Luc Jouret

Luc Georges Marc Jean Jouret (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.

Early life
Luc Georges Marc Jean Jouret was born on 18 October 1947 in Kikwit, in what was then the Belgian Congo. His Belgian parents returned to their homeland in the 1950s. 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 at the Free University of Brussels. 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. At the beginning of the 1980s he settled in Annemasse, France, not far from the Swiss border, and began to practice homeopathy there. 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).

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 (1920–1983). 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
The Solar Temple wedded the Templars tradition to the New Age, part of a Neo-Templar tradition that claimed to descend from a lineage of grand masters that claimed to go back to the medieval Order of the Temple that was suppressed at the beginning of the fourteenth century, an idea which French historian Régine Pernoud called "totally insane". The temple offered a program of personal spiritual progress through the practice of occult disciplines and rituals that invoked the power of the Great White Brotherhood to bring forth the New Age.

Jouret led a growing organization through the 1980s, but in the 1990s, troubles began to plague the temple. Members began to depart, Di Mambro fell ill, and authorities in several countries began to investigate its activities. Jouret and Di Mambro became increasingly pessimistic, especially after Jouret was arrested for asking two members of the OTS to purchase three semiautomatic guns with silencers in Quebec, illegal in Canada. 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.

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 some 12 other members of the temple died by suicide at two locations in Switzerland. 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 Jouret's 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.