Stratfor and the Crusaders: A Drug Cartel, a Manifesto and “Legitimized” neo-Templars

By Terry Melanson (11/01/2014)

I was alerted a few months ago that the massive WikiLeaks cache of internal emails from Stratfor, a global intelligence firm, contains multiple emails about neo-Templar groups. It’s fascinating stuff because recently I have been researching connections between an arms-dealing neo-Templar Order (OSMTJ), its association with Licio Gelli’s P2, and the Solar Temple cult who committed mass murder/suicide in October 1994.

The emails about modern day “Knights Templar” began in the summer of 2011 in the wake of Anders Behring Breivik’s murderous rampage and the discovery of his Manifesto. One of the revelations in the Manifesto was that Breivik was claiming to be involved with a modern “pan-European nationalist” Templar military order/tribunal, “founded in London in 2002,” and dedicated to serving “as an armed Indigenous Rights Organisation and as a Crusader Movement (anti Jihad movement).”

Stratfor was very interested in these claims. They had been monitoring drug cartel operations for various clients and one particular gang had renamed itself Caballeros Templarios (Knights Templar). This, in combination with the Breivik allegations piqued their interest even more and they contacted one of their subscribers for clarification.

In an email to Gordon S Fowkes – US Army retired, the Grand Historian of the Grand Priory of St Joan of Mexico and Latin America OSMTH (Ordo Supremus Militaris Templi Hierosolymitani) – Sean Noonan, Tactical Analyst for Stratfor asked:

From: sean.noonan@stratfor.com
To: gfowkes@aol.com
Sent: 7/25/2011 10:20:56 A.M. Central Daylight Time
Subj: Breivik and possible Knights Templar connection

Mr. Fowkes,

I would guess that you and your fellow KTJs are troubled by the connections that the Norway IED and armed assault suspect has made between his attack and some sort of Knights Templar group. He makes a ton of references to historical KT leadership, organizations, and ideology.

Gordon S Fowkes then forwarded this message to his Grand Master:

For those who do not know, STRATFOR is a private intelligence firm that reports widely on world wide events. I get about two hundred spot reports and reports in depth a day.
http://www.stratfor.com/

Sean Noonan of STRATFOR is aware of the concerns that OSMTH (SMOTJ) has about other organizations who use the name of Knights Templar. This includes a new offshoot of a Mexican drug cartel that has taken the name and symbols in it’s operations in Mexico. Those of us from GP of St Joan of Mexico and Latin America have more personal concerns each time we travel to or in Mexico.

He was kind enough to forward these links about Norway.
nnDnn
Gordon S Fowkes, KTJ
GPMX

To which Grand Master Patrick Rea replied:

Dear Gordon,

Many thanks for your speedy reply. Bob Disney and I have been discussing how best to deal with both the Mexican and Norwegian abuses of our name and mission. It is impossible to control the actions of mean spirited people when using our name that has also been in the public domain for centuries. Well meaning professional like STRATFOR and world journalists can be our allies in correcting the dark images cast on our Order by fakes and dangerous organizations. We may well need to develop a formal, transparent and aggressive set of responses to help in setting the matter straight.

Please keep us informed.

Patrick E. Rea
Brigadier General – AUS Ret.
Grand Master III
OSMTH-I

And then a response from the Templar Grand Commander, Major General (Ret) Chev Robert C. G. Disney:

On 7/26/11 11:38 AM, Maj Gen (Ret) Chev Robert C. G. Disney wrote:

Dear Mr. Noonan:

Chevalier Gordon Fowkes, a Knight in the Grand Priory of St Joan of Mexico and Latin America, OSMTH – Knight Templar International, kindly forwarded to me a copy of the email that you sent to him subject as above.

I would appreciate if you would so kind as to provide me your telephone number so that I can call you and discuss the recent tragic events in Norway.

I also invite you to visit the OSMTH Web Site – www.OSMTH.org – where we have posted an “Open Message Following the Killings in Utoya, Norway.” I believe that this might put a different perspective on the messages that are emanating from Oslo. Please let me state categorically that Mr. Breivik is NOT and HAS NEVER been a member of OSMTH.

Warm regards,

NNDNN

Major General (Ret) Chev Robert C. G. Disney, GCTJ, GMTJ

Grand Commander

Ordo Supremus Militaris Templi Hierosolymitani (OSMTH) – Knights Templar International (KTI)
A United Nations NGO in Special Consultative Status with ECOSOC
2800 Placida Road (Suite 110)
Englewood, FL 34224-5500 USA

My point in this is not to conflate the OSMTH with Breivik’s real or imagined involvement with other self-styled Knights Templar. Only that, there are established neo-Templar Orders who draw from military and intelligence (retired and active), have priories in over 40 countries all over the world and within existing NATO structures, whose lineage traces back to Freemason Bernard-Raymond Fabré-Palaprat’s L’Ordre du Temple in 1804. More later on how it evolved through the years, but Wikipedia has a surprisingly well-sourced article on Fabré-Palaprat which contains all the essentials.

For how L’Ordre du Temple’s legacy is comprised today, let’s start with Gordon S Fowkes who was the first to have contact with Stratfor.

According to a press release for a radio appearance, he served “in all levels of command from rifle squad to the Pentagon, and the NSA.” He is a knight in the Grand Priory of St Joan of Mexico and Latin America of OSMTH.

The history of the Grand Priory of St Joan of Mexico (according to OSMTH) is as follows:

ORDO SUPREMUS MILITARIS TEMPLI HIEROSOLYMITANI
History of the Order Serving Latin America

Request to establish the Order was made by Colonel Sir Alfred L Michaud, OMJ, NATO Grand Priory in 1999. Request was made through Colonel Sir Wilfred Ebel, GMJ, NATO Grand Inquisitor to Colonel Sir Richard Flahavan, GMC, Grand Prior of the NATO Grand Priory of Saint Sebastian.
The Order of Saint Joan of Arc was established by General Order 2000-1, mentored by the NATO Grand Priory of Saint Sebastian, in Berlin, Germany. Colonel Sir Alfred L Michaud, OMJ, was appointed the first Commander of the Commandery of Saint Joan of Arc.

COMMANDERY OF SAINT JOAN OF ARC, NATO GRAND PRIORY
The Founding Members were:
Captain, USNR Doctor Sir James Burnette, OMJ
Major, USAFR Sir Roger c. Gardner, OMJ
Colonel, USAR Sir John R. Hauschild, OMJ
Colonel, USAR Sir W. J. Lynn, OMJ
LT COL, USAFR Dr. Sir John Luke, GMJ
Colonel, USAR Sir Alfred L Michaud, OMJ
Major, USAR Sir Timothy Mills, OMJ
Captain, USNR Sir T. E. Mouritsen, OMJ
Captain, USAR Sir Tim Salazar. OMJ
Captain, USNR Sir David M. Epstein, CMJ
LTC, USAR Sir R. Edgar Rabano, OMJ
STTE, Argentina Sir Leandro M. Pose, OMJ

NATO Grand Priory of Saint Sebastian no longer has a website but this Wayback capture stated:

The NATO Grand Priory of Saint Sebastian – Soldier Martyr is an autonomous member of the Ordo Supremus Militaris Templi Hierosolymitani (OSMTH), commonly known by its English translation, The Sovereign Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem (SMOTJ) or simply as Knights Templar. The Order is a 200 year old organization, founded in France in 1804, on the precepts and goals of the noble crusading Order of the Temple of Jerusalem, 1118-1307.

Membership in the NATO Grand Priory is composed of military officers and defense officials of NATO member countries and partner states, who are recommended, and who are awarded, the NATO Grand Priory Military Cross of Merit. Award of the Cross of Merit is in recognition of significant contributions to the NATO community and to the Grand Priory’s humanitarian goals.

The purposes of the NATO Grand Priory include furthering the concepts of Christian chivalry of the original Knights Templar Order, and pursuing humanitarian objectives in the modern world. The NATO Grand Priory supports communications and networking among NATO and NATO partnership militaries and defense establishments, support of NATO peace and peacekeeping initiatives, development of interoperability of NATO and NATO partner forces, and support of veterans and veteran organizations.

We’ve all heard about some Christians in the US military after September 11th comparing themselves to modern “crusaders” – Blackwater included. This self-styled Knights Templar Order professes not to be engaged in a crusade as their namesake would suggest, of course, but its membership is nonetheless comprised of military, intelligence and NATO personnel – in other words, the very people whose livelihood is tied to the so-called “war on terrorism.” Furthermore, their lineage – though convoluted and schismatic – attests to recent involvement in secret services intrigue, links to the arms trade and P2; and previously they were squarely at the center of the esoteric/occult underground throughout the 19th-century and into the 20th, as well shall see.

Non nobis, Domine, non nobis

In 1804, while active in the Grand Orient lodge Les Chevaliers de la Croix [The Knights of the Cross] in Paris, a medical podiatrist, Bernard-Raymond Fabré-Palaprat (1773-1838) became the founder of modern neo-Templarism with the creation of L’Ordre du Temple [Order of the Temple].

As historian Massimo Introvigne tells it:

In 1804, he and some of his Masonic companions declared that they had discovered …a number of documents “proving” the century-old theory, or legend, of a secret prosecution of the Order of the Knights Templar … Fabré-Palaprat claimed not only to have found solid evidence for it, but also documents left by the last Grand Master in an uninterrupted line of succession dating back to the Middle Ages (namely, Cossé-Brissac himself), authorizing certain Masonic bodies to elect a new Grand Master after his death. Fabré-Palaprat concluded that the Knights of the Cross lodge held sufficient authority to appoint the Templar Grand Master, and had himself elected to the position in 1805. (Introvigne 2005: 354-5)

Moreover, Fabré-Palaprat’s Order of the Temple would declare autonomy from and stewardship over, Freemasonry. If, as claimed, a survival of the Templars had persisted and eventually founded Freemasonry itself, the logic, then, is that his restored Order took precedence. “[A]uthority over all the Masonic lodges throughout the world,” was proclaimed (Ibid. 355). Regular masons, no doubt, had a good laugh over it, but this marks the beginning of autonomous neo-Templar Orders: during the preceding century “Templar play time” was carried out strictly within Freemasonry through a series of higher degrees, rituals and rites, most notably that of Hund’s Strict Observance.

Napoleon was informed about the Order and apparently approved. He authorized and presided over a “solemn ceremony” for the Order in 1808 (Introvigne 2005: 355; Introvigne 1995: 21). A validation in the eyes of many; those who seek legitimacy, therefore, trace themselves back to Fabré-Palaprat and his “restored” Templar Order.

The eccentricities of Fabré-Palaprat grow bolder still. At an antiquarian bookshop in Paris in 1812 (or 1814 according to some) he claimed to have purchased a Greek manuscript purporting to be an original, gnostic “version of the Gospel of St. John entitled Evangelicon,

together with an old commentary known as Leviticon or Levitikon. …They explained that Jesus Christ was not the Son of God, but a genial esoteric master educated in Alexandria. Before dying, according to the Leviticon, Jesus established an “Order of the East”, with secret but unquestionable authority over the Church of the West. The first Grand Master of the Order of the East was John the Beloved; in the Middle Ages the Order ceased to exist under that name and became instead the Order of the Temple.” (Introvigne 2005: 355)

Fabré-Palaprat, as the Templar Grand Master, could now claim to be both “St. John’s successor and head of the Order of the East, with full apostolic authority over the whole of Christianity.” Thus was born what amounted to a new religion: “the so-called ‘Johannite Church’, and to proclaim himself Sovereign Pontiff of that ‘John’s Church’, a body invested with full authority over ‘Peter’s Church’ (i.e. the Roman Catholic Church).” (Ibid)

The good Catholics in his order were not happy with the situation and this caused the first of many schisms. A Catholic faction was formed at odds with the Johannites or the Palapratians; the latter gathered their followers from among anticlerical masons.

A defrocked priest, the overtly socialist Ferdinand-François Châtel (1795-1857) joins the Johannite faction of the neo-Templar Order in 1831 and “was consecrated by Fabré-Palaprat (on the basis of the authority he claimed to have as successor of St. John) as ‘Bishop’ and ‘Primate of France’ in the Johannite Church.” (Ibid)

A precedent was set that continues today.¹ Gnostic and Johannite independent churches:

led by “bishops” claiming an irregular, but nevertheless “valid” consecration of more or less remote Catholic or Orthodox origins, due to the Catholic theory that the apostolic succession may validly continue also outside the Church of Rome as long as the consecrating bishop is a “real” (although schismatic or excommunicated) bishop and was in turn consecrated by a “valid” bishop. The intertwining still remains today, within certain limits, and often, wherever there is a neo Templar order, we find an “independent church” under the same leadership (and vice versa). (Introvigne 1995: 21)

Also in 1831, Fabré-Palaprat publishes Levitikon for the first time. And according to the Grand Priory of Knights Templar in England and Wales (which is part of OSMTH), in “Levitikon John the Baptist was the founder of the Johannite Secret Church. An uninterrupted line of Grand Pontiffs succeeded him. In 1118 the Grand Pontiff, Theocletes, initiated Hugues de Payens into the mysteries of the church, thus creating a secret order within the Templars. Every Templar Grand Master was also an hidden Johannite Grand Pontiff, including Fabré-Palaprat, who claimed such succession for himself.”

At the time of Fabré-Palaprat’s death in 1838 the Catholic and Palapratian wings of the Order were still at odds, so in an effort to reconcile until a proper Grand Master was found, British Admiral William Sidney-Smith (1764-1840) accepted Regency of the Order. He had been the Grand Prior of England since 1813; other members in England included Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex (1773-1843), son of George III and his consort; and Charles Tennyson d’Eyncourt (1784-1861), uncle of poet Lord Tennyson.

Charles William Heckethorn, in Volume two of The Secret Societies of All Ages & Countries, wrote: “To restore the Order to its original purpose – fighting the infidels – the members endeavoured to obtain an island in the Mediterranean; Sir Sidney Smith, later on, wanted to make it the means of suppressing piracy along the African coast” (p. 48).

In The Knights Templars: God’s Warriors, the Devil’s Bankers, pp. 262-3, Frank Sanello goes even further:

The Admiral hoped to wrest British-controlled Malta from the moribund Knights Hospitallers and use it as a revitalized Templar base. But instead of debating early Christian heretical roots and putting on medieval pageants with embarrassing costumes like his predecessors, the Admiral wanted to use Malta as a launching pad to fight the Templar’s ancient enemy, Islam, represented in this era by the Barbary pirates. Smith proposed nothing less than a new Crusade … Once again, these new monks would be fighting the old enemy.

(No footnotes or endnotes are found in the book, although Sanello is probably sourcing The life and correspondence of Admiral Sir William Sidney Smith, Volume 2 [1848], which is listed in his bibliography.)

Introvigne makes a distinction between Sidney-Smith (who apparently was head only of the moderate branch) and Charles-Fortuné-Jules Guigues de Moreton, comte de Chabrillan (1796-1863), Regent of the ‘Palapratian’ Johannite faction. In any case, after the death of Sidney-Smith in 1840, an apparent compromise was reached under the leadership of Jean-Marie Raoul (1766-1850) in 1841. “The Templar Order had, however, gone out of fashion” he writes “and — in Masonic terminology — one of Raoul’s successors, A.M. Vernois, put it ‘to sleep’ in 1871” (Introvigne 1995: 22). The “Grand Priory of Knights Templar in England and Wales” timeline history of itself confirms this. They write that Vernois was the last Regent of “the palaprien faction” and had “deposited the records of the Order into the National Archives of France” in 1871. The records can still be found at the Archives Nationales, Fonds “3 AS 1-34 (anc. AB XIX 125-158)” with additional material deposited in 1920-1.

From here the histories recounted by Introvigne and the “Grand Priory of Knights Templar in England” diverge somewhat, but upon close inspection not so much.

According to Introvigne the Regency was handed over to the influential occultist Joséphin Péladan (1858-1918) by some of Fabré-Palaprat’s surviving members. Péladan, however, seemed to have been more interested in his own ‘Catholic and Aesthetic Order of the Rose-Croix of the Temple and the Grail’ (‘l’Ordre de la Rose-Croix catholique et esthétique du Temple et du Graal’) than in Fabré-Palaprat’s old Order. Introvigne goes on that “the Templar Order, with dozens of other groups, ended in the great melting pot of occult orders operated by the strange bedfellows Joséphin Péladan and Papus” (Introvigne 1995: 22); talks briefly about how neo-Templarism continued to be fashionable in the same magical milieu, citing the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) and the Ordo Novi Templi (ONT) within Ariosophy (which of course had influenced Nazism); but then writes: “The succession of Fabré-Palaprat’s Order of the Temple continued in Papus’s Independent Group of Esoteric Studies, and later on in its Belgian branch, KVMRIS (Ordre Kabbalistic du Rose-Croix), an organization particularly interested in sex magic … In 1932 the Order of the Temple was legally incorporated by the Belgian group under the name of the Sovereign and Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem (OSMTJ), having as its ‘Regent’ Théodore Covias” (Ibid. 23).

Both are recounting the same thing, with Introvigne focusing on details relevant to the article (and the book to which it belongs). The “Grand Priory of Knights Templar in England,” on the other hand, omits completely the part about Péladan, Papus and the occult revival, stressing instead the continuity of the Order through an “International Secretariat of the Templars” in Brussels in 1894, thus confirming the (occult) Belgian branch as well as the Regency of Covias in 1932 – no mention of KVMRIS, Kabbalism, Rosicrucianism and sex magic or that OSMTJ was finally incorporated by those who pursued such paths.²

Agreement continues as to the succession afterwards: Emile-Clément Vandenberg becoming Regent in 1934/5, and then to the Portuguese Grand Prior, Antonio Campello de Sousa Fontes in 1942, his son in 1960, and in 1970 a sort of “secret services” coup with the election/appointment of Marshall Antoine Zdrojewski (1900-1989) as Regent in 1970.

OSMTJ and Deep Politics

In the context of discussing P2’s potential political connection with the Vatican – a “natural ally” in the fight against communism – Philip Willan wrote: “P2 meetings often opened with a reading from the Gospel of St John, the evangelist being considered a kind of patron saint of freemasonry, he [Licio Gelli] told me” (Willan 2007: 120). Besides being true that St. John is the patron saint of Freemasonry in general, that P2-boss Gelli would highlight it seems fitting: considering the Johannite religion accompanying the neo-Templar Order, the fact that members of P2 also belonged to the Italian branch of OSMTJ, and that a friend of Gelli’s, Philip Guarino, “leader of an OSMTJ Priory in the USA,” was “the American ‘correspondent’ of Licio Gelli’s lodge” (Introvigne 1995: 25).

Philip Guarino’s American Priory of OSMTJ was set up in 1973, with the blessing of “Grand Master General Antoine Zdrojewski and Swiss Grand Prior Alfred Zappelli.”

In his Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party, Russ Bellant introduces Guarino thus:

Philip A. Guarino: An honorary American member of the conspiratorial P-2 Masonic Lodge in Italy, which plotted in the early 1970’s to overthrow the Italian government in order to install a dictatorship. P-2 was exposed widely in the European press and investigated by the Italian Parliament. Guarino, an Italian Heritage Council member and Republican National Committee advisor, offered aid to those being investigated. (p. 3)

Guarino was already friends with P2 member, Mafia associate, banker and financier Michele Sindona. According to Bellant, in 1976 Guarino had co-chaired a Sindona-financed “ad hoc group called Americans for a Democratic Italy” along with Paul Roa, Jr., a Gambino attorney (ibid. 18). It was apparently Sindona who introduced Guarino to Gelli.

The scandal of P2 was itself discovered while authorities were investigating the bankruptcy of Sindona’s Franklin National Bank in Long Island, NY. The trail led to Gelli and his rogue secret lodge Propaganda Due (P2). Gelli’s villa was searched and a cache of documents was uncovered, listing close to a thousand members in the highest reaches of finance and business, the Italian government, the military, and the secret services. Correspondences were discovered as well, with Guarino among them.

On 28 August 1979, Gelli wrote to Guarino (who at the time was on the Senior Citizens Division of the Republican Party National Committee):

I would also like you to let me know as urgently as possible whether the candidate you support is General Alexander Haig: as you know, we are able to help both through the Italian press, to influence Italo-Americans and Italians resident in your country, and through other channels, as well as economically. (Willan 2002: 67)

A reply is sent September 19th, that Reagan, instead of Haig would be the candidate. His answer was late, however, and Gelli had already made an effort to help: a glowing article did indeed appear in the press (on Haig) in Italy’s “most prestigious newspaper, recently bought with Banco Ambrosiano money and now under the editorial control of P2” (Willan 2007: 120).

Gelli was the only Italian national to be invited to Reagan’s inaugural dinner, and sat in the front row. It may have been Guarino who set it up; he certainly handled the arrangements. In a 1981 New York Times article – while the P2 scandal was breaking – Guarino is quoted as saying, “The last time I saw Mr. Gelli was at the inauguration of President Reagan,” La Stampa quoted Mr. Guarino as having said. “He asked me to introduce him to some members of the entourage, which I did. I made his hotel reservation, and we had occasional friendly meetings.”

Guarino’s Republican National Committee in fact issued (master conspirator) Gelli a “Citation”:

‘In recognition of dedicated and untiring service to the Republican party’. Gelli published the award in his memoir La Verita (The Truth), where it sits proudly across the page from a reproduction of his invitation to the ‘Inauguration of Ronald Wilson Reagan as President of the United States of America’. (Willan 2007: 120).

No doubt Gelli was aware of Guarino’s OSMTJ affiliation. Gelli and P2 kept secret files and dossiers on people and organizations, both business and political. One of those files, discovered in the police raid at Gelli’s villa, was marked “Sovereign Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem.”

In Lobster, Issue 5, 1984, Jonathan Marshall wrote:

One of the many secret dossiers found in Gelli’s possession was entitled “Sovereign Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem.” According to the Communist paper La Marseillaise, Gelli had direct dealings with the French branch of the Templars. One of the French Templar initiates was Ja[c]ques Massie, former leader of the Gaullist Service d’Action Civique (SAC) in the south of France, who was found murdered with all his family at Auriol on the outskirts of Marseilles. Massie had allegedly been involved in the traffic of arms from Turkey to the Italian Red Brigades and to right-wing hit teams in Spain and Italy. He was accused of diverting more than Frs.2 million in proceeds from one such deal in March 1981 to finance Giscard d’Estaing’s presidential fund, against the wishes of his Gaullist superiors in SAC and the Templars – for which crime he may have paid with his life. Gelli himself was said to have met in Marseilles with the French Templars, and to have stayed at a villa frequented by extreme right Italians close to SAC and the fascist Order Nouvea [Ordine Nuovo].

It was after all through the French and Swiss heads of the Order that Guarino had been given permission to set up the branch in America. If Gelli was that close to the French Templars, then it is probably through this connection that he had become aware of Guarino, rather than through Michele Sindona as is presumed.

Massimo Introvigne corroborates the Gelli/P2/SAC French Templar connection, writing:

Philip Guarino was also — according to the Italian Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on the P2 Lodge — the American “correspondent” of Licio Gelli’s lodge. Perhaps it is for this reason that a file on the OSMTJ was found during one of the raids carried out by the Italian authorities at Licio Gelli’s villa in Arezzo. Many “fringe” and “irregular” Freemasons belonged to an Italian Grand Priory of the OSMTJ (established, as it seems, with Alfred Zappelli’s authorization) which had as bailli (local leader) Pasquale Gugliotta (himself a member of the P2 Lodge) and comprised, among others, Pietro Muscolo of Genoa and Luigi Savona of Turin — both leaders of “clandestine” Masonic fraternities and, according to the Parliamentary Commission, Masonic allies of Licio Gelli. (Introvigne 1995: 25)

Pasquale Gugliotta is not on the list of P2 members found in the raid, however, but Introvigne has inside sources in esoteric circles and is very careful with facts.

According to OSMTJ’s Facebook page:

General Zdrojewski had to stay out of the spotlight because of investigations by the French Government. During these years, Grand Prior Alfred Zappelli stepped up to be an important leader to hold the OSMTJ together until the Grand Master could come back. Zappelli was also the one who recruited and introduced the Grand Prior of the USA, Father Philip Guarino, to Grand Master Zdrojewski in 1973. After that, Zappelli started several other Grand Priories including one in Italy under Pasquale Gugliotta.

In France, Italy and indeed all of continental Europe secret societies are taken much more seriously than in Anglo-Saxon countries. A “twilight underworld exists,” wrote Picknett and Prince, “where far-right groups, organized crime, security and intelligence agencies, and ‘initiatory’ societies meet and merge” (Picknett and Prince 2006: 39). The Sion Revelation contains a very good summary, drawn from solid French source material, of SAC and the purpose behind its subversion of established neo-Templarism (39-43). “There were several reasons for infiltrating the Templars,” they write. “As the SMOTJ tended to appeal to the upper echelons of society – the bosses – it could be used to infiltrate the police, the Army, the media, and so on. Indeed, according to Francois Audigier, author of an intensive study of the SAC, the SMOTJ already had links to various intelligence services” (41).

In the 1980s, with the discovery and investigations of SAC and Propaganda Due, all this came to light. In the years afterwards SMOTJ/OSMTH tried to distance itself from the controversies, especially after the Order of the Solar Temple [l’Ordre du Temple Solaire, or OTS] made headlines with the suicide/murder and ritual killing of 53 members in Quebec and Switzerland in October 1994. The latter esoteric/occult, new age magical fraternity didn’t directly stem from SMOTJ, but had beliefs in common, neo-Templarism was at its core, and its founders – before going off into a completely different direction – had initially frequented the same milieu.

Sources:

Bellant, Russ (1991): Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party, South End Press

Introvigne, Massimo (1995): “Ordeal by Fire: The Tragedy of the Solar Temple,” in The Order of the Solar Temple: The Temple of Death, ed. James R. Lewis, Ashgate, 2006, pp. 19-38

Introvigne, Massimo (2005): “Fabré-Palaprat, Bernard-Raymond” entry in Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism, ed. Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Brill Academic Publishers,  pp. 354-356

Marshall, Jonathan (1984): “Brief Notes On The Political Importance Of Secret Societies,” Lobster, Issue 5

Picknett, Lynn and Clive Prince (2006): The Sion Revelation: The Truth About the Guardians of Christ’s Sacred Bloodline, Touchstone

Willan, Philip (2002): Puppetmasters: The Political Use of Terrorism in Italy, iUniverse

Willan, Philip (2007): The Last Supper: The Mafia, the Masons, and the Killing of Roberto Calvi, Constable & Robinson