Jean-François Mayer
Before the 1994 “transit” of the Solar Temple made headlines across the world, few scholars were even aware of the existence of this small group. The following article was originally published in the January 1993 issue (no. 153) of the French newsletter Mouvements Religieux. Insofar as I know, it is the only research article ever published on the group before it became infamous. For this reason, it can be considered as historical material. Consequently, it has been translated into English for this volume without any changes, updates, or corrections. Of course, we know much more today about the group. Moreover, the article had not used all the information that I had already gathered at the time, and focused primarily on the person of Luc Jouret and his work as a representative case of the way the “cultic milieu” operated. The article was part of a wider research project on the history and sociology of alternative religions in Switzerland; the full results of that project were published in the form of a 400-page book, Les Nouvelles Voies spirituelles. Enquête sur la religiosité parallèle en Suisse (Lausanne, 1993).
Sometimes, the article was unknowingly premonitory—for instance when it claimed that the group would “draw researchers’ attention again one day,” although certainly not in the way the author had expected! The following article, published for the first time in English in this volume, provides an insight into the way the Solar Temple could be seen from outside before it became tragically famous.
As one will notice, the expression “Solar Temple” itself never appears. This reminds us that the group used several names (consecutively as well as simultaneously) over the years and launched several, partly overlapping structures, as can already be seen in several passages of this article. “Solar Temple”, however, became a convenient general label following the 1994 events. This paper covers what could have been described as the “exoteric” work of the organization in the late 1980s. In contrast, most of the later articles on the Solar Temple have focused on its inner circle.
As part of a large-scale study on new religious movements in Switzerland under the auspices of the Swiss National Foundation for Scientific Research (PNR 21), in 1987 we approached the Archedia Clubs active at the time in several cities of French-speaking Switzerland and France. In the fall of 1987, the “International Association of Sciences & Tradition Archedia Clubs” counted more than 350 members worldwide. The Archedia Clubs’ activities ceased during the summer of 1991. However, the movement embodied by the Archedia Clubs has not disappeared and could, in other forms, draw researchers’ attention again one day. The following case study is therefore intended as both a contribution to research on trends in contemporary alternative religiosity and an analysis of one stage in the history of a movement.
On 18 March 1987, homeopathic doctor Luc Jouret gave a lecture on the topic of “Love and Biology” in Lausanne (Switzerland) for “Archedia—Sciences and Tradition”. “In all existing forms, from the smallest to the largest, from the electron to the galaxy, we are witnessing a phenomenon of attraction,” read the flyer. “Can we speak … of an awareness underlying all things that drives us to regain our original unity?” The hundreds of people from Lausanne and beyond pressing their way into the room were undoubtedly expecting answers to these questions.
A talented speaker, Luc Jouret knows how to captivate his audiences. He projects dynamism and youthfulness; he speaks in a friendly voice and does not use notes. The fact that he is a doctor also adds to his aura. However, his lecture soon strays from medicine and onto other topics. The main thread in his discussion is that humanity is on the cusp of the Age of Aquarius; religions will still exist in this new age, but will be “called to transform themselves in a unitary vision.” Luc Jouret discusses healthy eating (the majority of diseases are caused by not eating properly) as well as apocalyptic topics (forests are dying, volcanoes will erupt, and so on). He thus seems to possess both scientific knowledge and traditional wisdom.
At the conference exit, members of the Lausanne Archedia Club handed out flyers advertising an informational meeting about this group and its activities. I sent in my registration form and attended the 15 April information session in a rented room at a cultural center. The president of the local club began by explaining to the small audience that the Archedia approach was based on one fact: humanity was heading toward an impasse. Yet people can change the world only by changing themselves, and such was precisely the goal of the Archedia Clubs: “Everyone participates in the healing of the world at his or her own level.” He continued to explain that, as far as practical considerations were concerned, each club was managed by seven members and concentrated on a particular theme—food was Lausanne’s. A plenary meeting was held once a month. Since Archedia International was in fact an international association, it supervised the local clubs and ensured that the Charter and club ethics were respected. Moreover, he said, a more interior and spiritual work existed; it was founded on the “Solar Tradition.” In addition to the “Exterior Relations Commissioner” (who was French), a Solar Tradition representative who had traveled from Geneva was also present at the meeting. During the question and answer session we learned that these spiritual teachings fall within a Templar tradition.
The Lausanne Club, founded three years earlier, counted 12 members at the time. The membership fees came to 142 Swiss francs per quarter, 105 of which went to Archedia International. The few newcomers present that evening were not asked to join the group immediately. Rather, the Archedia Clubs offered an “observer” membership as a first step; this permitted one to participate in activities without commitment (for three or six months, depending on the club) before making an informed decision. Of course, to respect certain thresholds in the progression, those with this temporary status were not allowed to participate in activities of the Solar Tradition branch (to which not all members of the clubs belonged, in any case). However, a three- to four-month preparatory course for entrance into the spiritual group was available.
This commitment-free trial period allowed contact to be maintained easily. On 6 May 1987, I was thus able to attend the monthly plenary meeting of the Lausanne Archedia Club. The meeting followed a precise order. In fact, that evening the club was inducting a new member. A vase containing a rose was placed on a table, and the new member read an “engagement of honor” aloud, promising to respect the ethics of the club and to work toward its growth.
There were about fifteen people present, including three “observer members.” The main topic of discussion was the first international convention of the Archedia Clubs, which had taken place in Tours in April. The results of Dr Jouret’s March conference in Lausanne were also discussed. Because of the large audience, they had tried to launch a variety of activities; but in light of the small number of “observer members” it seemed that the predictions had been too optimistic. We later learned that out of the 618 people present on 18 March, one member and five observer members joined two months later. The uncircumscribed nature of alternative religiosity makes it quite open to anything offered in the realm of the spiritual, but it does not lend itself to taking firm root: this was once again proven by the disproportionate number of enthusiastic audience members at Dr Jouret’s conference versus the number of those actually interested in joining the Archedia Clubs.
On 21 May 1987, another kind of event took place in Lausanne: an “inter-club” meeting for the clubs of the Lake Geneva region (French-speaking Switzerland and neighboring areas in France). Sixty to 70 people had traveled there to attend. The discussion focused mainly on exterior relations. Two main concerns were raised: communicating a unified image of the clubs and projecting an impression of professionalism to the outside world.
On 18 June 1987, the Lausanne Club organized a new information session. Of the 19 people present, nine were non-members. Several of the main topics of discussion from the 15 April session were picked up again, though in slightly different forms. At the 1 July 1987 club meeting, this information session was judged a success, even if it had resulted in only one observer member joining. However, it was noted in the minutes that, in order to meet the expectations of audience members, “it is necessary to further develop [the way we explain] the history of the club and what is really behind it.” The public is clearly interested in more than just the workshops on food—their curiosity is “above all piqued by the increasingly spiritual nature of Dr Jouret’s lectures,” as the president of the Lausanne Club explained at the 23 May “interclub” meeting.
On 27 June 1987, near Bonneville (the headquarters of one of the clubs), we attended the festival of St John along with the members of that region’s clubs. The event took place in a prairie, with a pole in the middle to mark the location of the bonfire—this spot had not been chosen at random, but according to cosmotelluric considerations. We made our way to the large circle, following a path marked by stakes to which ribbons had been attached. We were told that we should move within the circle only in the clockwise direction. A lot of attention had been given to the details: the harmonious arrangement of the buffet tables for example, as well as the trays of aesthetically pleasing food (freshly picked organic vegetables).
There was a friendly and relaxed atmosphere among the eighty or so adult and several dozen children and adolescents who attended this event. When it came time for the ceremony, everyone formed a circle around the pole, the symbolic representation of the earth’s axis. The lighting of the fire followed a precise order: seven people each brought a bundle of a different type of wood and read a short text summarizing the essential symbolic aspects of their wood before placing it on the pyre. The wood was then simultaneously set on fire by the club presidents in attendance. Chanting and dancing around the fire followed. All of this, combined with the nighttime and the magic of the fire, contributed to a very warm and sociable feeling. A certain number of people remained there until dawn to watch the sunrise, according to the ancient custom.
After these two months of attending Archedia Club events, it was already possible to summarize a few observations:
a) Triple structure in the movement’s activities: at the Archedian conference in Tours the need to pursue “Operation Pelican” was stressed. This involved setting up a (Solar Tradition) lodge for each club in the near future. The triple structure was observable in:
1. External activity: conferences, intended for large audiences attracted by Luc Jouret, and generally organized by Amenta (the name Amenta Club had been used by the group which had assembled around Luc Jouret before the Archedia Clubs were founded in 1984.)
2. “Internal-exoteric” activity: the Archedia Clubs proper, that had come into being in Geneva in 1984. According to Archedia leaders,
A group of men with different backgrounds and complementary abilities, aware of the deterioration of the world and the disappearance of traditional values, decided to gather together sincere men and women who were sensitive to the same concerns. At first existing in the form of experimental groups (Sciences & Tradition), they very quickly organized themselves into Clubs and, powered by their success and the desire to pursue further research into spirituality, the Solar Tradition Branch was born.
3. “Internal-esoteric” activity: the International Chivalric Order of the Solar Tradition, which was also created in 1984.
b) Structure already in place for a movement of much larger dimensions: the number of activities led by the handful of Lausanne members was striking. What is more, it all took place in a very structured context, each activity being recorded in minutes, reports, etc. The text of the “Universal Charter of the Sciences & Tradition Archedia Clubs,” the “International Constitution of the International Association of Sciences and Tradition Archedia Clubs” and the “Rules for Application” of the latter confirmed this first impression: there were precise and detailed rules, projects organized geographically by “sector,” “region” and “country”: from the start, the founders of the movement had thought big, intending to progressively develop it into a large-scale organization.
c) Emphasis on practical activities in the Archedia Clubs: anyone expecting long spiritual meditation sessions would have been rather surprised by the Lausanne Club’s activities. Its members placed a lot of importance on nutrition and organized cooking classes, workshops, etc. Although the Club had given up the idea of opening a vegetarian restaurant (too much of a commitment compared with the number of people willing to help out), one member was managing a health-food store in the heights of Lausanne. It had been created as a cooperative with the very active support of club members. This “practical” side was an explicit goal of the movement: “We are original in that we spread a Science of Concrete Life in the form of an initiatory spiritual teaching which can be applied to the Clubs’ practical projects (health, nutrition, education, cultural performances, etc.).” In fact, many spiritual seekers belong to esoteric organizations and apply different techniques, but in the end, very few change “in their everyday lives, their state of awareness and at the level of their being.” They discover new “ideas,” but “all these aspects … remain at the level of their ‘heads’—they neither enter their ‘hearts’ nor are ‘integrated’ in their lives” (Roche de Coppens 1986: 4).
d) Social side of club life: the club members working together to open a health-food store provides a glimpse of a level of social interaction going beyond simply belonging to a cultural club. Each new member, in principle, had a sponsor; this further reinforced personal connections. One of the advantages of Archedia Club membership given at the 18 June informational meeting was the fact that a traveling member would no longer have to stay in hotels but could be accommodated by other members.
At the end of June I decided to reveal the reasons for my participation to the club leaders I had met. This approach was well received and gave me the opportunity for even greater access, including the chance for a long private interview with Dr Jouret in December 1987. Of course, my sources have not been limited to the information coming from the Archedia Clubs themselves. I met some (occasionally very critical) outsiders who had followed certain stages in the development of the movement or Dr Jouret’s activities. I also met at least one former member. Nevertheless, it is difficult to reconstitute the early history of the Archedia Clubs. Much of the data is vague, even contradictory, from one informant to another, and I do not claim that the following information is complete: I will gratefully accept any corrections.
If my information is correct, the Archedian movement has its origins in both a series of Geneva-area spiritual groups and an attempt to recreate the Order of the Temple. In Saconnex d’Arve, in Geneva, there was a very attractive conference center called the Golden Way Foundation. When Luc Jouret arrived in Geneva in the early 1980s he was invited there to give several lectures for the Foundation (he had begun a career as a professional speaker in Belgium two years before). In 1983, Jouret spoke there for the Amenta Club (cf. La Suisse newspaper, 11 March 1983). Apparently, this club was international from the beginning, since that same year it also listed an address in Quebec, where Dr Jouret would also lecture. (During my field investigation in 1987, I several times heard mention of a farm established by the movement in Canada. Swiss members would occasionally travel there to work.) In 1984, there were Amenta Clubs in Brittany, Angers and elsewhere. The Archedia Clubs seem to have been created that same year, but it is clear that they grew from a foundation that was already well developed even before Dr Jouret came onto the scene.
The International Chivalric Order of the Solar Temple was also born in 1984. It was the fruit of the 1952 attempt to bring about the resurgence of the Order of the Temple in France; it began its present phase of activities at a meeting held in Switzerland on 21 March 1981 (cf. Delaforge 1987: 136–7). The date of 1952 is significant if one takes into account that the Archedia Clubs willingly circulated writings and cassettes by Jacques Breyer, whose work was frequently alluded to. Jacques Breyer then lived in Arginy Castle (in Rhône) and belonged to the group at the origins of the foundation of the Sovereign Order of the Solar Temple (founded 12 June 1952), although he left it in 1964 (cf. Bayard 1989: 43). Undoubtedly this is where the 1952 Order of the Temple resurgence efforts (to which the International Chivalric Order of the Solar Temple alluded) had taken place—the “solar” reference confirms this impression. Breyer is the author of a rather difficult work; his main book, Arcanes solaires; ou les secrets du Temple Solaire,1 was published in 1959 (cf. Destin, March 1960, p. 1665). We also find an echo of his work in the journal La Voix Solaire2 (founded in 1961), which often featured Jacques Breyer’s articles, all written in his very particular and rather hermetic style.
The Renovated Order of the Temple—founded in 1968 with Julien Origas at its head—would follow in the tradition of the Sovereign Order of the Solar Temple and. AMORC.3 (It is interesting to note that, according to Luc Jouret himself, several members of the Solar Tradition had come from AMORC.) Luc Jouret was said to have met Origas (who had also been to the Golden Way Foundation) for the first time in a restaurant in Geneva. Jouret briefly succeeded Origas as head of the Renovated Order of the Temple after the latter’s death, but the hostility of some members soon forced him to resign. As in any conflict of this kind, severe accusations were made on both sides. In 1983 Luc Jouret joined the Renovated Order of the Temple, which was dissolved in the autumn of 1984. Its members received the first four issues of Excalibur, a journal being put out by Amenta at the time (it stopped publication in the summer of 1987).
Clearly, the origins of the Archedian activities had a background that was much more complicated than Dr Jouret’s audiences could imagine. Especially striking is the interaction between the different groups. But it can be said that their core group, as it appeared in 1987, was composed mainly of:
a) ex-members of the Renovated Order of the Temple;
b) patients of Luc Jouret (from his homeopathic practice in Annemasse);
c) people who had been to Luc Jouret’s lectures.
Because of the large role played by Luc Jouret, one must examine his approach and message, such as they could be observed in 1987. I will deliberately emphasize in the following section the “spiritual” aspects of his approach, without attempting to cover the entirety of his discourse.
A Belgian citizen, Luc Jouret was born in Africa on 18 October 1947. He studied medicine at the Free University of Brussels, earning his doctorate in 1974. He then practiced general medicine for three years. After this, dissatisfied by traditional medicine, he began a “personal quest through all medical practices and made many trips all over the world,” synthesizing the practices into a medicine that “treats man in his totality.” One learned from Luc Jouret’s speeches that he lived in the Philippines from 1976 to 1977 and that he worked there with two or three well-known healers, acting “at the level of the energetic bodies of his patients.” In the second of a series of interviews broadcast in 1987 on Yvette Rielle’s program L’Eternel Présent4 (Radio Suisse Romande), Luc Jouret declared “for me, the Philippines was an environment to learn my profession,” and that it was an experience that led him to “return to the West to accept my evolution.” He said his travels were the chance for him “to integrate different human components.” But Luc Jouret’s experiences were not only medical in nature, he said: although his was a “non-religious education” and a “difficult youth”, he had had spiritual experiences at certain times:
There were some transcendent experiences in my life, some experiences that made me directly experience a superior aspect of man—to which I had previously been blind … (L’Eternel Présent, 1987, 1st episode)
Dr Jouret acknowledges having been curious, having done multiple experiments, having gone to investigate many groups. He says, however, that he had not read much in the field of spiritualism. But, in his mind, the homeopathic approach necessarily had to lead to other dimensions, he explained during the private interview I conducted with him in December 1987. “Perhaps medicine needs to have a dimension that is—why not?—sacerdotal” (Conference of 5–6 October 1987 in Lausanne).
in all great civilizations we notice that doctors were always priests and vice-versa … I am convinced…that a doctor who is not concerned with reintegrating himself into a dimension in which the spiritual is more important than the physical cannot understand his patient as such. And this is rather the tragedy of medicine today, not to denigrate its authentic value concerning what it has allowed as far as transformation of man, but it nevertheless still leads to a dead end … because it refuses to integrate the spiritual man into the physical man, even though the spiritual has conditioned the physical … . (L’Eternel Présent, 4th episode)
The union of therapeutic and sacerdotal is key to understanding the philosophy that attracted Luc Jouret and several other doctors who ended up taking on the role of “spiritual guide” (even if they do not always define their work in these terms). The simple fact of being a doctor confers an aura of credibility. And, particularly if the doctor insists on a “holistic” approach or integrates spiritual considerations into his work, he can easily find himself slipping into a role similar to one that, in the past, a priest would have played for his congregation. This can happen even more easily when the doctor is already supposed to hold the answers to physical or even psychological problems: if he goes on to address other fundamental questions it is only a shifting or extension of his competence.
It is … a common observation in the literature about social influence and decision-making that relatively high-status, especially when based on technical expertise, can easily be used to gain deference in areas beyond the scope of actual competence. (Ofshe 1986: 186)
In this particular case, the “sacerdotal” dimension that Luc Jouret insists upon perhaps manifests itself more concretely because, according to one participant, there are liturgical celebrations within the Templar branch, at least some of which include an “Essene rite.” On this subject, it is interesting to note that an “Essene rite” was already being practiced in the Sovereign Order of the Solar Temple (cf. Plume and Pasquini 1980: 338), the group that had resulted from the 1952 resurgence.
Although Dr Jouret claims to be “one of the representatives [of the Temple resurgence] in the secular world” (Geneva, 13 October 1987) and that he is guided by Templar superiors (interview of 15 December 1987), he does not present himself as an initiate, but as a person mandated to take care of work in a precise sector. However, at the seminars he hosts, Jouret clearly brings his audience to believe that they belong to a small chosen circle, and that they can understand the meaning of events and world changes: no one is here by chance; the people present have come because they are ready to understand certain things. I met people at seminars in Switzerland who had come from Belgium, Nice, and Brittany simply to hear Jouret speak for one or two evenings.
Like many others, the message propagated by Luc Jouret is intimately tied to the conviction that we are entering the Age of Aquarius: each astrological era is marked by a totally different rate of vibration; at the beginning of the Age of Aquarius we can no longer live with laws from two thousand years ago, a time when no scientific contributions had yet been made (Geneva, 5 October 1987). “If we do not consider tradition in light of scientific facts, it is useless; nothing can be learned from it. By the same token, if science does not incorporate tradition into its facts, it too is useless” (L’Eternel Présent, 3rd episode). We live in a period of fundamental transmutation: “We are in the reign of fire, everything is being burned” (Geneva, 13 October 1987). Gigantic upheaval is on the way, “we are making a leap into what I call macro evolution” (L’Eternel Présent, 3rd episode). Luc Jouret feels that humanity is currently in a very sad state; that it “has completely slipped” (L’Eternel Présent, 5th episode). Humanity’s brutishness is all the more tragic as it is occurring at the moment in evolution when new abilities can awaken, when man should transform himself and make a leap:
Our brains will undergo modifications, physical in the second phase, but certainly subtle and vibratory at first, which will cause man (the ones who are able) to react completely, and in a different way to events. (L’Eternel Présent, 2nd episode)
For, despite all humanity’s deviations, “the worlds’ energetic contingencies are such that there is hope that a group of men and women will rise up to live the experience” (L’Eternel Présent, 2nd episode). In two lectures (in October 1987) on the topic “Templar tradition and the modern world,” Luc Jouret explained the nature and function of the Temple in a little more detail: it is the manifestation of a celestial archetype among men and will bring together men and women who are marked with the celestial seal and are willing to serve. Templars reappear during each phase of humanity’s development. The Temple is at the origin of all the great currents of awareness—even religious movements and Masonry.
What then is the attitude toward religions? The tragedy of faith, Luc Jouret says, is that it isolates the Creator from His Creation, that it sees a God outside of us, even though according to mystic vision, “the Creator is fused with His Creation” (Lausanne, 5 October 1987). “… the essence of God is what makes things evolve …” (L’Eternal Présent, 4th episode). Or, in other words: “My notion of God is that He is the essence of what makes all things happen” (Lausanne, 5 October 1987); “God cannot be defined in terms other than movement and evolution” (Lausanne, 6 October 1987).
Luc Jouret makes frequent reference to Christ, as he does to Christianity in general: he has given talks on the Apocalypse (Lausanne, October 1987) and “Parables throughout the Gospels” (Geneva, November 1991). But it is clear that Luc Jouret’s interpretation is rather different from that of the Churches. Christ is presented as an initiate, as “a solar entity” (L’Eternal Présent, 5th episode). “All religions fall and have failed in their duty”; “the Vatican has certainly forgotten the primordial and basic teachings” (13–14 October 1987). Nevertheless, according to Dr Jouret, the Templar is fundamentally Christian. The Temple pursues seven core goals that we can attempt to summarize, according to Jouret, in the following ways:
a) Reestablish knowledge of authority and power (power of the Spirit) in a period of dissolution;
b) Affirm the primacy of the spiritual over the temporal (one must pass through exaggerated materialism to rediscover the value of the mind);
c) Make man aware of his dignity (pull him out of his brutishness, laziness, unhealthy eating, consumer mentality);
d) Help humanity through its passage by being aware that we will live through a dissolution on a collective scale;
e) Participate in the assumption of the Earth: the Templar is aware that the Earth is his surrogate mother, and Templars have always been devoted to their earthly mothers, represented by the Virgin; the universal Virgin gave birth to the universe; one of the Temple’s goals is to make the Earth sacred and preserve it.
f) Help unify the Churches (and reunite the three great religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam);
g) The key objective is the return of Christ in solar glory.
The essence of Luc Jouret’s message can be characterized by the word “unity”: awareness must be brought back to the original unity; a scattered awareness must be reassembled into a unitary awareness. The final phase of the cycle is the “reunification of awareness to Omega”. We pass through the disparity of life only so we can merge ourselves again into primordial unity. This “unitary” perspective indeed corresponds to an aspiration that is quite widespread in the world of alternative religiosity.
The Archedia Clubs’ activities ceased in the summer of 1991, and a certain number of high-ranking members seem to have distanced themselves from the movement during this period. But the Solar Tradition branch still exists, and Dr Luc Jouret, who recently published a book in Canada (Jouret 1992), is pursuing his career as an international speaker under the auspices of Atlanta. The movement has seen changes, reorganizations, and departures, but one must not lose sight of the permanence behind the changing labels, nor let oneself be misled by their variety.
1 Solar Mysteries or the Secrets of the Solar Temple. After 1995 new evidence surfaced. The author today is certainly less persuaded that secret services really had a significant role in the event. For the author’s (so far) final conclusions about what happened see Introvigne and Mayer 2002.
2 The Solar Voice.
3 The Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis.
4 The Eternal Present, broadcast on Channel 2 of the Swiss National Radio.