Luc Jouret

Luc Jouret
Photo of Jouret, used to advertise a 1991 lecture
Born	Luc Georges Marc Jean Jouret (1947-10-18)18 October 1947 Kikwit, Belgian Congo
Died	5 October 1994(1994-10-05) (aged 46) Salvan, Switzerland
Cause of death	Suicide
Occupation(s)	Founder, Order of the Solar Temple
Spouse	Marie-Christine Pertué ​ ​ (m. 1980⁠–⁠1985)​
Children	1

Luc Georges Marc Jean Jouret (French: [ʒuʁɛ]; 18 October 1947 – 5 October 1994) was a Belgian cult leader and homeopath. Jouret founded the Order of the Solar Temple (OTS) with Joseph Di Mambro in 1984. He committed suicide in the Swiss village of Salvan on 5 October 1994 as part of a mass murder–suicide. While Di Mambro was the true leader of the group, Jouret was its outward image and primary recruiter.

Early life

Luc Georges Marc Jean Jouret was born on 18 October 1947 in Kikwit, in what was then the Belgian Congo. He was the second son of Napoléon and Fernande Jouret (born 1923, née Jeanmott), both Belgian. His father Napoléon Jouret was known as an authoritarian parent, but was described by Jouret's older brother as "hard-working" and "a man of great honesty". He had studied in Germanic languages and was a local government official in Belgium, while Fernande was a housewife.

After their first son had been born in Belgium in 1946, the couple moved to the Belgian Congo, where they settled in Kikwit; at the time, the colonial administration of the territory needed more civil servants, and Napoléon took up a job in territorial administration. Luc Jouret was born a year later – a sickly child, suffering from rickets, pulmonary issues, whooping cough, as well as nutritional issues in his early life. Due to the lack of medical equipment (and the climate) available in the Congo, the family returned to Belgium when he was 18 months old. By the age of three he had recovered under his mother's care. Though he remained fragile in health, the family returned to the Congo and settled in Matadi where a third son was born in 1951. Napoléon switched careers into teaching Germanic languages to Belgian children, both black and white, and the family moved to Luluabourg. In 1954, when Jouret was six, he fractured his skull after being hit by a cyclist. His family, afraid for his life, returned to Dour, Belgium for good. A fourth child, a daughter, was born two years later.

As a teenager Jouret, now in better health, began to excel at sports, particularly judo and climbing. He aimed to become a teacher in physical education. In 1966, he enrolled in the prestigious Université libre de Bruxelles with a scholarship; his brother, also a student there, described him as a "serious idealist" at the time, not interested in money. Following May 68, communism was popular at the school, including with Jouret, noted to be more devoted to it than other students. One professor commented on an assessment that he "would be an even better student if he studied less female students".

His father, now a school administrative manager, was an avid secularist and progressive critic of Belgian society. He created an organization opposing Catholic influence in Wallonia, of which he was president. At home however he was disciplinarian and occasionally physically abusive; a teacher of Jouret's sister recalled she would arrive at school sobbing and confessed to her that their father made their family life difficult. Jouret's older brother said that while he was not abused, he believed Jouret "has bad memories of it". Jouret would leave home at about 21 years of age, under violent circumstances. A later patient of Jouret said that he had complained to him later in life of the lack of freedom and strictness of his upbringing.

Homeopathy and esotericism

At the age of 20, Jouret began to experience severe pain, and was diagnosed with coxarthrosis (osteoarthritis of the hip joint), a diagnosis unusual for someone his age. As a result of this he spent 14 months mostly immobilized in bed and subject to constant medical care, an event which he described as making him lose his faith in modern medicine. Faced with the reality that he would no longer be able to become an athlete as he had wanted, Jouret was distraught.

Visiting students discussed with Jouret homeopathy and alternative medicine, and he set up an appointment with a homeopath. Jouret's condition seemed to improve after a year, but he was still unable to achieve his previous aims, instead choosing to focus on medicine. As he could not regularly attend the classes due to his illness, he had to repeat the course, wasting two years of effort. Gradually Jouret's condition began to improve, which he attributed to homeopathy, and he received his medical degree. Jouret became interested in a variety of alternative medicine, including iridology, macrobiotics, and acupuncture in addition to homeopathy. Jouret also became interested in politics, particularly Maoism, and joined the Union of Communist Students. Interested in both China's history of traditional medicine and its communist politics, he decided to travel to China.

During his college years he joined the Walloon Communist Youth, which resulted in the police placing him under surveillance. He graduated with a medical degree in 1974. Two years after graduation, in 1976, he joined the Belgian Army, saying it was "the best way to infiltrate the Army with Communist ideas", and became a paratrooper. While in the army he participated in the Battle of Kolwezi, a joint French and Belgian airborne operation which resulted in the liberation of hostages from the city of Kolwezi.

Following his time in the army, he began a formal study of homeopathy and qualified as a homeopathic practitioner in France. He travelled widely studying various forms of alternative and spiritual healing; it is known that he visited the Philippines in 1977, and he later stated he had visited China, Peru, and India. In 1980, he married Marie-Christine Pertué, a sophrologist four years his junior. At the beginning of the 1980s he settled in Annemasse, France, not far from the Swiss border, and began to practice homeopathy there, where he was very successful.

Meeting Joseph Di Mambro

Among the groups for which he lectured was the Golden Way Foundation, a New Age group in Geneva, Switzerland, and he became close friends with the foundation's leader, Joseph Di Mambro. Di Mambro had been a Rosicrucian and Jouret had in 1981 affiliated with the Renewed Order of the Temple, an occult order founded in the 1970s by Julian Origas. Jouret was immediately a favorite of Di Mambro; he encouraged his ambitions and exempted him from a member's typical work. Soon after, he stopped contacting his family and largely abandoned his former friends. In one letter to a former friend, he wrote that he had "changed his life" and "had a lot of work to do" but that if he could he would see them again.

In 1983, after the death of Julien Origas, leader of ORT, Di Mambro urged Jouret to take over the order, and he became its new grand master the same year. Within the year Origas's daughter forced him out of the group over a dispute involving leadership and funds, resulting in a schism with half of ORT going with Jouret. Jouret then formed and lead a schismatic group of 30 ORT members, which opened branches in Martinique and Quebec. He continued to lecture widely on holistic health and the paranormal and invited those who responded to him into Amenta Club (later renamed the Atlanta Club).

They soon discovered their mutual interests and in 1984 together founded the Solar Temple. By this time Jouret was traveling widely through French-speaking Europe, Eastern Canada and Martinique as an inspirational speaker. While Di Mambro directed the group from behind the scenes, Jouret was its outward image and primary recruiter.

The Solar Temple

Main article: Order of the Solar Temple

The Order of the Solar Temple was an esoteric and neo-Templar order with a complicated internal structure, claiming to descend from the Knights Templar. Jouret was a popular lecturer to Francophone audiences in both North America and Europe, where his publications and lecture recordings were sold in several New Age bookstores and health food shops. He would lecture to the public from a homeopathic and New Age persona, providing a path to the secret society beneath – usually, at least some who attended his lectures were interested. Jouret was known as an excellent speaker, and according to former member Hermann Delorme:

You start listening and by God, you know, you just all of a sudden feel so attracted to what he is saying. You talk about the universe, you talk about how man is made of four ingredients and how the stars are made of these same four ingredients. Then you go back to Egypt and Egyptology, and then somewhere along the line comes the possibility of extraterrestrials. And it goes on and it goes on like that. But the more you hear, the less you understand, and therefore, the more you want to know. You slowly get caught up in the web.

Pertué and Jouret officially divorced in 1985, following the death of their only child in infancy; however, she told her family that she would continue to live with him. In a letter in 1983, Jouret told their friends that they had mutually decided on a divorce, while in actuality Di Mambro had ordered they separate, portraying the couple as having a "cosmic incompatibility". In a ceremony, Pertué was "emptied" of her "spiritual content", and condemned to wander until the day she died; Jouret was advised not to contact her, however they did interact occasionally in the following years. Despite her harsh treatment by the cult, she did not leave. Following their divorce, Pertué devoted herself to the group, developing anorexia, depression, and other mental health issues; Jouret, however, was told by Di Mambro that he was the reincarnation of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux – he viewed Jouret as too important for such a "mediocre wife".

In the 1990s, troubles began to plague the temple. Members began to depart, Di Mambro grew more controlling, and authorities in several countries began to investigate its activities. In March 1993, two members of the OTS – Jean Pierre Vinet and Hermann Delorme – were arrested for attempting to purchase three semiautomatic guns with silencers, which are illegal in Canada; this came after Jouret had encouraged them to buy the weapons. A warrant for Jouret's arrest was issued, which could not be carried out as he was in Europe, and the Canadian press's attention was drawn to the OTS. Jouret and the other two men were given only light sentences after the crime (one year of unsupervised probation and a $1000 fine intended to be paid to the Red Cross), but in the aftermath the media took interest in the group. The Canadian press began to report, using information gained from police wiretaps, conversations between members of the OTS, which they described as a "doomsday cult".

Mass suicide and death

In 1993 Jouret, Di Mambro, and several members travelled to Australia. By this time they were beginning to discuss the refusal of the public to evolve and bring in the New Age. They began to put together a set of documents that would be mailed out in October 1994 detailing their rationale for their final act, mass suicide, which they believed would let them escape the world to a higher dimension. On 3–5 October 1994, Jouret and 52 other members of the temple died by suicide at two locations in Switzerland. His ex-wife, also killed, had been invited to Cheiry; several of the dead in Cheiry had been killed as "traitors" to the movement. Hall and Schyuler noted she may have been killed for more "personal" reasons; she was killed with two bullets to the head.

The night before he died, Jouret joined Di Mambro and a small group of members in a lavish last meal together at a local restaurant. Prior to their own death, the group assisted other members who had taken tranquilizers to die. These members were shot. The Solar Temple disbanded after Di Mambro and Jouret's deaths death, though a year later another group would commit suicide and in 1997 five more died believing that they were following the first group to a higher dimension.

In a final, fifth note written by the group, Jouret was blamed for the group's actions. A note was found in Di Mambro's chalet, which read:

Following the tragic Cheiry Transit, we wish to make it clear, on behalf of the Rosy Cross, that we deplore and totally disassociate ourselves from the barbaric, incompetent and aberrant behavior of Doctor Luc Jouret. Taking the decision to act on his own authority, against all our rules, he has transgressed our code of honor and is the cause of a veritable carnage that should have been a Transit carried out in Honor, Peace and Light. His departure does not correspond to the Ethics we represent and defend to posterity.

Mostly in an attempt to discourage devoted former members from visiting their graves, the location of the graves of Jouret and Di Mambro were not officially released, with authorities describing it as "top secret". As neither of their families came to claim their bodies, they were both cremated following their autopsies. According to the three journalists Arnaud Bédat, Gilles Bouleau, and Bernard Nicolas, who investigated the case, as the canton where the death occurred has jurisdiction in Switzerland, they were buried secretly under an unmarked slab in a cemetery in Sion, Switzerland, where "the two gurus of the Order of the Solar Temple, now rest in peace. And, as the saying goes, for eternity."

References

Bibliography

• Bédat, Arnaud; Bouleau, Gilles; Nicolas, Bernard (1997). L'Ordre du Temple Solaire: Enquête et révélations sur les chevaliers de l'apocalypse (in French). Montreal: Libre Expression. ISBN 978-2-89111-707-4.
• Clusel, Shannon; Palmer, Susan J. (2020). "The Solar Temple in Quebec and the Saint-Casimir "Transit"". In Palmer, Susan J.; Geoffroy, Martin; Gareau, Paul L. (eds.). The Mystical Geography of Quebec: Catholic Schisms and New Religious Movements. Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 217–245. ISBN 978-3-030-33061-3.
• Hall, John R.; Schuyler, Philip D. (2000). "The Mystical Apocalypse of the Solar Temple". Apocalypse Observed: Religious Movements and Violence in North America, Europe, and Japan. London; New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-203-97766-8.
• Lewis, James R. (2005). "The Solar Temple "Transits": Beyond the Millennialist Hypothesis". In Lewis, James R.; Petersen, Jesper Aagaard (eds.). Controversial New Religions (1st ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-515682-9.
• Lewis, James R., ed. (2006). The Order of the Solar Temple: The Temple of Death. Controversial New Religions. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7546-5285-4.
  • Introvigne, Massimo. "Ordeal by Fire: The Tragedy of the Solar Temple". In Lewis (2006).
  • Mayer, Jean-François R. "The Dangers of Enlightenment: Apocalyptic Hopes and Anxieties in the Order of the Solar Temple". In Lewis (2006).
  • Chryssides, George D. "Sources of Doctrine in the Solar Temple". In Lewis (2006).
• Mayer, Jean-François (April 1999). ""Our Terrestrial Journey is Coming to an End": The Last Voyage of the Solar Temple". Nova Religio. 2 (2). Translated by Siegler, Elijah: 172–196. doi:10.1525/nr.1999.2.2.172. ISSN 1092-6690.
• Palmer, Susan J. (October 1996). "Purity and Danger in the Solar Temple". Journal of Contemporary Religion. 11 (3): 303–318. doi:10.1080/13537909608580777. ISSN 1353-7903.