Further Reading For Order of the Solar Temple
The Order of the Solar Temple by James R Lewis
The Most Evil Secret Societies in History by Shelley Klein
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The Order of the Solar Temple is an initiatory secret society and cult started in 1984 by Joe Di Mambro and Luc Jouret in Geneva, Switzerland. It bases its core values on on what the order claimed were the ideals of the Knights Templar, a military and banking power dating back to the Crusades. The Templar are believed to have been protecting a great secret, captured during their time in the Middle East during The Crusades and smuggled out to Southern France before being lost to time.
The Solar Temple, borrowed ideas and ritual from other initiatory societies such as The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Aleister Crowley’s Ordo Templi Orientis, and The Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis. Their ritual practice was similar to these outfits in that the ultimate goal was reunite their spirit with the spirit of God. Survivors and documents of the Oder’s rituals revealed a series of magical sexual rituals and extremely elaborate ceremonies that made extensive use of special effects to create tangible physical results of magical evocation.
Similar to Jim Jones and the People’s Temple, The Solar Temple is, however, most notorious for a number of mass suicides and murders which took the lives of several dozen members between 1994 and 1995 in France, Switzerland, and Canada.
Episode: 341 & 342
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