Jacques Breyer

Jacques Breyer was born 27 March 1922 in Noyon, Oise, in France. He was raised in Anjou, born to a family of wine sellers.^[1] His secondary education was interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War; he joined the French Resistance, where he was a second lieutenant helping the Comet Line. He was arrested by the Gestapo in April of 1944, and then deported to a concentration camp in Buchenwald and then Flöha. While there he met and befriended writer Robert Desnos.^[1]

Following the liberation of France, he was ill with tuberculosis – visiting the Pyrenees for treatment, his mother gifted him a few items that had belonged to her father, one of which was a grimoire of herbal medicine. Following this, he became interested in esotericism, and "embarked on a lifelong quest for initiation".^[1]

In 1951, he contacted the owners of the Arginy Castle [fr], trying to interpret a possible esoteric meaning to the graffiti on the keep walls. The following spring, he would move into the farmhouse next to it, where he would live for the next seven years; while living there, he would care for its animals and the sick, lecture in Lyon and Paris, and perform theurgy in its dungeon.^[2] That year he met a journalist attempting to write an article on the site, Marcel Veyre de Bagot, who he befriended and attempted theurgy alongside. Breyer viewed this as the start of a rebirth of the Knights Templar (later called the "Arginy Renaissance"), the medieval Order of the Temple.^[3][2]

In this period, he wrote his first two books, Dante alchimiste in 1957 and Arcanes solaires ou les secrets du temple solaire two years later.^[2] Breyer claimed that he had discovered a document dated to the 1700s in the French BnF, which allegedly stated that the final Grand Master of the Knights Templar, Jacques de Molay, had passed on his authority to his nephew; further, he identified Arginy as the original location at which the Templars had been founded.^[4] He said that relics would be found at the family estate of this nephew – no relics were found, but Breyer started workshops in Ergonia which drew the interest of others.^[4] He claimed these writings related directly to knowledge possessed by the original Knights Templar,^[5] though he later denounced these works as "incomplete" and "inaccurate".^[2]

Breyer began to acquire a circle of freemason and occultist orbiters, including Armand Barbault, Jean de Foucault, Victor Michon, Vincent Planque, Pierre de Ribaucourt, Maxime de Roquemaur, and Jean Roux. Later inclusions were Jean Soucasse, then Robert Chabrier, Bernard Wiernick, and Georges Sourp.^[2] Roquemaur claimed she was a descendant of a branch of the original Templars, who had survived, and the two then proceeded to found the Sovereign Order of the Solar Temple (OSTS), members of which founded several other Masonic organizations in France.^[6][7] Breyer's actions in Arginy lead to a second, independent branch of Neo-Templar groups (compared with the main OSMTJ organizations that had existed for many years).^[7] Breyer resigned from the OSTS in 1964, after which the OSTS was embroiled in crisis; they reorganized again in 1966 and 1973.^[6]

He then left Arginy and moved to Paris in 1959, where he encouraged the founding of a conference center, workshops and a publishing house. While he directed some research workshops, he lived and worked alone. He was made Master in the Willermoz Lodge of Lyon (related to the Grande Loge Nationale Française) two years later; however, he was never a formal member of any Masonic group. He was also a contributor to the La voix solaire magazine, and published a play based on Tarot cards, Oubah.^[2] Breyer's thought was apocalyptic, teaching of an imminent destruction which he dated to 1995.^[4]

He was invited as a guest speaker for the Golden Way Foundation (later, the Order of the Solar Temple, OTS); the organization studied his work, and took symbols from Breyer's work.^[8][2] He attended meetings from the group in 1985 in Geneva, and one ex member of the OTS described Julien Origas, Joseph Di Mambro and Breyer as "the three chums who spoke of esoteric things" during these early meetings.^[8] The OTS had inherited from Breyer's works occult-apocalyptic themes, along with those of Origas.^[8] In late 1987 he dissociated himself from the group and its two leaders, Joseph Di Mambro and Luc Jouret, as their ideas and doctrine were growing increasingly incompatible with his. Following the mass suicides and murders by members of the group in 1994, he strongly condemned their actions, saying what they had done was incompatible with his system of belief and his works.^[2]

Breyer died 25 April 1996 in Le Pouliguen, Loire-Atlantique.^[1] Serge Caillet described his "most important" work as being 1972's Terre-Oméga, described as a "metaphysical thesis based on lines".^[2]

• Dante alchimiste (1957)
• Arcanes solaires ou les secrets du temple solaire (1959)
• Terre-Oméga (1972)
• Les forces occultes du bonsaï (1978)
• Le Tarot des grands peintres (1979)
• Audessus des tombeaux (1980)
• Philosophe (1989)
• Clefs opératives vérifiées (1994)

• Chantin, Jean-Pierre, ed. (2001). Les Marges du christianisme: « Sectes », dissidences, ésotérisme. Dictionnaire du monde religieux dans la France contemporaine (in French). Paris: Éditions Beauchesne. ISBN 978-2-7010-1418-0.
  • Caillet, Serge (2001a). "Les Sociétés Initiatiques". In Chantin (2001).
  • Caillet, Serge (2001b). "BREYER Jacques". In Chantin (2001).
• Lewis, James R., ed. (1998). The Encyclopedia of Cults, Sects, and New Religions. Prometheus Books. ISBN 978-1-61592-738-8.
  • Introvigne, Massimo (1998a). "Solar Temple". In Lewis (1998).
  • Introvigne, Massimo (1998b). "Templars (The Neo-Templar Tradition)". In Lewis (1998).
• Lewis, James R., ed. (2006). The Order of the Solar Temple: The Temple of Death. Controversial New Religions. Aldershot: Ashgate. ISBN 978-0-7546-5285-4.
  • Introvigne, Massimo. "Ordeal by Fire: The Tragedy of the Solar Temple". In Lewis (2006).
  • Chryssides, George D. "Sources of Doctrine in the Solar Temple". In Lewis (2006).

• Caillet, Serge (1997). L'Ordre rénové du Temple: Aux racines du Temple solaire (in French). Dervy. ISBN 978-2-85076-924-5.