalets at Les Granges sur Salvan, in the canton of Valais, were set on fire, and another 25 bodies were found, including those of the leaders of the Solar Temple, Joseph Di Mambro and Luc Jouret. The 53 victims (not counting the three homicides committed on September 30) were divided into three different categories.
The first category, consisting of 15 members who were referred to as the “Awakened,” belonged to the inner circle of Di Mambro and his right-hand man, Luc Jouret. This inner group of members committed suicide by taking poison. The second category, the “Immortals,” who formed the majority of the dead members (30 people), were either shot or smothered. The eight members of the final category were labeled as “traitors” and were found murdered. In one of the four letters or “Testaments” that were sent out to 60 journalists, scholars, and government officials at the time of the fiery end of the OTS, it was explained that the authors of the Testaments saw themselves as the “judges appointed by a Superior Order,” which in the esoteric worldview of the OTS meant that the so-called “Hidden” or “Cosmic Masters” had appointed them to this task:
Those who have breached our Code of Honor are considered traitors, they have suffered and will suffer the punishment they deserve for the ages of the ages.
All is accomplished according to the mandates of Immanent Justice. We hereby affirm that we are in truth, the judges appointed by a Superior Order.
In view of the present irreversible situation, We, the Servants of the Rose+Croix, strongly reaffirm that we are not part of this world and that we are perfectly aware of the coordinates of our Origins and our Future. (Lewis 2006: 178)
These initial murder-suicides were followed over a year later, on December 16, 1995, by another group suicide in the southeast of France, near Grenoble, where members of the OTS from France and Switzerland had gathered in a forest. Most of the 16 members who were found dead, had been drugged, shot to death, and then placed in a circle, while two remaining members had poured gasoline over the bodies, set them on fire, and then committed suicide. The violence did not end here, however. Fifteen months later, on the vernal equinox (March 20, 1997), five remaining members committed suicide in Quebec, Canada. In sum, the violence of the Solar Temple led to the death of 77 individuals in Canada, France, and Switzerland between September 30, 1994, and March 20, 1997.
Naturally, the murder-suicides of the Solar Temple raise a number of important questions about the relationship between religion and violence in general, and new religious movements and violence in particular. Why did the leadership of the OTS turn to violence to solve the problems the group was facing? What sorts of problems did the group face? What caused many of the members to obey Di Mambro and Jouret and either murder their fellow members or commit suicide? What motivated the remaining members to commit suicide in 1995 and 1997 in order to follow the others? While the anti-cult movement and the press have usually provided simplified explanations (for example, brainwashing) for the violence of the OTS, scholars have argued that one must take into account the complexities of the case and to eschew single-factor theories. In this chapter, I first give an overview of the Solar Temple and then discuss a number of theories that have been put forward to explain the violence of the OTS.
After having been a member of various esoteric and initiatory societies, including the Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis (AMORC) in France between 1956 and the late 1960s, Joseph Di Mambro (b. 1924) founded an esoteric group called the Centre for the Preparation of the New Age in 1973. This group would later assume a variety of names over the years, of which Order of the Solar Temple would become the most well-known name in the Anglophone world after the murder-suicides committed in 1994. After having established its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1978, the movement developed into a highly active organization with two distinctive sides. On the outside, the activities centered on public lectures and workshops on topics common to the French-speaking esoteric and New Age scenes. The movement’s public appeal was enhanced by the recruitment of the Belgian homeopathic physician, Luc Jouret, who apparently was a charismatic speaker who easily caught the attention of his audience. Jouret would soon find himself in a leading position in the organization, second only to Di Mambro himself. These public lectures and workshops functioned as front organizations and recruiting grounds for the inner workings of the organization. On the inside, the organization was structured as a traditional esoteric initiatory society, with an hierarchical structure divided into various degrees through which the members progressed by undergoing secret rites of initiation.
A common characteristic of many new religious movements is that their organizational structure is in more or less constant change, and in that respect the Order of the Solar Temple was no exception. Introvigne has described the various layers of the organization as a “Chinese box” system (Introvigne 1995: 274). The outer shell consisted (at least for some time) of the semi-public Amenta Club (which later changed its name to Atlanta), in which Jouret, as mentioned, lectured on New Age topics such as homeopathy, naturopathy, and ecology. This outer shell worked as a recruiting ground for members to the inner and semi-secret Archédia Clubs, which were established in 1984. According to Introvigne, in this layer of the organization, one could “find a definite ritual and an actual initiation ceremony, with a set of symbols taken from the Masonic-Templar efforts of Jacques Breyer” (ibid.: 274). The third and central layer of the organization, to which only the most trusted members of the Archédia Clubs were invited, was the secret International Order of Chivalry Solar Tradition (founded in 1984), which later changed its name to the Order of the Solar Temple. To further complicate matters, a fourth organization existed: the Golden Way Foundation (previously called La Pyramide), founded by Di Mambro, which served as the parent organization of the Amenta and Archédia clubs. The order was quite successful in French-speaking countries but failed to establish itself in the English-speaking world, particularly in the United States and Australia. In the English-speaking world, the order was known by at least two names: the Order of the Solar Temple and the Hermetica Fraternitas Templi Universali. Compared to other Rosicrucian and Templar organizations, the Solar Temple was a comparatively small organization. At its height in 1989, the order had a total of 442 members: 90 in Switzerland, 187 in France, 53 in Martinique, 16 in the United States, 86 in Canada, and 10 in Spain (Mayer 1996: 54).
From the early 1990s, the OTS went through several crises, which included the defection of several members, including members of the inner core, and even Di Mambro’s own son. Some of these former members would criticize the OTS in public and the movement was quickly branded as a cult by the media. Around the same time, Canadian authorities began to investigate the OTS and it was in particular charges of possession of illegal weapons that led the movement’s premises in Quebec to be raided in 1993. Clearly, the news coverage and the police investigations were interpreted by the leadership of the movement as not only a conspiracy against the OTS, but also as symptomatic of the Kali Yuga, or dark age, in which society is increasingly becoming corrupt and degraded. In one of the so-called Testaments, titled “To Lovers of Justice,” it was stated at the outset:
Let the events which have entertained the Canadian press during the past several months permit everyone to recognize that everywhere in the world politicians, financiers and judicial officials have delighted in scorning democracy, squandering public resources, [and] manipulating, through the intermediary of a mass media hungry for scandals and sensationalist events, whole crowds of people which they themselves have rendered totally passive and unconscious. (Lewis 2006: 183–4)
The text then proceeds to list eleven points to illustrate how the media and the authorities had acted, with “cynicism and cowardice,” in this “scandal” (ibid.: 186). The events, in combination with other factors (discussed below), triggered a chain of events that lead to the “transit,” that is, the murder-suicides mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. The decision to make the transit was announced in one of the Testaments:
We, the servants of the Rose+Croix, considering the urgency of the present situation, affirm:
that we refuse to participate in systems set up by this decadent humanity;
that we have planned, in full state of consciousness, without any fanaticism, our transit which has nothing to do with suicide in the human sense of the term;
that according to a degree emanating from the Great White Lodge of Sirius, we have closed and voluntarily blown up all the sanctuaries of the Secret Lodges so that they will not be desecrated by impostors or by the ignorant;
that, from the Planes where we will work from now on and by a just law of magnetism, we will be in the position of calling back the last Servants capable of hearing this last message. (Ibid.: 178)
As self-professed servants of the R+C—that is, the Rosicrucian Order—the worldview of the Solar Temple was firmly rooted in western esotericism and, more specifically, in neo-Templarism, twentieth-century Rosicrucianism, and the New Age movement. Western esotericism is a scholarly construct that covers numerous currents that share a family resemblance and can be described as a form of holistic spirituality characterized by resistance to the dominance of either pure rationality or doctrinal faith. Instead, the importance of the individual effort to gain spiritual knowledge, or gnosis, is often emphasized.
Furthermore, esoteric discourses are often connected to secrecy and rejected knowledge.2 This gnosis is not limited to intellectual or rational knowledge but is based on experiential knowledge that is unconstrained by the limits of the intellect. The path to gnosis is often believed to pass through self-knowledge since humankind is seen as a microcosm of the universe—the macrocosm. Human beings are created in the image of God and therefore reflect the whole of creation. The created universe is usually regarded as an emanation of the godhead, and since humans are perceived as a microcosm of the macrocosm, the esotericist believes that the godhead can be found within people. The quest for self-knowledge is thus also a quest for the divine aspect of existence, just as knowledge about the godhead is of necessity knowledge about us. The holistic understanding of the universe to be found within western esotericism is based on the idea that the entire universe is alive and traversed by a network of sympathies and antipathies that link everything in nature (Faivre 1994: 10). The network, which is often referred to as mystical links, constitutes the theoretical basis of esoteric “sciences,” such as astrology and ritual magic.
The Templar tradition of which the Solar Temple was part is a modern interpretation and reconstruction of the medieval Knights Templar, founded early in the twelfth century as a military monastic order whose chief object was to protect pilgrims traveling in the Holy Land, then known as “Outremer.” The Order of Knights Templar was disbanded by Philip IV, “the Fair,” (1268–1314) and Pope Clement V (1264–1314) in the first decade of the fourteenth century. In 1310, 54 Knights Templar were burned at the stake, and, according to Introvigne (1995: 279), the first 53 OTS deaths were intended to mimic these fiery deaths (a Swiss ex-member, Thierry Huguenin, managed to escape before being killed, thereby frustrating the plan to reach the full complement of 54 deaths). According to a Masonic legend, the Templars survived in the Highlands of Scotland and later reappeared in public as the Order of Freemasons. The first person to present this theory of continuation in public was Chevalier Michael Ramsay (1686–1743), a Scot who lived as an expatriate in Paris. In a famous oration given at a lodge in 1737, he claimed that the Order of Freemasonry was founded in the Holy Land by medieval crusaders. Although he did not explicitly identify the crusaders as Knights Templar, the connection was certainly made by the Freemasons. Soon enough, perhaps as early as 1737, Masonic Templar degrees appeared (Bogdan 2007: 95–100). During the second half of the eighteenth century, templar degrees flourished on the Masonic scene, but soon the Masonic supremacy over the Templar degrees began to be questioned. If Freemasonry is nothing but the medieval Knights Templar in modern form, then why should Freemasonry be required at all if one wanted to be a modern Templar? As Massimo Introvigne has shown in great detail, the origins of independent neo-Templarism can be traced to Bernard-Raymond Fabré-Palaprat (1773–1838), who in 1805 proclaimed himself Grand Master of the Templar Order. During the 1950s, French esotericist Jacques Breyer and later Raymond Bernard revived the Templar tradition, and by 1980 more than a hundred rival Templar orders existed across a wide spectrum, ranging from social clubs to organizations that indulge in sexual magic (Introvigne 1995: 267–73).
To the members of the Solar Temple, death was a transition, a notion that Di Mambro had most likely acquired during his time in the Ancient and Mystical Order Rosæ Crucis (AMORC), which was founded by H. Spencer Lewis (1883–1939) in 1915 and quickly became the largest Rosicrucian group in the world. According to one source, the AMORC may now have as many as 250,000 members (Barrett 2001: 357). The highly eclectic teachings of the organization have a firm foundation in occultist spirituality. Death is seen as a transition in which the physical body (which is subject to change and decay) becomes separated from the soul. According to H. Spencer Lewis, “the soul of man, or the divine essence which animates him is the only part of man which is not subject to the law of change” (Lewis 1941: 238). The soul is thus eternal and not limited by the death of the physical body. These sentiments were later echoed in the rituals of the Solar Temple (Bogdan 2006).
The Order of the Solar Temple was organized as a Masonic initiatory society with a strict hierarchy divided into different degrees. As in Craft Freemasonry, the Solar Temple had three degrees: Frères du Parvis, Chevaliers de l’Alliance, and Frères des Temps Anciens (Brothers of the Court, Knights of the Alliance, and Brothers of the Former Times, respectively). It is unclear whether these three degrees made up the Solar Temple or constituted an even more secret, inner group. At least one source suggests that in 1990 the Rule of the Solar Temple “described an order under the absolute authority of a secret inner group called the Synarchy of the Temple,” which consisted of the aforementioned three degrees (Hall and Schuyler 1997: 294). In order to attain these degrees, members had to undergo a rite of initiation for each level. The number and titles of the officiants in the initiation rituals varied, and it is thus impossible to give a clear picture of how the local “sanctuaries” were organized. In the “Dubbing of a Knight” ritual of the OTS, nine officiants were mentioned: priest, deacon, ritual master, maître, chaplain, sentinel, master of ceremonies, guardian, and escorts.
The practice of rituals appears to have been the core activity of the Solar Temple. These rituals seem to have been highly elaborate and suggestive and were often enhanced by the use of opera music, visual effects, and possibly hallucinogenic drugs (Palmer 1996: 306). The visual effects included simulated lightning, in which apparitions of the masters appeared and objects such as the Holy Grail materialized (Mayer 1999: 217). The rituals of the Solar Temple can be divided into two categories: magical/mystical ceremonies and rites of initiation. The first category allegedly included sex magic practices (Introvigne 1995: 276), in which couples practiced “sperm drinking” (Palmer 1996: 311). The extent to which such practices actually occurred is, however, unclear. The second category of rituals, rites of initiation, appears to have been the central activity carried out by the OTS. According to Susan J. Palmer, the Solar Temple constructed “special underground sanctuaries which were concealed behind false walls and reached by secret passages, requiring the ritual descent of 22 steps” (ibid.: 311). She does not explain what the 22 steps refer to, but, given the esoteric context, they probably allude to the 22 paths on the kabbalistic Tree of Life. As discussed below, the surviving rituals of initiation of the OTS provide us with invaluable information for the understanding of the ritualistic and symbolic interpretations of life and death and of the esoteric worldview of the movement.
Scholarly literature on violence and the new religious movements often center on the four well-known cases of the 1990s (the OTS, Branch Davidians, Aum Shinrikyo, and Heaven’s Gate), as well as the Peoples Temple murder-suicides at Jonestown in 1978. Based on these cases, a number of theories have attempted to explain the use of violence. Although these cases differ in several significant aspects, the tendency has been to focus on the similarities in order to find common denominators that might explain the violent ends of these groups. Chief among these common denominators are a millennial/apocalyptic ideology, a high-demand organization, isolation from the surrounding society, and a charismatic leadership.
The millennial/apocalyptic ideology denominator signifies an end-of-days expectation, which in the case of violent groups is connected to a fierce condemnation of the existing social order. The apocalyptic view of history is combined with a radically dualistic worldview, in which the group is identified with the “good” side, while society, understood in its widest sense, is identified with the “evil” side. Identification with the good side affords a group with a cosmic purpose in the sense that its members perceive themselves as chosen by God for a specific task. However, millennialism and apocalypticism are not restricted to violent new religious movements but are integrated parts of many Christian traditions. In order to differentiate between the millennialism of more violence-oriented groups and traditional millennialism, Catherine Wessinger distinguishes between progressive and catastrophic millennialism. Common to these two types is the belief in collective salvation that may be earthly and allegiance to a “principle whose authority is greater than the authority of civil law” (Wessinger 2000a: 8). Progressive millennialism is the belief that humans, under the guidance of divine agents, can progressively build the millennial kingdom in harmony and peace, while catastrophic millennialism presupposes that the millennial kingdom will be accomplished by an apocalyptic catastrophe orchestrated by God or some other superhuman agent. The catastrophe will destroy the current evil social order and lead to the subsequent salvation of the elect. According to Wessinger, the Order of the Solar Temple adhered to a catastrophic millennialism expressed in New Age terminology. The basic premise of the New Age movement (in sensu stricto) is that humankind is about to make a spiritual evolutionary leap forward as we enter the Age of Aquarius. The transition from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius is generally considered in the New Age movement as a positive step and is often viewed as connected with a transition from a dualistic form of thought (as exemplified by ancient religions such as Christianity) to a monistic form of thought. However, the Solar Temple took a highly pessimistic view of the evolution of consciousness and stressed that evolution “had reached its end on Earth.” Wessinger argues that as a result of internal weaknesses and the simultaneous experience of cultural opposition, the leaders of the Solar Temple developed a pessimistic theology that justified a transit in order to escape the imminent cataclysm on earth (Wessinger 2000b: 223–4). Catastrophic millennialism is made evident in a number of passages of the so-called Testaments, four short texts that were sent to various scholars and the media at the time of the murder-suicides in October 1994 with the aim of justifying the members’ last actions. One of these texts, “Transit to the Future,” states the following:
The race is heading irreversibly toward its own destruction. All of nature is turning against those who have abused it, who have corrupted and desecrated it on every level. Man will pay heavy tribute for he remains no less than the only one responsible for it.
Awaiting favorable conditions for a possible Return, we will not participate in the annihilation of the human kingdom, no more than we will allow our bodies to be dissolved by the alchemical slowness of Nature, because we don’t want to run the risk of their being soiled by madmen and maniacs. (Lewis 2006: 183)
Catastrophic millennialism is expressed even more forcefully in the second testament, titled “To All Those Who Can Still Understand the Voice of Wisdom … We Address This Last Message”:
The current chaos leads man inescapably to face the failure of his Destiny. In the course of time, the cycles have followed one another in accordance with precise rhythms and laws. Different civilizations disappeared in the course of cataclysms that were destructive but regenerative, nonetheless none of these reached a level of decadence such as ours.
Subjected to the devastating effects of individual and collective egocentricity, marked by a total ignorance of the Laws of the Spirit and Life, this civilization will no longer escape sudden self-destruction. (Ibid.: 177)
In seeking to understand the violence enacted by groups such as the Solar Temple, the importance these groups attached to millennialism has been stressed by numerous authors (for example, Robbins and Palmer 1997; Daniels 1999; Bromley and Melton 2002), as well as by Wessinger, in her volume How the Millennium Comes Violently: From Jonestown to Heaven’s Gate (2000a), and the edited collection Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence: Historical Cases (2000b). However, millennialism (or even catastrophic millennialism) is not seen as the sole reason that groups such as the Solar Temple become violent. As already mentioned, Wessinger stressed the importance of internal weaknesses and the simultaneous experience of cultural opposition that the OTS exhibited prior to the transits. In a similar manner, Hall, Schuyler, and Trinh stress in Apocalypse Observed: Religious Movements and Violence in North America, Europe, and Japan that focusing only on millennialism might lead one to overlook the importance of the “apocalyptic tensions between the established social order and countercultural religious movements” (Hall, Schuyler, and Trinh 2000: 3). In the case of the Solar Temple, though, the external opposition did not pose any imminent threat, and it is argued instead that “the mystical apocalypse of deathly transcendence” was the primary impetus to the violence of the Solar Temple (ibid.). Likewise, John Walliss argues in Apocalyptic Trajectories: Millenarianism and Violence in the Contemporary World (2004) that what triggered the leaders of the OTS to abandon their belief in survivalism and instead to adopt an apocalyptic worldview that emphasized the necessity of escaping from earth was the experience of cultural opposition—viewed as persecution—in combination with the crumbling of the charismatic authority of Di Mambro and Jouret, caused by various internal factors. Introvigne and Mayer, in line with the aforementioned scholars, argue that four factors might explain the OTS tragedy, namely, predisposing apocalyptic ideology, perception of external opposition, internal dissent and apostasy, and the crumbling charismatic authority of the leader (Introvigne and Mayer 2002: 178–83).
There has, however, been some criticism of the primacy of millennialism/apocalypticism in explaining the violent end of the Solar Temple and of the fact that discussion has lumped together the murder-suicides of the Solar Temple and Jonestown, the ATF/FBI raid on the Mount Carmel community, the Tokyo subway poison-gas attack by Aum Shinrikyo, and the Heaven’s Gate suicides. James R. Lewis has questioned the often-assumed connection between violent movements (for example, the OTS), millennialism, and external provocation in an essay with the telling title “The Solar Temple ‘Transits’: Beyond the Millennialist Hypothesis” (2005); he instead focuses on internal factors, especially the failing health of the leader of the OTS, Di Mambro. Lewis argues that Di Mambro not only had a grandiose self-image (a common enough feature in many new religious movements) but also developed strategies of legitimacy that created an organization in which members had to be totally committed and in which dissenting views were not tolerated. Di Mambro was perceptive enough to realize that he lacked the necessary charisma to control the members directly, so he isolated himself from the majority of them, thereby creating an air of mystique and authority around himself. Direct dealings with the members on a day-to-day basis were transferred to the more charismatic and younger Luc Jouret, something that Di Mambro apparently later regretted as he grew increasingly paranoid. Furthermore, Di Mambro based his authority to a large extent on the fact that he was perceived as the sole source of communication with the “Cosmic Masters,” who guided the Solar Temple. This would prove to be an unstable foundation for his authority when members began asking for proof that the Cosmic Masters existed. These factors led to the crumbling of Di Mambro’s charisma and legitimacy.
More important, however, was Di Mambro’s failing health. Apparently, Di Mambro was suffering from kidney failure, incontinence, and severe diabetes and believed he also had cancer. According to Lewis, the failing health of the leader is an essential factor in our understanding of “suicide cults.” By distinguishing the three groups that imploded in suicide—Peoples Temple, the Solar Temple, and Heaven’s Gate—from the other violent new religious movements such as Aum Shinrikyo and the Branch Davidians, Lewis stresses that these groups shared the fact that their leaders (Di Mambro, Marshall Applewhite, and Jim Jones) believed they were seriously ill or even dying—something that set them apart from Koresh and Asahara. Based on his analysis of Peoples Temple, the Solar Temple, and Heaven’s Gate, Lewis presents a list of traits that are essential characteristics of a suicide group:
1. Absolute intolerance of dissenting views.
2. Members must be totally committed.
3. Exaggerated paranoia about external threats.
4. Leader isolates him/herself or the entire group from the non-believing world.
5. Leader’s health is failing—in a major way, not just a transitory sickness; or, alternately, the leader believes he or she is dying.
6. There is no successor and no steps are being taken to provide a successor; or, alternately, succession plans have been frustrated.
7. The group is either stagnant or declining, with no realistic hopes for future expansion. (Lewis 2005: 311)
Peter Åkerbäck (2008), a Swedish historian of religions, agrees with Lewis that it is problematic to view violent new religious movements as constituting a particular category by themselves, since this approach emphasizes their similarities while downplaying their differences. While focusing on the suicide groups (the Solar Temple, Peoples Temple, and Heaven’s Gate) in his discussion of previous research, as exemplified by John R. Hall, Catherine Wessinger, and John Walliss, Åkerbäck argues that even though these scholars emphasize the groups’ religious ideology—especially an apocalyptic and millenarian worldview—their research is problematic from two perspectives. First, their discussions of the movements’ apocalyptic worldviews are often too general in character. The analyses are superficial in the sense that they deal only with basic and general assumptions about apocalyptic and dualistic worldviews without actually discussing in detail the ideology of the movements themselves. Secondly, Hall, Wessinger, and Walliss attempt to understand the context of and reasons for the groups’ collective suicides and overlook their religious foundation. Åkerbäck emphasizes that, as a consequence, parts of their ideologies have been neglected, while others have been highlighted. He argues that previous scholars have emphasized the groups’ similarities while minimizing the differences in their ideologies. In fact, according to Åkerbäck, the reality is the converse: these groups are characterized not so much by their similarities as by the differences in their ideologies.
Åkerbäck describes these differences as an ideology of opposition, a temporary ideology, and an ideology of metamorphosis. The first category, the ideology of opposition, describes the ideology of the Peoples Temple, in which apostolic socialism was seen as an antithesis to capitalism. The temporary ideology is connected to the Solar Temple, whose ideology was based on the notion of a select few individuals who represented the temple, manifested throughout history, and assisted humankind in its spiritual evolution. After the mission had been accomplished, the group would withdraw and advance to a higher spiritual level. Åkerbäck uses the ideology of metamorphosis to denote the ideology of Heaven’s Gate, which centered on reaching a level above human. These three forms of ideology give witness to three highly different forms of worldview and soteriology, and thus one is forced to question the often-assumed similarities of these groups’ ideologies and their import to the understanding of the subsequent collective suicides.
In “Death as Initiation: The Order of the Solar Temple and Rituals of Initiation” (2006), I have taken a somewhat different approach to the murder-suicides of the OTS. The role of the leaders of a “suicide cult” is undoubtedly of particular importance in trying to understand the motivating factors for extreme groups like the Solar Temple. However, at the same time such a focus runs the risk of avoiding the question of what motivated the members to follow their leaders into death. Strategies of authority notwithstanding, suicide must appear as a plausible option for the members in order for them to carry out such a drastic action. In the case of the Solar Temple, I have argued that a close reading of the rituals of initiation and the esoteric context of the movement can afford us with at least a partial key to understanding why the members (at least some of them) chose to join the transit. Through the rituals, it is possible to understand the symbolic universe of the members and thus to place the transit within a frame of reference. The practice of rituals of initiation was central to the Solar Temple, and members progressed higher up in the hierarchy by undergoing them. A central theme in these rituals is the notion of purification, which was connected with the element of fire. The idea of spiritual purification was also connected to death symbolism, which is a common theme in many western rituals of initiation, such as the Master Mason degree of Freemasonry. However, in the case of the OTS, this was connected to a neo-gnostic dualism in which the material body was seen as less important than the spiritual self. The highly ritualistic circumstances of the murder-suicides and the fact that all traces of the Solar Temple were to be erased by fire indicate that the murder-suicides were seen as a final ritual of initiation, a rite of passage that led from the profane world to the spiritually pure world of another planet. The following extract from one of the rituals of initiation (Ritual for the Donning of the Talar and the Cross) found at the OTS headquarters in Switzerland gives an idea of the content and symbolism of these rituals of initiation:
Death is the same for us all./It is how we leave Life that makes the difference.
But always remember/that Death is an illusion./In fact,/It is only another aspect of Life.
At this Station, let me tell you/that you must also consider Life/as ephemeral as smoke passing by,/or a cloud drifting overhead,/and all its glory/is like a flower in the meadow/which unfolds in the morning and dies at eventide.
In the world of illusions,/all must pass away.
Everyone must one day confront/The great problem of Death/which alone gives meaning to Life./You must be able to die to the profane world/in order to be born again to the Cosmic World.
Therefore, let the quality and the wholeness of Life/compensate for its shortness./You, wishing to be a Knight of the Temple,/Do not think of living according to Cosmic Good.
And since nothing is more uncertain/than the hour of Death … prepare yourself each day to be FREE/to leave this Earth/and to continue/on a parallel Invisible plane,/free from all human and terrestrial chains/which keep you prisoner of yourself. (Bogdan 2006: 150)
The murder-suicides of the Order of the Solar Temple stand out as one of the very few examples of a western esoteric group that turned violent. The ritual purification of the soul strived for in the initiatory system of the Order, neo-Templar notions of chivalry and self-sacrifice, and Rosicrucian beliefs in the importance of secret societies and Hidden Masters, in combination with New Age notions of an evolutionary leap forward for humankind as we enter the Age of Aquarius, formed the basic components of the esoteric worldview of the Solar Temple. In contrast to other violent new religious movements—apart from Aum Shinrikyo—the members of the Solar Temple were not marginalized members of society. On the contrary, the members of the OTS were generally well-integrated into society, well-connected politically and socially, and affluent.
To sum up, the various hypotheses for the murder-suicides of the Solar Temple often emphasize catastrophic millennialism in combination with factors such as perception of external opposition, internal dissent and apostasy, and the crumbling charismatic authority of the leader. Furthermore, the explanations of violence offered by scholars are often reached by a comparison with other violent new religious movements, especially the well-known cases from the 1990s (the Branch Davidians, Aum Shinrikyo, and Heaven’s Gate), together with the Peoples Temple murder-suicides at Jonestown in 1978. This comparative approach has, however, been criticized for its tendency to focus on the similarities of these different groups, while to a large extent ignoring their differences. A final criticism has involved the assumption that millennialism is essential to our understanding contemporary violent groups.
Åkerbäck, Peter (2008). De obeständiga religionerna: Om kollektiva självmord och frälsning i Peoples Temple, Ordre du Temple Solaire, och Heaven’s Gate. Stockholm: Stockholms universitet.
Barrett, David V. (2001). The New Believers: A Survey of Sects, Cults, and Alternative Religions. London: Cassell.
Bogdan, Henrik (2006). “Death as Initiation: The Order of the Solar Temple and Rituals of Initiation,” in The Order of the Solar Temple: The Temple of Death, ed. James R. Lewis. London: Ashgate, pp. 133–53.
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1 This chapter is based on Bogdan (2006) and Bogdan (2011).
2 Discussions concerning the definition of western esotericism are ongoing. For the most significant recent works on the subject, see Hanegraaff (2012; 2013), and von Stuckrad (2010).