The Order of the Solar Temple was a secret society whose leadership believed they were reincarnated Templars – including the last grand master, Jacques de Molay. They came to the attention of the public in 1994 when these very weird so-called Templars engaged in an act of mass suicide and murder in Switzerland and Québec. What exactly happened remains a mystery but below, we try to piece together the evidence.
The Order of the Solar Temple was not made up of dropouts or socially vulnerable people. The membership was well-heeled, including business owners, an orchestra conductor, and a mayor. But on closer inspection, one begins to find the kind of petty grievances that are well-recognised catalysts for individuals to become brainwashed or radicalised.
So, what made fifty-three members of this cult agree to end their lives in two separate incidents in Switzerland and Canada in early October 1994?
Well, the first point to make many of the deaths were not voluntary. Some of the bodies showed signs of violence while still alive, though analysis was difficult because they were all set on fire by the cult. However, twenty of the dead had 22-calibre bullet holes in the head. A few had as many as eight bullet wounds. Others had been suffocated with grey plastic rubbish bags secured around their necks. In some cases, their hands had been bound, which certainly points to murder over suicide. An investigating Swiss judge said the victims looked like a wax museum – their faces completely white.
Over forty of those cult members killed were found at a farm in the Swiss village of Cheiry – men, women, and children. The area was a ski resort. A smaller number of charred corpses had been found a day before in a burnt out apartment in a suburb of Montreal. All the deaths were linked to the Order of the Solar Temple.
Who founded the Order of the Solar Temple?
This curious order had been set up in 1984 by a New Age influenced homeopath, Luc Jouret (born 1947 in the Belgian Congo), and a French-Canadian jeweller obsessed with the occult, Joseph di Mambro (born 1924). The Order of the Solar Temple was very much a Francophone affair.
Jouret believed he was the reincarnation of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, the spiritual mentor of the Templars while Di Mambro declared, on different occasions, that in a previous life, he had been an ancient Egyptian pharaoh, one of the twelve disciples, and Longinus (the centurion who pierced the side of Jesus with his spear at the crucifixion).
Jouret’s descent into madness may have begun with his arrest in Canada, accused of illegally buying a gun with a silencer. This humiliating incident was likely the grievance that created a cognitive opening for a whole number of conspiracy theories that meshed together in his mind and formed the ideology for the cult.
This included a pseudo-ecological message that the planet was sick and dying and that members of the order had to help transition from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius. Into this was thrown element of ‘prepper’ paranoia – where members were urged to prepare for some kind of global holocaust. Plus Jouret added a dose of Gnosticism with garbled stuff about escaping the physical world – throwing off its shackles – and joining the true spiritual realm beyond our senses.
While Jouret was busy cooking up a toxic stew of esoteric belief systems – Di Mambro was the chief charlatan and showman. Since the 1960s, he had been dabbling in different belief systems, gathering like-minded people around him, and forming a community of wealthy adepts who would fund his activity.
In 1973, he set up the Centre for Preparing the New Age and by 1978, he had enough money in his bank account to buy an upmarket property near the Swiss city of Geneva. Ten years later, Di Mambro had hundreds of acolytes in tow – all prepared to do his bidding. By all accounts, Di Mambro and Jouret exuded heaps of charm and were very persuasive.
Not in the best of physical health, Di Mambro claimed to be communing with ‘ascended masters’, somewhere in the cosmos. During the order’s rituals these otherworldly masters were said to appear, bearing the Holy Grail and Excalibur. One of these ascended masters, referred to as Manatanus, once fired a laser beam from a sword at Di Mambro’s mistress during a secret ceremony.
Cult members were adamant they had seen these things but further investigation pointed to a mix of tacky special effects and hallucinogenics. Basically, the cult members were whacked out on drugs and susceptible to any magical illusions. In Canada, it turned out that King Arthur’s sword was a painted toy: “King Arthur’s Excalibur was a large, tinny broadsword crudely painted fluorescent green and red. In a dark room, black light made it appear suspended in midair, blood dripping from the tip.”
Countdown to tragedy
Up until 1990 or 1991, the cult was known as the International Order of Chivalry Solar Tradition – or Solar Tradition for short. Around that time, it rebranded to the Order of the Solar Temple. It claimed to be part of the neo-Templar movement founded in the early 19th century by Bernard-Raymond Fabré-Palaprat.
In the lead up to the his suicide – and multiple murders – Di Mambro sent his passport, and that of his wife Jocelyne, to the French interior minister, Charles Pasqua. In a letter (a copy of which was sent to the French newspaper Le Monde), Di Mambro claimed that his wife’s passport had not been renewed by order of Pasqua as the minister was bent on destroying the Order of the Solar Temple. Di Mambro announced that by way of retaliation he and his wife had decided to “leave this terrestrial plane”. The meaning of that phrase would become all too clear.
About three hundred people, including journalists, received mailings from the cult at the time of the 1994 massacre, sent by Patrick Vuarnet, the son of a former Olympic ski champion Jean Vuarnet. Jean’s wife, Edith Bonlieu – a former female ski champion – had also joined the Order of the Solar Templar alongside her son. These were the kind of families that got drawn into the cult and donated an estimated US$93 million that funded a lavish lifestyle for Jouret and Di Mambro.
Among the documents and videos sent by Vuarnet to the media was a chilling statement from Di Mambro implicating Jouret as a mass murderer. Di Mambro complained that Jouret had been “barbarous and incompetent” turning what should have been a glorious moment of transit from the physical realm to the spiritual into a “veritable carnage”. It also made clear that some cult members had been executed – including Di Mambro’s own son. Despite this hint of acrimony – both men would die together in 1994.
The badly charred corpses of Jouret and Di Mambro could only be identified from dental records. The 1994 murders and suicides were followed by sixteen more deaths in France in 1995 and another five in Canada in 1997. After the 1994 massacres, Patrick Vuarnet was taken into custody by Swiss police who questioned him at length.
He later told L’Express magazine that he now feared for his own life. In 1995, Patrick and Edith’s badly burned bodies were among the sixteen found dead in France – as well as a friend, Ute Verona, and her six-year-old daughter. The remains of all these people were laid out in a star formation. A grief-stricken Jean Vuarnet wrote a book: Ils ont tué ma femme et mon fils (they killed my wife and son). That mass killing and the 1997 deaths in Canada eradicated the cult, barring a handful of survivors including the aforementioned orchestral conductor.
During that last gruesome episode, Canadian police found a book covered in cult emblems.
The final episode in this cult’s grotesque history played out in 1997 when the surviving leaders ended their lives. Five bodies were laid out in the now familiar cross formation and once more plastic bags over heads featured. The dead were Didier Queze – a Swiss-born cult member – his wife Chantal, a 49-year-old, Bruno Klaus, a 54-year-old Pauline Rioux, and Queze’s mother-in-law, Suzanne Druau. A letter nearby explained their “departure”.
READ MORE: Do the Templars control the world today?
If you would like to know more about the real Templars – then get yourself a copy of The Knights Templar: History & Mystery – by Tony McMahon – published by Pen & Sword – available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, WHSmith, and other online bookstores.
