Massimo Introvigne
On 4 and 5 October 1994, fifty-three people were found dead in Switzerland and in Canada. Their bodies—some showing signs of violence suffered before the fires—were found in the incinerated centres of a neo-Templar movement called originally International Order of Chivalry Solar Tradition or, for short, Solar Tradition, and after 1990–91 Order of the Solar Temple. The movement is part of one of several currents which as a whole compose the universe of the contemporary occult-esoteric movements, the neo-Templar tradition. In this paper I propose to trace, first of all, the history of the neo-Templar tradition, then that of the Solar Temple, relating the essential information on the tragedy of October 1994, and finally suggesting some possible interpretations.2 © 1995 Academic Press Limited.
The modern neo-Templar tradition is not a continuation of the Order of the Temple, a monastic-chivalric Catholic order founded in 1118–19 by Hugues de Payens (or Payns) and dissolved by Pope Clement V after the cruel persecution by Philip the Fair, King of France, in 1307. After its suppression, the order survived for a few decades outside of France, but by the beginning of the 15th century the Templars had totally vanished. The theory of a secret continuation of the order has been criticized by academic scholars of medieval Templar history, such as Régine Pernoud, as “totally insane” and tied to “uniformly foolish” claims and legends.3
The idea that the Templars, though officially suppressed, secretly continued their activities until the 18th century, spread mostly among French and German Freemasons.4 When it was introduced from England to continental Europe, Freemasonry could in fact hardly present itself as merely the heir—no matter how much esoterically reinterpreted in its meaning—of the British trade guilds of masons (composed not only of architects, but also of simple bricklayers). Its origins were too humble to be acceptable to the European nobles Freemasonry hoped to attract. The legend was thus formulated of persecuted knights finding a “hiding place” in the English and Scottish guilds of masons, where they could continue their activities. Especially in Germany, these mysterious knights were quickly identified with the Templars. These are the origins of the Templar degrees of Freemasonry. They were created in continental Europe, but extended to the United Kingdom through the activities of Thomas Dunckerley (1724–95), who in 1791 founded the “Grand Conclave of Knights Templars” (later known as “Grand Priory of Knights Templars”) within English Freemasonry.5 “Templar” Masonic degrees are today found in both the Scottish and the York Rites, and originated from the present Encampments of Knights Templars, composed exclusively of Freemasons and widespread within Anglo-American Freemasonry.6
The presence of Templar degrees in the great majority of Masonic rites and obediences found today throughout the world must be correctly interpreted, and there could be two different levels of interpretation. At a first level, one could mention the idea of propagating a new organization such as Freemasonry through a captivating ritual, such as the one derived—with a lavish display of costumes and swords—from the chivalric world of medieval times. At a second level, dating from the 18th century, a tension was already developing within Freemasonry between a rationalistic “cool current” and a “warm current,” more interested in esotericism and the occult. Such tension not only divided each of the several obediences and lodges from the others, but also often existed within the same obediences where a lodge could easily include both rationalists and occultists.7 The Templar legend appealed, for different reasons, to both “cool” and “warm” currents. The “warm current” presented medieval Templars as esoteric magicians, keepers of occult secrets (in the wake of what today’s historians regard as libelous allegations of witchcraft generated by the propaganda spread by Philip the Fair in his desire to destroy the Templar order for economic and political reasons). The “cool current,” considered the Templars to be not only victims of tragic historic circumstances, but rebels against the French monarchy and the Roman Church (“against the Throne and the Altar,” according to the terminology of that time), and therefore predecessors of the Enlightenment protest and, later on, of the French Revolution. This consideration is once again false, if we consider the Templars’ real history, but represents an integral part of the myth surrounding them in the 18th century.
During the French Revolution—an especially complicated time in Masonic history—not everyone agreed with the assumption that the set of Templar degrees was only a part of the Masonic system, and that it was therefore to remain subordinated to Freemasonry as a whole and to its leadership (although today such an assumption is accepted in the majority of Masonic obediences and rites). The first disagreements originated in the Lodge of the Knights of the Cross in Paris. There it was argued that, if the Templar legend is true and the British guilds of Freemasons are “interesting” only because they have offered, since the fourteenth century, a hiding place to the heirs of the Templar Order, then the Templar Order precedes Freemasonry, and the Masonic organizations must be subordinated to the (neo-)Templar ones and not vice versa. This controversy began with a Masonic adventurer active at the time of the French Revolution, a Paris physician called Bernard-Raymond Fabré-Palaprat (1773–1838). In 1804 he declared to have discovered—together with his colleagues of the above-mentioned Masonic Lodge of the Knights of the Cross in Paris—some documents proving the existence of an uninterrupted succession of Templar “Grand Masters,” operating secretly from the suppression of the order in 1307 to 1792 (when the last “hidden” Grand Master, Duke Louis Hercule Timoléon de CrosséBrissac, died in Versailles, massacred by the Jacobins). With the French Revolution and the fall of the French monarchy, the Templars were now able to come into the open. In 1805 Fabré-Palaprat reconstructed the Templar Order, and proclaimed himself Grand Master. The idea of an autonomous Templar Order (independent of Freemasonry, unlike the Templar degrees) was generally well accepted in the occult subculture, and caught the interest of Napoleon himself, who authorized a solemn ceremony in 1808.8
In spite of Napoleon’s interest, the Catholic Church remained obviously hostile to neo-Templarism. Fabré-Palaprat called the Roman Church “a fallen church” and founded in its place an “esoteric,” so-called “Johannite” church, of which more later—due to his supposed prerogatives as Templar Grand Master—he consecrated as bishop the radical socialist and former Catholic priest Ferdinand-François Châtel (1795–1857). From the 1830s onwards the neo-Templar movement intertwines therefore with the “independent churches,” schismatic groups led by “bishops” claiming an irregular, but nevertheless “valid” consecration of more or less remote Catholic or Orthodox origins, due to the Catholic theory that the apostolic succession may validly continue also outside the Church of Rome as long as the consecrating bishop is a “real” (although schismatic or excommunicated) bishop and was in turn consecrated by a “valid” bishop. The intertwining still remains today, within certain limits, and often, wherever there is a neo-Templar order, we find an “independent church” under the same leadership (and vice versa). There is no evidence that Luc Jouret, the co-founder of the Solar Temple, was consecrated as a bishop, but he was ordained a priest in one of the French “independent churches” and in this capacity occasionally celebrated what he called an “Essene ritual,” in fact a version of the Catholic Mass.
In any case, Bernard-Raymond Fabré-Palaprat gave birth to a neo-Templarism independent of Freemasonry, though largely composed of “knights” who were at the same time Freemasons. Today the Templar knights and degrees within Freemasonry are found mostly in Anglo-Saxon countries, while Fabré-Palaprat’s autonomous neo-Templarism has remained largely confined to Latin countries.
After Bemard-Raymond Fabré-Palaprat’s death in 1838, the neo-Templars experienced their first schism, dividing promoters and opponents of the ties between the Templar Order and the Johannite Church of Ferdinand-François Châtel. (The Johannite Church, the history of which is not part of this paper, continues to have heirs to this day, though not all of them are at the same time neo-Templars.) The two branches, led respectively by Count Jules de Moreton de Chabrillan and Admiral William Sydney Smith, reconciled in 1841 under the leadership of Jean-Marie Raoul. The Templar Order had, however, gone out of fashion and—in Masonic terminology— one of Raoul’s successors, A.M. Vernois, put it “to sleep” in 1871. Later on, the “regency” of the order was given by some surviving members to the poet Joséphin Péladan (1858–1918), who, however, was mainly interested in another order he himself created, the Order of the Catholic Rose-Croix of the Temple and the Grail. Those were the years of the occult revival of the late 19th century. The Templar Order, with dozens of other groups, ended in the great melting pot of occult orders operated by the strange bedfellows Joséphin Péladan and Papus (nom de plume of the medical doctor Gérard Encausse, 1868–1916).9 During these years, a certain “Templar” terminology and symbology was fashionable in a long series of occult movements of different origins: to quote just some of the most relevant examples, the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), was founded by Austrian industrialist Carl Kellner (1850–1905) and made famous later by the British magician Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) in the world of ceremonial magic; and the Ordo Novi Templi (ONT) was created in 1907 by Jorg Länz von Liebenfels (1874–1954) within the German “Ariosophy,” a pan-German and racist version of Rosicrucian and theosophic themes, which later had a real, but often overestimated, influence on Nazism.10 In all these groups, “Templar” symbols were more or less prominent and were used side by side with other symbols of a different nature, within the frame of worldviews which differed from those of the Templar Order founded by FabréPalaprat.
The succession of Fabré-Palaprat’s Order of the Temple continued in Papus’s Independent Group of Esoteric Studies, and later on in its Belgian branch, KVMRIS (Ordre Kabbalistic du Rose-Croix), an organization particularly interested in sex magic.11 In such environments, the neo-Templar tradition easily blended in with others (such as the neo-Pythagorean, Martinist and Rosicrucian traditions), especially since many occult orders shared the same leadership. In 1932 the Order of the Temple was legally incorporated by the Belgian group under the name of the Sovereign and Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem (OSMTJ), having as its “Regent” Théodore Covias (the number of members was considered to be too small to nominate an actual “Grand Master”). The next Regent was Emile-Clément Vandenberg, elected in 1935. In 1942—in the midst of World War II—the Order of the Temple agreed to pass the regency on to a member residing in the neutral country of Portugal, Antonio Campello Pinto de Sousa Fontes, who secured for the neo-Templar movement a great international propagation, opening national “priories” in almost all Western countries.
In 1970 an international convention met in Paris to elect Antonio Campello Pinto de Sousa Fontes’s successor as head of the OSMTJ.12 The majority of national priories wanted to elect his son Fernando, but at the convention a turn of events caused Antoine Zdrojewski, a general of Polish origin but a French citizen and resident, to be unexpectedly elected as Regent. The 1970 convention started a rather unclear connection tying neo-Templars, secret services, and European politics. The turn of events that brought on the election of Zdrojewski was in fact due to the massive enrolment in the Sovereign and Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem by members of Service d’Action Civique (SAC), a private French right-wing organization with ties to the Gaullist party: half-way between a private secret service and a parallel police. Right after the election, Zdrojewski nominated as his chargé de mission Charly Lascorz, an influential member of SAC. The OSMTJ’s headquarters were located on the same premises as Etudes Techniques et Commerciales (ETEC), a Paris corporation later exposed as a front for SAC. The OSMTJ, unsanctioned by any law—unlike the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, whose passports are recognized as valid by many countries—began issuing “diplomatic passports” in the name of the order, from which many members of SAC benefited. In 1972, the police—accusing ETEC of several irregularities, including possible collusions with organized crime—raided ETEC’S premises in Paris and put an end to its operations (seen by the press as a “cover” for SAC’s illegal activities). As a result of the raid, in 1973 Antoine Zdrojewski put the OSMTJ’s French Priory “to sleep”. The history of SAC ended with the murder of police inspector Jacques Massié (a local leader of SAC) and his family in Auriol, near Marseille, in 1981. This affair, one of the most obscure of recent French history, culminated in a court case, and in a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry, which dissolved SAC in 1982. During the trial—held in Aix-en-Provence in 1985—Jacques Massié’s career within Antoine Zdrojewski’s OSMTJ was brought to light. Even after the OSMTJ’s official dissolution in 1973, in fact, SAC members had kept alive the order’s activities, which included the trafficking of OSMTJ passports and (according to press sources) an international traffic of weapons (never fully proved) between the neo-Templars connected with SAC and the notorious Italian Masonic Lodge P2 headed by Licio Gelli (later also dissolved in Italy after a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry).
The election of Antoine Zdrojewski in 1970 also brought about a schism among the neo-Templars. Fernando Campello Pinto de Sousa Fontes declared the election invalid and proclaimed himself as Regent, as his father’s successor, thus creating in almost every country at least two orders of the Temple (often sharing the same name, OMSTJ): one loyal to Sousa Fontes and one loyal to Zdrojewski. Especially important for the number of members and for international relations was the Swiss Great Priory, directed by Alfred Zappelli and recognized by Fernando Campello Pinto de Sousa Fontes. When Antoine Zdrojewski left the stage in 1973, Alfred Zappelli tried to operate from Switzerland on an international scale, and to salvage what was left of Zdrojewski’s organization, establishing a French Priory dependent on the Swiss one. He then nominated as leader of the French Priory—according to press sources—Georges Michelon (also a member of SAC). At the time of the murder in Auriol, Antoine Zappelli issued a press release, clarifying that Jacques Massié had no part in his OSMTJ. During the same years Philip Guarino, an American political lobbyist, introduced himself as leader of an OSMTJ Priory in the USA. Philip Guarino was also—according to the Italian Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on the P2 Lodge—the American “correspondent” of Licio Gelli’s lodge. Perhaps it is for this reason that a file on the OSMTJ was found during one of the raids carried out by the Italian authorities at Licio Gelli’s villa in Arezzo. Many “fringe” and “irregular” Freemasons belonged to an Italian Grand Priory of the OSMTJ (established, as it seems, with Alfred Zappelli’s authorization) which had as bailli (local leader) Pasquale Gugliotta (himself a member of the P2 Lodge) and comprised, among others, Pietro Muscolo of Genoa and Luigi Savona of Turin—both leaders of “clandestine” Masonic fraternities and, according to the Parliamentary Commission, Masonic allies of Licio Gelli.13
At this point however, the OSMTJ loyal to Sousa Fontes or Zappelli and the remainder of Antoine Zdrojewski’s OSMTJ were no longer the only two main characters of the neo-Templar scene. Almost everywhere, “independent’ orders had sprung up, which—when not claiming to be receiving direct messages channeled from medieval Templars from the spirit world—produced genealogical trees which usually included both Bernard-Raymond Fabré-Palaprat and Antonio Campello Pinto de Sousa Fontes. It is perhaps also worth mentioning two branches stemming neither from Antoine Zdrojewski nor from Fernando Campello Pinto de Sousa Fontes. The first branch was established by a bizarre Spanish gentleman, Guillermo Grau, who—convinced that he was a descendant of the last Aztec Emperor, Moctezuma II—began claiming, in the 1960s, the throne of Mexico under the name of Guillermo III de Grau-Moctezuma, granting (not for free) honors, chivalric tides and even university degrees from a (mail-order) “college” in his “kingdom.” At that time a student of esoteric lore, Antonia Lopez Soler asserted that the Templars, suppressed since 1307 all over Europe, had survived in Catalonia. The alleged Moctezuma enthusiastically espoused not only the theory, but also the student, changing Antonia Lopez Soler’s name to Countess Moctezuma and immediately proclaiming himself Grand Master of a Catalan Branch of the OSMTJ. The Catalan Branch, founded in the 1960s, began establishing priories all over the world in the 1970s, taking advantage of the conflict between Fernando Campello Pinto de Sousa Fontes and Antoine Zdrojewski.
A second “independent” branch sprang from the mystical-esoteric experiences of Jacques Breyer, a member of the current most interested in esotericism in French Freemasonry. After these experiences, which he underwent in 1952 in the castle of Arginy, France, the French occultist came into contact with Maxime de Roquemaure, who claimed to be a descendant of a branch of the medieval Order of the Temple which had survived through the centuries not in Catalonia but in faraway Ethiopia. Breyer and de Roquemaure subsequently founded the Sovereign Order of the Solar Temple (OSTS). Some of the initial members of the OSTS founded one of the many French Masonic organizations, the National Grand Lodge of France “Opéra” (the history of which is outside the scope of this paper). The OSTS faced a crisis in 1964 following Breyer’s resignation, but was reorganized twice after that, in 1966 and 1973.14 Within this order appeared most persistently apocalyptic ideas on the end of the world and the glorious return of the “Solar Christ.”
The more apocalyptic neo-Templar ideas caught also the interest of Julien Origas (1920–83), who frequented other occult orders as well—including the Saint Germain Foundation in Marseille (not to be confused with the Foundation of the same name in the USA, which constitutes the organizational structure of the new religious movement called I AM Religious Activity). The French Saint Germain Foundation was led by a certain “Angela” who claimed to be a reincarnation of Socrates and Elizabeth I of England, and at the same time the mother of the Count of Saint-Germain, the eighteenth-century French occultist who never died and is still active—according to ideas common to dozens of groups of theosophical origins—in the Grand Lodge of Agartha, composed of “Ascended Masters,” which secretly governs the world. Julien Origas was also a member of the world’s largest Rosicrucian organization, the Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis (AMORC), founded in the United States by Harvey Spencer Lewis (1883–1939) and extremely successful in the French-speaking countries. It is in those same French-speaking countries, in fact, that AMORC tried, in the 1970s, to gain a sort of total control of the esoteric community. Due to widespread interest in Martinism, for example, in order to avoid AMORC members seeking Martinist experiences elsewhere, AMORC created its own Martinist order. Around 1970, Raymond Bernard, then “Legate” of AMORC for the French-speaking countries (today he has no more ties with AMORC, but in the meantime much has changed within the international Rosicrucian community), enthusiastically embraced Julien Origas’s idea of creating a Renewed Order of the Temple (ORT)—not to be confused with the similarly named Order of the Renewed Temple joined by famous esoterist René Guénon (1886–1951) at the beginning of the twentieth century.15 Origas’s ORT may have offered the opportunity of keeping within AMORC fold members of the occult subculture interested in joining a neo-Templar group. It seems that the creation of the ORT was even confirmed by the apparition of a mysterious “White Cardinal” to Raymond Bernard in Rome, and that, as a result of this event, Julien Origas was crowned “King of Jerusalem” with an actual crown. For several years before the coronation, Origas had been in contact with Alfred Zappelli, and their two groups (the ORT and the Swiss Branch of the OSMTJ) —without actually coming together— had developed some common ventures, even if some strong disagreements arose soon after.16 It seems that there was also a “Secret Order” (assembling important members of the ORT and several branches of the OSMTJ), unknown to the other members, within which were formulated ideas on the imminent end of the world and on the presence on Earth of living “Ascended Masters,” including Origas and “Angela,” the leader of the Saint Germain Foundation. Members of the “Secret Order” even offered prayers “to Angela and Julien” (Origas), both destined to assume a critical role in the soon-coming universal conflagration.
Julien Origas, to say the least, did not receive good press coverage in France. Several journalists noticed his relations with neo-Nazi and White supremacist groups from half of Europe and (once again) with members of SAC. A few years later, his neo-Nazi ideas and his relations with the Saint Germain Foundation in Marseille caused his separation from AMORC. Julien Origas’s ORT continued to operate independently (undergoing, of course, several schisms), accepting ideas from Jacques Breyer’s OSTS and from “Angela” on the end of the world and on messages received directly from the Ascended Masters of the Grand Lodge of Agartha. After Julien Origas’s death in 1983, these ideas became even more odd. It was in 1981 that Luc Jouret, one of the main characters in the Solar Templar tragedy, first contacted Origas’s ORT.
Around 1980 all over the world there were over one hundred rival Templar orders. Today there are probably many more, and every large western city (in Italy as well as in other countries) hosts at least a couple of them. It would be a serious mistake—especially right after the October 1994 tragedy—to lump all of them together. They vary greatly, from apocalyptic associations to “cover groups” for espionage and political machinations, from organizations dealing with sex magic to others that are little more than clubs where one dresses as a Templar mainly to cultivate social and gastronomical interests (as happens in a couple of Italian organizations).
Luc Jouret (1947–94) was born in Kikwit, Belgian Congo (present-day Zaire), to Belgian parents on 18 October 1947.17 Fear of violence against Belgian citizens at the time of decolonization persuaded his parents to settle back in their home country, where Luc enroled in the Department of Medicine of the Free University of Brussels. In the 1970s the Belgian police opened a file on Jouret as a member of a small communist group, the Walloon Communist Youth. In 1974 he graduated as a medical doctor. In 1976 he enlisted as a paratrooper and took part in the Kolwezi raid, which allowed Belgian troops to bring back home a group of fellow citizens threatened in Zaire. The prevailing ideas among paratroopers were diametrically opposed to Luc Jouret’s communism but, according to a former college mate, Marc Brunson, now a veterinarian, the young doctor asserted that, at the time, joining the paratroopers “seemed the best way to infiltrate the Army with Communist ideas.”18 After the military experience, his interests focused on alternative forms of medicine. He studied homeopathy and later became a registered homeopathic practitioner in France (in many French-speaking countries homeopathy is in fact regulated by law). In 1977 he had visited the Philippines (later he also reported visits to “China, Peru and India”) in order to study the techniques of local spiritualist healers. According to Jean-François Mayer, Jouret claimed—in a long interview he had with him in December 1987—that the experience in India was crucial in turning him to homeopathy, although he had been in contact with European homeopathic practitioners before.19 For a short while he supposedly became a follower of guru Krishna Macharia. In the early 1980s he started a homeopathic practice in Annemasse, France, receiving clients also from nearby Switzerland. His success as a homeopath was remarkable. People came to him from as far as the other side of the Atlantic and, after a few years, Jouret had several practices in France, Switzerland and Canada.
In the 1980s, Geneva and Montreal were perhaps the two cities with the greatest number of esoteric groups in the world. Besides continuing with his homeopathic practice, Luc Jouret also became a lecturer on naturopathy and ecological topics, active in the wider circuit of the French-speaking New Age movement. Around 1981, he established the Amenta Club, an organization managing his conferences (the name was later changed to Amenta—without “Club”—and then to Atlanta). He spoke in New Age bookstores (in France, Switzerland, Belgium and Canada) and in eclectic esoteric groups such as the Golden Way Foundation of Geneva (previously called La Pyramide). This had as its leader Joseph Di Mambro, 1924–94, who later became the co-founder—and largely the real leader—of the Solar Temple, while the Golden Way became, to all intents and purposes, the parent organization of the Atlanta, Amenta and later Archedia clubs and groups (see Chapter 1). In 1987, Jouret was able to be received as a paid “motivational speaker’ by two district offices of Hydro-Québec, the public hydroelectric utility of the Province of Quebec. Besides getting paid 5,400 Canadian dollars for conferences in the period 1987–89, he also recruited 15 executives and managers who later followed him to the end.
Amenta was nothing but the outer shell of an actual “Chinese box” system. Those who most faithfully attended Jouret’s homeopathic practices and conferences were given an invitation to join a more confidential, although not entirely secret, “inner circle”: the Archedia Clubs, established in 1984, in which one could already find a definite ritual and an actual initiation ceremony, with a set of symbols taken from the Masonic–Templar efforts of Jacques Breyer (whose books—and one audiotape, according to Jean-François Mayer—were still being circulated). According to Canadian reporter Bill Marsden—who in 1994 interviewed some former members of the Solar Temple and whose findings have been compiled by Susan Palmer in an unpublished manuscript she kindly sent to CESNUR—Breyer personally attended meetings of the International Order of Chivalry Solar Tradition (OICTS) in Geneva in 1985: an ex-member described Origas, Breyer and Di Mambro as having been earlier “the three chums who spoke of esoteric things” in the first Templar meetings he had attended in Geneva. Jean-François Mayer also notes that in 1987 Amenta organized a seminar on Breyer’s thought. The Archedia Clubs were not yet the truly inner part of Jouret’s organization. Their most trusted members were invited to join an even more “inner” circle, one that truly was a secret organization: the International Order of Chivalry Solar Tradition, in short Solar Tradition, and later to be called Order of the Solar Temple (although it is not impossible that an Order of the Solar Temple originally existed as an inner circle of the OICST). The OICST can be considered both a schism and a continuation of Julien Origas’s ORT, which Jouret had joined in 1981 with the knowledge of only a few friends. Apparently former communist Luc Jouret and neo-Nazi Julien Origas understood each other very well, at least for a few months. After Origas’s death, Luc Jouret tried unsuccessfully to be recognized as the ORT’s leader, facing opposition from the founder’s daughter, Catherine Origas: hence the 1984 schism and the establishment of the OICTS. On the other hand, some of Luc Jouret’s co-workers in the Archedia Clubs, such as Joseph Di Mambro, co-founder of the OICTS, and Geneva businessman Albert Giacobino, had been members, according to press sources, of Alfred Zappelli’s Sovereign and Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem20 and possibly of AMORC. But according to Jouret’s most secret teachings, the schism that had given birth to the OICTS was not only the mere fruit of disagreements, but was instead according to the will of the Ascended Masters of the Grand Lodge of Agartha, who had revealed themselves in 1981 (before Julien Origas’s death) and had disclosed a “Plan” that was supposed to last 13 years, until the end of the world, predicted for the year 1994.
Di Mambro’s and Jouret’s OICTS teachings stressed the occult-apocalyptic themes of Jacques Breyer’s OSTS and Julien Origas’s ORT, connecting three traditions on the end of the world: (a) the idea found in some (but by no means all) New Age groups of an impending ecological catastrophe (for instance, Jouret was very insistent about the lethal nature of modern diets and food); (b) some neo-Templar movements’ theory of a cosmic renovatio revealed by the Ascended Masters of the Grand Lodge of Agartha; (c) the political ideas of a final international bagarre propagated by survivalist groups both on the extreme right and on the extreme left of the political spectrum, with which Jouret had contacts in different countries. It seems that, in the years spanning from 1986 to 1993, Jouret and Di Mambro kept receiving “revelations” following Julien Origas’s tradition, especially of four “sacred objects”—the Holy Grail, the sword Excalibur, the Menorah, and the Ark of the Covenant—(“apparitions” of which, according to ex-members, were fabricated through electronic tricks and holograms), until it was revealed to them that between the end of 1993 and the beginning of 1994 the Earth would have been forsaken by its last “guardians”: at first six “entities” hidden in the Great Pyramid of Egypt, and later—but this could have been a metaphor used for a spiritual experience of three leaders of the Temple—three Ascended Masters who had received a revelation on the end of this cycle near Ayers Rock (now Uluru), Australia (a country in which the Temple had in the meantime established itself).
Luc Jouret was able to keep up his speaking engagements on the New Age circuit as long as the existence of a secret order with peculiar ideas on the end of the world was well hidden behind the different Amenta, Atlanta, and Archedia groups and clubs. When some curious journalists and the unavoidable disgruntled ex-members started to talk about the Solar Temple, the doors shut. The Archedia Clubs dissolved in 1991, and various European New Age bookstores had by this time begun refusing to host Luc Jouret’s conferences. There remained, however, a solid operation in Canada, where Jouret and Joseph Di Mambro spent a great deal of their time from 1986 onward, and where they had founded a Club Archedia de Science et Tradition International. Under the Atlanta and Archedia Clubs’ labels, Luc Jouret could thus keep up his conferences—on topics such as The Sphinx, Christ, and the New Man—in Quebec (and it seems even at the University of Quebec at Montreal) in the years 1991 and 1992. Motivational classes were offered to companies under the aegis of an Académie pour la Recherche et la Connaissance des Hautes Sciences (ARCHS), whose literature was printed by Editions Atlanta. The “Chinese box” system continued in Canada, to where Solar Temple members from Switzerland, France and Martinique had also moved. According to the Marsden interviews compiled by Susan Palmer, ex-members claimed in 1994 that in 1991, 11 members of the Solar Temple were brought to Canada from Martinique in order to increase the French “female” energy in Quebec and further balance the English “male” energy there. The order’s headquarters were located in Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade, in a historic boarding school purchased on 26 October 1984 from the Catholic Brothers of the Sacred Heart, for 235,000 Canadian dollars. In the 1990s the house was the property of the Association pour l’Etude et la Recherche en Science de Vie Québec, and of the Société Agricole 81. In fact, “Science of Life” (Science de Vie) was often the topic of Luc Jouret’s conferences, as he blamed many of the world’s ills on today’s poor diet, suggesting as an alternative “naturally grown” products. The house in Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade was also a center for the production of “natural” food products, partly marketed through an “ecological’ bread shop, the Boulangerie Aliments Naturels. Another Solar Temple center was established in 1992 in Saint-Sauveur, in a luxurious house on Rue Lafleur, bought for 450,000 Canadian dollars. A PO Box address and a bank account were kept in Charlesbourg, another small Quebec town. In Morin Heights, a mountainous area, were the two villas which served as personal residences for Luc Jouret and Joseph Di Mambro, with apartments for two other Temple leaders, Camille Pilet and Dominique Bellaton. Focusing on Canada and communal living meant a decrease in the number of devotees. In 1992–93 only the “hard core” of about one hundred members of the Solar Temple was left, as opposed to the international membership in the 1980s of about 200–300 people.
On 8 March 1993, a crucial episode in the history of the Solar Temple occurred in Canada. Two Temple members, 54-year-old Jean Pierre Vinet, engineer and project manager for Hydro-Québec, and 45-year-old insurance broker Hermann Delorme, were arrested attempting to buy three semiautomatic guns with silencers, illegal weapons in Canada. Daniel Tougas, a police officer of Cowansville and a Temple member, was temporarily suspended from office on charges of having helped the two. On 9 March, Judge François Doyon of Montreal committed them to trial, freeing them on parole. Luc Jouret—who according to police reports asked the two to buy the weapons—was also committed to trial, and an arrest warrant was issued against him. (The Temple leader could not be found, as he was in Europe at the time.) The event drew the attention of the Canadian press to what newspapers called “the cult of the end of the world.” Rose-Marie Klaus, the estranged Swiss wife of one of the members, took advantage of the situation, calling for a press conference on 10 March, in which she denounced sex magic practices and the economic exploitation of members. On the same day, another press conference was held in Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade. Sitting beside Jean-Marie Horn, President of the Association pour l’Etude et la Recherche en Science de Vie Québec, and Didier Quèze, Solar Temple spokesman, was the town’s mayor, Gilles Devault, who declared that the Temple “never caused any trouble” but, on the contrary, “contributed to the development of the community.” “A cult? ” Not at all, said the mayor, “Their children take part in the town’s amusements, they play hockey. Actually I believe that they are people that give a very positive contribution.”21 Even the reporters most inclined to sensationalism could not find any hostility between this Quebec town and the Solar Temple, and recounted that “residents of Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade [who] met yesterday [10 March 1993] do not seem to have any grievances towards members of the Order.”22 Rose-Marie Klaus was considered an unreliable fanatic, and even the local parish priest, Father Maurice Cossette, admitted that, true, they were not Catholics, but he let them “advertise their conferences on nutrition and health on the church bulletin,” as long as they didn’t “talk about Apocalypse.”23 Later on, the Solar Temple’s lawyer, Jacques Rochelle, hinted of a “schism” that would have happened “more or less” in 1990, during which the Canadian members supposedly left Di Mambro and Jouret. Allegedly also Hermann Delorme and Jean-Pierre Vinet “had left the Order several months before” their arrest.24 It is unclear whether this information represented a simple attempt to sidetrack the investigations, or if tension within the Order of the Solar Temple actually existed. In any case, the official leader of the Canadian Branch in March 1993, Robert Falardeau, head of a minor department at the Quebec Ministry of Finance, died in October 1994 with Luc Jouret and Joseph Di Mambro.
A few days after the arrests, the press started to reduce the intensity of its attacks on the Solar Temple, asking the police for clarifications. Police officials were then forced to reveal that the operations against the Solar Temple were not motivated simply by a desire to emulate their American colleagues at that time engaged in the siege of the Branch Davidians’ ranch in Waco, Texas. On 23 November 1992, a man identifying himself as “André” had phoned four Canadian members of parliament on behalf of a mysterious group, Q-37 (so called—according to “André”—because it had 37 members, all from Quebec), announcing the impending murder of Quebec’s Minister of the Interior, Claude Ryan, found “guilty” of adopting a political line too favorable to the claims of Native Americans. Reports by some informers—perhaps members of the Canadian intelligence services—to the Quebec police, stating that the group Q-37 was tied to the Solar Temple, prompted the investigations which culminated in the entrapment of two Temple members who tried to buy illegal weapons from a person who turned out to be a police agent. Police authorities had to admit, however, that in five months of investigations they had not been able to find any proof of ties between the Q-37 group and the Solar Temple (except for the Solar Temple’s hostility toward Native Americans, which came from Julien Origas’s White supremacist ideas). In fact, they could not even find any proof that a Q-37 group actually existed. Since this was about all the information the Quebec police could offer (apart from a wire-tapping report relating how Luc Jouret advised a member of the group to practice shooting with a pistol—advice justified by his lawyers because of the need for self-defense in the isolated Swiss centres), at the 30 June 1993 court proceedings in Montreal, Hermann Delorme and Jean-Pierre Vinet pleaded guilty only to having bought illegal weapons—justified again by reasons of self-defense—and were freed with the local formula of “suspended acquittal”, with a fine of 1,000 Canadian dollars each to be given to the Red Cross. Judge Jean-Pierre Bonin justified the decision, stating that
[the accused] have until now been victims of biases and bigotry which have become tremendously widespread through this event’s coverage; they have been regarded as members of a cult, and cults were not very popular in the media at the time of these events, especially due to the incident in Waco.25
On 15 July—discreetly and without the previous knowledge of the media—Luc Jouret returned to Montreal to answer in court the same accusations and to obtain his own “suspended acquittal”—under the same conditions as Hermann Delorme and Jean-Pierre Vinet. Meanwhile, in Quebec, three institutions were concerned about connections their officers and employees had with a “cult”: the police (which had convicted officer Daniel Tougas, paroled him and expeled him from its ranks); Hydro-Québec (which nominated an investigation commission that verified how 22 employees had participated in the activities of the Solar Temple and 15 were actual members of it, advising Hydro-Québec to refrain in the future from hosting occult-religious “motivational” conferences), and the Ministry of Finance (which sent Chief of Department Robert Falardeau on leave for one week, then let him slip quietly back into office). The tempest seemed to end smoothly, even if on 17 March 1994, a letter signed “Order of the Solar Temple” was found in Montreal, in which the order claimed responsibility for an attack against a Hydro-Québec tower in Saint-Basile-Le-Grand on 24 February. The police questioned the authenticity of the letter as it mentioned only the Saint-Basile-Le-Grand attack and not another one committed the same day against a Hydro-Québec installation in the Native American reserve of Kahnawake but kept secret by the authorities (which, however, had obviously been known to the attackers).26 The Canadian incident later appeared to be extremely significant in the final crisis of the Solar Temple.
It will take months, perhaps years, to find out exactly how the events developed during the first week of October 1994. The most essential information has been extensively covered in the world media. On 30 September, nine people, including Luc Jouret, had dinner at the Bonivard Hotel in Veytaux (in the Vaud canton, Switzerland). On 3 October, Joseph Di Mambro was seen having lunch with others at the Saint-Christophe Restaurant in Bex (same canton). On 4 October a fire destroyed Joseph Di Mambro’s villa in Morin Heights, Canada. Among the ruins, the police found five charred bodies, one of which was a child’s. At least three of these people seemed to have been stabbed to death before the fire. In Salvan (Valais canton, Switzerland), Luc Jouret and Joseph Di Mambro asked a blacksmith to change the lock in their chalet, and bought several plastic bags. On 5 October, at 1:00 a.m., a fire started in one of the centers of the Solar Temple in Switzerland, the Ferme des Rochettes, near Cheiry, in the canton of Fribourg—which was also a center for natural agriculture—owned by Albert Giacobino, who, as mentioned earlier, was an associate of Joseph Di Mambro in several esoteric and neo-Templar activities. The police found 23 bodies, one of which was a child’s, in a room converted into a temple. Among the corpses was Albert Giacobino’s. Some of the victims were killed by gunshots, while many others were found with their heads inside plastic bags. The same day, at 3:00 a.m., three chalets inhabited by members of the Solar Temple caught fire almost simultaneously at Les Granges-sur-Salvan, in the Valais canton. In the charred remains were found 25 bodies, along with remainders of devices programmed to start the fires (such devices were also found at Morin Heights and at Cheiry), and the pistol which shot the 52 bullets destined for the people found dead in Cheiry. On 6 October, Swiss historian Jean-François Mayer, secretary of the International Committee of CESNUR (Center for Studies on New Religions)—the scholar who in 1987 had conducted a participant observation of the Archedia Clubs—received a package mailed from Geneva on 5 October (in the space for the sender it said simply ”D.part,” meaning “departure” in French). The package included four documents summing up the ideology of the Solar Temple and explaining what had happened that night, together with an article extracted from the American Executive Intelligence Review as republished in Nexus on the Randy Weaver incident.27 Other copies of the package, or parts of it, were also sent to some Swiss newspapers. On 8 October, in Aubignan, France, the police discovered, in a building owned by a member of the Solar Temple, a deactivated device which could have burned down the house, similar to the ones found in Switzerland and Canada. On 9 October, the French Minister of the Interior, Charles Pasqua, received in Paris the passports of Joseph Di Mambro and his wife Jocelyne (both already identified among the victims of the Swiss fire). The sender’s name on the envelope was that of a “Tran Sit Corp.” in Zurich. Canadian television announced the same day that, according to their investigations, Joseph Di Mambro used the Solar Temple as a cover for weapons smuggling and for money-laundering, and had huge bank funds in Australia. The figures allegedly involved in this traffic (millions of dollars), which supposedly corresponded with those of the Australian bank account, were however drastically reduced by the Swiss prosecutors. On 13 October, the Swiss police stated that, among the charred bodies they had identified without a doubt that of Luc Jouret (whom many thought had escaped), and to have recognized Patrick Vuarnet (a young member of the Solar Temple and son of former Olympic ski champion and president of a multinational fashion firm, Jean Vuarnet) as the “mailman” who had sent the documents to Jean-François Mayer and the passports to French Minister Charles Pasqua following instructions from Joseph Di Mambro.
Suicide and/or murder? We can find some answers—if we know how to search for them beyond the esoteric jargon and without barring the possibility that they could also include some information aimed at sidetracking—in the four documents sent to Jean-François Mayer (whom we thank for passing them on to the CESNUR network promptly). The explanation includes a suicide and two types of murder. According to the documents, some especially advanced members of the order are able to understand that—as the cycle started by the Grand Lodge of Sirius or of Agartha in 1981 is completed—it is time to move on to a superior stage of life. It is “not a suicide in the human sense of the term,” but a deposition of their human bodies to receive immediately new invisible, glorious and “solar” ones. With these new bodies, they now operate in another dimension, unknown to the uninitiated, presiding over the dissolution of the world and waiting for an esoteric “redintegratio.” There is also another class of less advanced members of the Solar Temple who cannot understand that in order to take on the “solar body” one must “depose” the mortal one. The documents imply that these members must be helped to perform their “transition” (in other words, must be “helped” to die) in the least violent way possible. Lastly, the documents state that within the Temple’s membership were also found backsliders and traitors, actively helping the arch enemies of the Solar Temple: the government of Quebec and Opus Dei. To them the documents promise “just retribution” (in other words, murder, without the cautions used with the less advanced members). According to a survivor, Thierry Huguenin—whose last-minute escape was apparently responsible for reducing the casualties to 53—Jouret and Di Mambro had planned that exactly 54 victims should die in order to secure an immediate magical contact with the spirits of 54 Templars burned at the stake in the fourteenth century.28
This scenario may seem consistent with the different ways in which the victims in Switzerland and in Canada died, and with the results of the investigations, which seem to indicate that the murders in Morin Heights and Cheiry were carried out by two members of the Temple, Joel Egger and Dominique Bellaton (a manicurist-turned socialite through a sequel of love affairs with businessmen, well known in Geneva and in the ski resort of Avoriaz), who later joined the other leaders in the suicidal act in Les Granges-sur-Salvan. In Morin Heights two Swiss members, Colette and Gerry Genoud, may have committed suicide, while Antonio and Nicky Dutoit were savagely murdered with their three-month-old son Emmanuel. According to the Quebec police report of November 1994, the Dutoits were also included in the traitors’ list because they had named their son Emmanuel. The report argues that Di Mambro’s daughter Emmanuelle—whom Nicky Dutoit had been babysitting and whose mother was Dominique Bellaton—was regarded as the “cosmic child,” an exalted being with a precious future. By calling their son Emmanuel the Dutoits had usurped the unique position of Emmanuelle Di Mambro, the “cosmic child,” and had in fact transformed their baby son into the Antichrist. Hence, according to the Quebec police, the particularly elaborate ritual used for killing baby Emmanuel Dutoit and his parents.
On the other hand, there seems to be a contradiction between the first three documents and the fourth one. From the first three documents it seems that the tragedy was prearranged, as part of the Grand Lodge of Sirius’s “Plan,” and as a preparation for the end of the world, which is at any rate impending for all humanity. The fourth document—on a more “political” note—presents the suicide as an act of protest against persecution by the government of Quebec, which the document accuses of “mass murder,” finding a parallel with the activities of the US authorities in Waco and with other episodes of violent repression of new religious movements by police or government authorities. Perhaps the contradiction is only apparent if we interpret the Canadian incidents of 1993 as the instigating force leading to the final stage of an apocalyptic itinerary which actually began a long time ago. The Quebec police report of November 1994 claims that, although no evidence of weapon trafficking by the Solar Temple exists to date, the police action taken in 1993 in fact prevented a mass suicide-cum-homicide taking place in Saint-Sauveur, Canada, at least one year before the October 1994 tragedy, and may thus have saved some lives.
After the tragedy of October 1994, a faulty interpretation spread widely among the international press, and most probably among the general public. The Solar Temple incident was compared to earlier events—from Jonestown, Guyana to Waco—and was simply blamed, once more, on the “danger of the cults.” Sociologically speaking, however, one can immediately notice a difference. The victims of Jonestown and Waco (two events which are already very different from one another) all belonged to low economic strata (unemployed young people, unskilled workers, low-salary employees facing difficulties), as is the case with the members of many Christian-apocalyptic (or, in the case of Jonestown, political-apocalyptic) new religious movements. If we run through the list of the identified victims of the Swiss fires, we immediately notice a different picture. It is perhaps enough to read the names of the victims (some of whom we have already mentioned): Robert Falardeau, chief of a department of the Ministry of Finance of Quebec; Joyce-Lyne Grand’Maison, a reporter for the daily Journal de Québec, who worked for eight years as contributing editor for the financial page; Camille Pilet, recently retired as international sales manager of the Swiss multinational watch corporation Piaget (who was in the process of launching his own brand of designer watches); Robert Ostiguy, mayor of Richelieu, Quebec; Albert Giacobino, businessman in Geneva. For a sociologist, this is not a typical list of members of a “cult” or a new religious movement. The media comparisons with the Jehovah’s Witnesses or The Family could be humorous if we were not talking about a tragedy. The high-ranking government officer, the financial reporter, the multinational manager, the mayor are all types of people one expects to find enlisted not in a new religious movement, but rather in a club or fraternity. The anticult movements have tried to exploit the Solar Temple tragedy to attack the “cults” in general and to launch campaigns against The Family, Scientology and even Jehovah’s Witnesses or Hare Krishnas, which are, on the contrary, religious movements and must be carefully distinguished—from a sociological and doctrinal viewpoint—from occult-esoteric groups such as the Solar Temple. As Jean-François Mayer has noted, the structure of the Solar Temple may recall, for some, features of new religious movements. On the other hand, as I have argued elsewhere, “new magical movements” share some external features with new religious movements but should not be confused with the latter since the experience they offer is inherently different.29 Even the expectation of the end of this world by Christian-based groups, such as The Family or the Jehovah’s Witnesses (as well as by millions of premillennialists in the evangelical Protestant world), does not resemble the expectation of destruction and of magical reconstruction of the members’ and of the world’s destiny, as found in the magical-esoterical views of the Solar Temple and similar groups.
An acceptable interpretation of the Solar Temple tragedy must be reached on two levels, which are not mutually exclusive. The first level must necessarily consider the odd intrigues between secret services, more or less “deviant” clandestine lodges and Templar organizations in recent neo-Templar history. Both the elderly Joseph Di Mambro and the younger Luc Jouret took part in orders such as Julien Origas’s Renewed Order of the Temple, and the Sovereign and Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem (in several of their controversial branches, not to be confused with others with similar or even the same names) long enough to enter into the orbit of influence of groups whose ties with the French SAC, with the Italian P2 Lodge and with several countries’ secret services seem probable in view of court and parliamentary findings. The fact that Joseph Di Mambro’s and his wife’s passports were sent to French Minister Charles Pasqua—who, according to the French media, was once linked to SAC—is, in this context, a strange coincidence (or perhaps a warning). Even more puzzling is the way some information of yet unclear origins provoked the Quebec police to attack the Solar Temple in 1993, thus exacerbating its apocalyptic fears.
The second level, referring to grounds more familiar to sociologists than the world—certainly more obscure to them—of secret services and political intrigues, takes into consideration the specific nature of the apocalyptic current within the magical-esoteric universe. The vision of a “renovatio,” or a total renewal of the world—which frequently adopts as its symbols fire and death—is typical of an occult tradition which, though a minority trend in the world of magical-esoteric groups, seems to be growing in importance at the end of the second millennium. This occult tradition—which, unlike the new religious movements, appeals mostly to middle-aged people from a good social background who generally elude to Christian beliefs and religion in their traditional meanings—usually maintains a metaphorical relation with the symbols of fire and death and, more generally speaking, with the idea of the destruction of the present world. The Solar Temple episode, however, proves that it is not impossible for small, fringe sections of the apocalyptic current within the magical-esoteric milieu to live the ideology of destruction to tragic and extreme consequences.
1 This paper was originally given in February 1995 as a report for associates and friends of the Centre for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), Turin, Italy.
2 Sources I found very useful include a dossier of Canadian press articles on the Solar Temple preceding the events of October 1994, compiled by Montreal’s Centre d’Information sur les Nouvelles Religions, as well as CESNUR’s collection of associated US, Swiss, and Canadian articles. I mention here some of the most thorough ones concerning facts, but whose opinions are to be read cautiously: Michael Matza, “Mix of apocalypse and ego drove cultist”, Philadelphia Inquirer, 9 October 1994; Alan Riding, “A Preacher with a Dark Side Led Cultists to Swiss Chalets”, The New York Times, 9 October 1994; see also Massimo Introvigne and J. Gordon Melton, “The Solar Temple. A preliminary report on the roots of a tragedy”, a paper presented at the annual conference of the Communal Studies Association in Oneida, New York, 6–9 October 1994; and Tom Post, Marcus Mabry, Theodore Stanger, Linda Kay, and Charles S. Lee, “Suicide cult”, Newsweek, 17 October 1994, pp. 10–15.
3 Régine Pernoud, Les Templiers (Paris, 1988), p. 11. For more details, see Marco Tangheroni, “La leggenda templare massonica e la realtà storica”, in Introvigne (ed.), Massoneria e Religioni (Turin, 1994), pp. 63–78.
4 For a detailed account of the matter, see René Le Forestier, La Franc-maconnerie templière et occultiste aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles (Paris, 1987), vol. 2.
5 See Frederick Smyth, Brethren in Chivalry: A Celebration of Two Hundred Years of the Great Priory of the United Religious, Military and Masonic Orders of St. John of Jerusalem, Palestine, Rhodes and Malta of England and Wales and Provinces Overseas (London, 1991). According to Smyth it is possible that “Templar” Masonry reached Ireland even before England, maybe as early as the 1760s (p. 19).
6 See Massimo Introvigne, “Che cos’è la massoneria: il problema delle origini e le origini del problema”, in Introvigne, Massoneria e Religioni (Turin, 1994), pp. 13–62.
7 See Introvigne, Il cappello del mago. I nuovi movimenti magici dallo spiritismo al satanismo (Milan, 1990).
8 On Bernard-Raymond Fabré-Palaprat, his Order of the Temple and the Johannite Church, see ibid., pp. 233–7; and—from a skeptical yet favourable viewpoint—the work of the Gnostic Church’s bishop, Léonce Fabré Des Essarts, Les Hiérophantes. Etudes sur les fondateurs de religions depuis la Révolution jusqu’à nos jours (Paris, 1905), pp. 124–53.
9 On the events mentioned here, see my Il cappello del mago, pp. 187–94. On the esoteric orders founded by Joséphin Péladan—which continue today in some forms—see ibid., and Christophe Beaufils, Joséphin Péladan 1858–1918. Essai sur une maladie du lyrisme (Grenoble, 1993). For the history of these orders, the testimony of Count Léonce de Larmandie, Notes de Psychologie Contemporaine. L’Entr’acte idéal. Histoire de la Rose+Croix (Paris, 1903), is essential reading.
10 On the history of the Order of the New Templars (ONT) and its influence on Nazism, see Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism (Wellingborough, 1985).
11 Among the KVMRIS members who became neo-Templars was the scandalous knight Georges Le Clément de Saint-Marcq, whose ideas on sex magic are described in my Il ritorno dello gnosticismo (Carnago, 1993), pp. 155–60.
12 On the events described in this paragraph and the next, I have based my considerations on personal interviews with members of the occult milieu in France, and on two books which include, along with interesting information, also obvious inaccuracies, and which must therefore be read cautiously: Arnaud Chaffanjon and Bertrand Galimard Flavigny, Ordres et Contre-ordres de Chevalerie (Paris, 1982)—which has as its main purpose the separation of the true chivalric orders of ancient and noble descent from counterfeits; and André Van Bosbeke (with Jean-Pierre De Staercke), Chevaliers du vingtième siècle. Enquête sur les sociétés occultes et les ordres de chevalerie contemporains (Anvers, 1988)—a journalistic survey mainly interested in the political and financial aspects of modern neo-Templarism. Both works quote extensively judicial, parliamentary and journalistic sources.
13 This Grand Priory did not represent the first Italian neo-Templar order. Since the nineteenth century there had been a few more, which later entered into the orbit of one of the main leaders of occult movements in Italy, Gastone Ventura (1906–81). See also his Templari e templarismo (Rome, 1984).
14 See Jean-Pierre Bayard, La Guide des sociétés secrètes (Paris, 1989), p. 43; Chaffanjon and Galimard Flavigny, pp. 169–71. From the OSTS also descend other present-day orders, such as the Ordre des Veilleurs du Temple in France, with corresponding parallel organizations in other countries, which have nothing to do with the developments described in the next paragraph.
15 On René Guénon’s Order of the Renewed Temple see my Il cappello del mago, pp. 237–8.
16 Fernando Campello Pinto de Sousa Fontes also tried to keep the OSMTJ’s priories free from ties with controversial groups, mainly fearing the loss of independence from Masonic organizations so greatly stressed by Bernard-Raymond Fabré-Palaprat. During the second half of the 1980s a conflict arose between the Portuguese Regent and Alfred Zappelli. The majority of the Swiss Grand Priory’s members accepted the authority of de Sousa Fontes and reorganized their priory in 1988, with Joseph Clerc as Prior. Joseph Clerc’s branch is still quite strong, while Albert Zappelli, old and in poor health, keeps only a handful of followers (author’s telephone interview with Joseph Clerc, 19 October 1994).
17 The only scholarly study on Luc Jouret and his activities, published before the tragedy, is Jean-François Mayer, “Des Templiers pour l’Ere du Verseau: les Clubs Archedia (1984–1991) et l’Ordre International Chevaleresque Tradition Solaire”, Mouvements Religieux, 14/153 (1993): 2–10 (summed up in Mayer, Les Nouvelles voies spirituelles. Enquête sur la religiosité parallèle en Suisse (Lausanne, 1993), pp. 148–9).
The Templar Tradition in the Age of Aquarius (Putney, VT, 1987), a curious book by Temple defector Gaetan Delaforge, argued that the Order of the Temple had indeed survived after the 14th century, keeping in its possession much occult knowledge, and that the International Order of Chivalry Solar Tradition (that is, Jouret’s order) was its true and legitimate heir. The book was circulated in the occult-theosophical subculture, but it is obviously not a scholarly work.
18 Post et al., p. 13.
19 Luc Jouret, Medécine et Conscience (Montreal, 1992), p. 4; letter from Jean-François Mayer to Massimo Introvigne, 14–15 December 1994. Many thanks to Jean-François Mayer for his most helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.
20 This information is also denied by Joseph Clerc, Grand Prior of the Swiss OSMTJ loyal to Sousa Fontes, who states that Joseph Di Mambro had only casual relations with Alfred Zappelli, without ever becoming a fully fledged member of the OSMTJ (author’s telephone interview with Joseph Clerc, 19 October 1994).
21 See Yves Boisvert, “L’Ordre du Temple Solaire n’a pas l’air de beaucoup déranger Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade”, La Presse (Montreal), 11 March 1993.
22 Denis Bolduc, “Les membres de l’Ordre nient vouloir importer des armes”, Le Journal de Québec, 11 March 1993.
23 Boisvert, “L’Ordre du Temple Solaire”.
24 Norman Provencher, “L’Ordre du Temple Solaire se dit victime de diffamation”, Le Soleil, 12 March 1993; Martin Pelchat, “Jouret avait été ecarté de l’Ordre du temple solaire”, La Presse (Montreal), 18 March 1993.
25 Richard Hetu and Martin Pelchat, “Le Juge absout deux ex-membres de l’Ordre du temple solaire”, La Presse, 8 July 1993.
26 See Bernard Plante, “L’Ordre du temple solaire serait impliqué”, Le Devoir, 18 March 1994.
27 In this incident in Idaho in the 1990s the FBI surrounded the home of a white separatist, Randy Weaver. An FBI sniper killed Weaver’s wife, resulting in a major scandal for the bureau.
28 The story of a survivor (with true names hiding behind pseudonyms) is told by Thierry Huguenin, Le 54e (Paris, 1995).
29 Letter from Jean-François Mayer to Massimo Introvigne, 14–15 December 1994. For the differences between new magical movements (NMMs) and new religious movements (NRMs) see my Il cappello del mago. This difference—and the category of NMMs—has been acknowledged in a paper on NRMs by the Roman Catholic Church, the general report of Francis Cardinal Arinze at the Extraordinary Consistory of 1991, and is implied in Raphaël Aubert and Carl A. Keller, Vie et mort de l’Ordre du Temple Solaire (Vevey, 1994).