Lyon, today France’s second largest city, is also the place from where, in the second century, the virulently anti-Gnostic bishop, Irenaeus, penned his writings which helped forever define ‘orthodox’ Christianity. Ironically, until the discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts in 1945, much of what we knew about the early Gnostics came from Irenaeus, one of their fiercest critics.

Southern France is also the area where the ‘Good Christians’ or Cathars (the name derived from the Greek word katharos, meaning ‘The Pure’) emerged in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Cathars received their Gnostic teachings from the Bogomils (meaning ‘beloved of God’), a Gnostic community active in the Balkans since the tenth century.

At the heart of Cathar doctrine is the notion that true Christianity (which the Cathars claimed to receive in a secret line of apostolic succession from St John) is a life lived, not simply a doctrine believed. For them the life of Jesus was a model the ‘Good Christian’ must strive to emulate, not a vicarious sacrifice to be blindly accepted on trust.

The existence of the Cathars challenged the legitimacy of the Roman Church as Zoe Oldenbourg explains in Massacre at Montsegur:

The Cathars declared themselves the heirs of a tradition that was older than that held by the Church of Rome – and, by implication, both less contaminated and near in spirit to the Apostolic tradition. They claimed to be the only persons who had kept and cherished the Holy Spirit which Christ had bestowed upon His Church; and it looks as though this claim was at least partially justified....

After the manner of the Bogomils and the followers of the eastern Gnostic prophet, Mani, the Cathars believed in a cosmic battle between the principles of Light and Darkness on whose meetings and encounters everything in the universe is based.

Darkness was for them dark matter, the unperfected, the transient. They identified all clerical and secular rulers, principally the Roman Church, as the personification of the Darkness.

“Today we are better informed than they were concerning the practices of the Early Church,” writes Zoe Oldenbourg, “and have to admit that the Cathars merely followed a tradition somewhat more ancient than that of the [Roman] Church herself. It was with some appearance of reason that they claimed Rome as the party guilty of ‘heresy’ through her falling-out from the original purity which had characterised the Church of the Apostles.”

As with the ancient Gnostics, Rome saw the Cathars as a threat. “Catharism was spreading with extraordinary speed in Southern France,” points out the French writer, Maurice Magre. “It was the radiant cult of the pure spirit which took possession of men’s souls, and it seriously endangered the materialistic Church of the pope.”

We know from their sacred books, primarily the Book of the Two Principles and The Questions of John, which relates a discussion between Jesus and the apostle John, that the Cathars believed they were true Christians faithful to a secret tradition stretching back to St. John.

Rejecting most of the Old Testament, whose deity they identified with Satan, the Cathars held the Gospel of John in highest esteem and made use of it in their rituals.

Early in the thirteenth century, Pope Innocent declared a Crusade against the ‘Good Christians’ of Southern France, announcing:

Attack the followers of heresy more fearlessly even than the Saracens – since they are more evil – with a strong hand and an outstretched arm. Forward then soldiers of Christ! Forward brave recruits to the Christian army! Let pious zeal inspire you to avenge this monstrous crime against your God.

On the annual Feast Day of Mary Magdalene, July 22, 1209, the pope’s army prepared to attack the city of Beziers, many of whose sixty thousand inhabitants were devout Catholics, in order to wipe-out the Cathar ‘heretics’. “It was here, in the name of the Christian religion and through the fanaticism of one of the most venerated popes,” says Maurice Magre, “that there took place one of the most ferocious massacres in all history.”

When asked how they were to distinguish pious Catholics from the Cathar ‘heretics’, the pope’s envoy, the Abbot of Citeaux, replied, “Kill them all, the Lord will know His own.”

The fall of the fortress-town of Montsegur in the Pyrenees in 1244 marked the end of the Cathars as a ‘public’ movement.

The Cathars were the legitimate heirs of the early Gnostic Christians and, through them, of the first apostles. The central tenets of the Cathars, particularly the prominence they ascribed to Mary Magdalene and St. John, confirms they were a manifestation of an underground stream of secret teachings called by the prophet Mani, the universal ‘Religion of Light.’

The persecution and massacres unleashed by the Roman Church again forced the Gnostics underground to reemerge at a later time in fulfilment of 'the Great Plan'.

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The Gnostic Revival

Six hundred years after the pope launched the murderous Crusade against the ‘Good Christians’, three French mystics were each inspired to play unique roles in the revival of the Gnostic Johannite tradition in the modern world.

Dr. Bernard-Raymond Fabré-Palaprat (1773-1838) was deeply immersed in the esoteric traditions of France, particularly those relating to the medieval Knights Templar who were said to have imbibed Gnostic ideas while in the Holy Land. Only a few years after the bloody massacres of the Cathars, the Templars met a similar tragic fate at the hands of the pope and king of France.

In 1812 Fabré-Palaprat claimed to have discovered a manuscript written in Greek called the Levitikon, containing a version of the Gospel of John. Most historians today believe the work actually dates from around the seventeenth or eighteenth century, but some researchers say it may originate as early as the eleventh century.

To Fabré-Palaprat it was an ancient text revealing the truth about the Church of John and the secret history of true Christianity. According to Peter Partner, the author of a scholarly book on the Knights Templar, in the Levitikon ...

“The orthodox presentation of Christ had been excised in favour of a version which eliminated the miracles and the resurrection, and presented Christ as an initiate of the higher mysteries, trained in Egypt.

God is understood as existence, action, and mind, and morality as rational and benevolent conduct. The cosmos, in the ancient Gnostic tradition, is viewed as a hierarchy of intelligences. The part played by privileged initiation in the transmission of divine knowledge is central.

Christ conferred the essential knowledge of this Gospel on John as the best-loved apostle, and it was transmitted thence through the Patriarchs of Jerusalem until the arrival of the Templars in 1118, after which the secret teaching was kept by the Templar Grand Masters.

The esoteric doctrine was passed down through the official medieval Order until its fall in 1312, and then through their successors who extend the chain down to the present.

Inspired by what he found in the mysterious Levitikon, Fabré-Palaprat set about establishing a ‘Johannite Church’, with himself as the Sovereign Pontif or outer head of ‘John’s Church’. Around 1828 he reorganised the fledgling Johannite community under the name of the “Holy Church of Christ,” or the “Church of Primitive Christians.”

Six years later Fabré-Palaprat, on the authority he claimed to have as successor of St. John, publicly celebrated a ‘Johannite Mass’. Facing considerable opposition from the Catholic clergy, the Johannites discontinued their open activities. Fabré-Palaprat retired to Southern France, where, in a region alive with the memory of the Cathars and Mary Magdalene, he died in 1839.

On August 6 1839, Eugene Vintras had finished work in the French village of Tillay when an extraordinary event irrevocably changed his life. An old man knocked at his door and addressing Vintras by his baptismal name ‘Pierre-Michel’, told him the time had come for him to carry out a special mission.

The end of the age (that is, the age of the Second Reign, that of Christ), he said, was at hand, and Vintras was to announce the coming of the Holy Spirit and the commencement of the ‘Reign of Love’.

The old man ‘whose face shone so brightly you could not look at him,’ again appeared to Vintras while he was on a visit to Paris. Subsequent visionary experiences confirmed the ‘old man’ was the Archangel Michael and Vintras a reincarnation of the prophet Elijah.

In addition to Archangel Michael, Vintras told of being visited by the Virgin Mary, St. Joseph, as well as other angelic beings, who disclosed to him the secret teachings of the original Christians. Followers flocked to Vintras, who now known by his spiritual name “Elie-Strathaniel,” celebrated Mass wearing a vestment adorned with an upside down cross.

“I want this cross to be known as the cross of grace, because this is an age of crime and corruption, having drawn down on all the earth the terrible effects of my Father’s justice,” Christ (Jesus) had told Vintras in a vision.

Vintras, the pious, mild-mannered Catholic, had been transformed by his experiences and as ‘Elijah returned’ radiated a powerful presence. People from all over France rushed to join his “Church of Carmel” or “Work of Mercy,” with its new priesthood which was to replace the ‘corrupt’ priesthood of the Catholic Church.

Lacking any formal religious training and with only a basic education, Eugene Vintras, the Prophet Elie-Strathaniel, preached complex rites and doctrines which remarkably resembled those of the ancient Gnostics. As the historian Richard Griffiths explains:

These rites were sacrificial in nature, and they enabled those who performed them to receive the merits of ‘redemption’, and to participate in the preparation for the coming of the Paraclete. The belief in the efficacy of a specific rite in freeing man from the fetters of matter and bringing him nearer to the spiritual redemption which would announce the Third Reign is very near to that of most gnostic sects, for whom the method of redemption consisted not so much in the profession of certain opinions or virtues as in the practice of certain rites.

The ancient Gnostics included both men and women in the priesthood, a tradition revived by Vintras in the Church of Carmel.

Women were permitted into the priesthood of the rite, in fact they held a very important place, for it was through Woman that salvation was to come. And in the attitude towards the Virgin Mary we find a conception of her as ‘created Wisdom’, the invariable reflection of ‘uncreated Wisdom’.

This can be seen to be very close to one form of Valentinianism, a gnostic belief in which Sophia, or Wisdom (a divine principle which had fallen from the realm of light into the realm of matter) was conceived as being a double figure.

The higher Sophia remained in the sphere of light, the lower Sophia had sunk into darkness. Through this duality Sophia became the fallen divinity through whom the mingling of light and dark, of spirit and matter, in the world, had been achieved; she was also seen as the intermediary between the lower and higher worlds and an instrument of redemption.

In 1842, under pressure from the Catholic Church, Vintras was arrested by the French authorities and imprisoned for five years on the trumped-up charge of soliciting donations from people to whom he claimed to reveal the name of their guardian angel.

While he was in prison, the Abbe Marechal, known as Ruthmael, took over the community. He apparently began publicly teaching certain rituals that had a sexual content. According to some reports, he confided to his congregation, “Those who feel love for one another should share it often. Every time they do, they are sure to create a spirit in heaven.”!!!

In 1848 the Church of Carmel was formally condemned by the Vatican, and during the years 1852 to 1862 Vintras lived in London, where he published The Eternal Gospel. On his return to France he founded new congregations and a ‘college of prophets’ in Lyon, a city with a strong connection to the Gnostic tradition.

For some years the Church of Carmel continued with congregations in Spain, in Belgium, in Italy, and in England. The church survived Vintras’ death on December 7, 1875, but by then the rites were only celebrated in the utmost secrecy. A Vintrasian church functioned in London up until at least the beginning of the Second World War.

From England, Vintras’ followers resettled in other countries, free of the acrimonious scrutiny of the Catholic Church. Others went on to join the new spiritual groups that emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Dr. Bernard-Raymond, Fabré-Palaprat and Eugene Vintras made unique contributions to the rediscovery of the Johannite Gnostic tradition. The religious movements started by these French visionaries helped prepare the way for the establishment of the modern Gnostic Church in 1890 by Jules-Benoit Doinel (1842-1902).

Doinel had for some years frequented esoteric and mystical circles, where he encountered the teachings of Fabré-Palaprat and Vintras.

One of these circles, formed around the Countess of Caithness, took a particular interest in ancient Gnosticism. Lady Caithness was well acquainted with France’s occult and mystical groups, including the Church of Carmel.

Jules Doinel also entered Freemasonry, being initiated Master in 1885 with the “congratulations and encouragement” of Albert Pike. Dr. Stephan A. Hoeller informs us:

It was into this milieu that the ancient Gnostic tradition was reborn in France in the late nineteenth century. Jules-Benoit Doinel du Val Michel, a scholarly esotericist who had been a devoted researcher of the documents of the Cathar faith, had a mystical experience in 1890, in which he received spiritual empowerment to reconstitute the Gnostic church of old.

His experience occurred in the splendid chapel at the residence of the Duchess de Pomar, Countess of Caithness, in Paris. This remarkable noblewoman was a friend of Madame Blavatsky and an early Theosophist and patroness of esoteric movements….

Jules Doinel gathered a following and established the Eglise Gnostique, which was organised along sacramental lines. The teachings of the new church were strictly Gnostic, and in homage to Valentinus, Doinel assumed the ecclesiastical title of Patriarch Tau Valentin II.

In a most progressive step he ordained women to priestly and episcopal offices; he also established once again the sacrament of the Consolamentum reminiscent of the Cathars.

Given Jules Doinel’s connections to France’s leading mystics, the Gnostic Church soon became known as “the church of the initiates.” Doinel consecrated the remarkable esoteric writer Papus (Dr. Gerard Encausse) as a Gnostic bishop, and also joined Papus’s Martinist Order. Among Doinel’s acquaintances was Abbe Berenger Sauniere, the parish priest of Rennes-le-Chateau.

At this time a number of gifted esotericists joined the French Gnostic Church, among them Fabré des Essarts, Albert de Pouvourville, Paul Sedir, Lucien Mauchel, Victor Blanchard and René Guénon.

In 1908, Joanny Bricaud (1881-1934), held at Lyon the Holy Synod of Gnostic Bishops, which elevated him as patriarch of the Gnostic Church under the name Tau Jean II.

Bricaud had studied the Johannite teachings and greatly admired Eugene Vintras and the Church of Carmel. He was committed to fully restoring the ancient Gnostic wisdom, faithful to the sacred tradition of Saint John. On becoming patriarch he declared:

The religious evolution of which we are a part shows us that a new religion is necessary. Gnosticism offers itself as the desired religion. Gnosis is the complete and definitive synthesis of all beliefs and all ideas of which humanity has need to realise its origin, its past, its end, its nature, the contradictions of existence and the problems of life….

Gnosis is the very essence of Christianity. Here, my beloved, is the just definition of Gnosticism. But, by Christianity, we do not only mean the doctrine taught since the arrival of the divine Savior, but also the one taught before Jesus’ arrival, in the old temples, the doctrine of Eternal Truth. Our Church is the antinomy of that of Rome. The name of that one is Force; the name of ours is Love.

Our Sovereign Patriarch is not Peter, the impulsive, who denied three times his master and took up the sword, but John, the Savior’s friend, the apostle who relied on his heart and in it knew best the immortal sentiment, the oracle of light, the author of the Eternal Gospel, who took up only Speech and Love.[7]

In The Esoteric Christian Doctrine, published in 1907, a year before he became patriarch of the Gnostic Church, Bricard wrote:

Sadly, the ecumenical brotherhood and openness of spirit cultivated by Bricaud could not prevent persecution and strife befalling the Gnostic Church in France. Bricaud’s successor, the saintly Monsignor Constant Chevillon, Tau Harmonious (1880-1944), was cruelly executed by Nazi collaborators after the Vichy government suppressed the Gnostic Church.

Nevertheless it was from France that the Gnostic Church spread to Portugal, Italy, Belgium, and South America. “The Gnostic tradition, which originally had its home in France,” Dr. Stephan Hoeller tells us, “came to be established in England and later in the United States, initially as a result of the efforts of a bishop of French descent who was raised in Australia.”

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A Gnostic Restorationist

With fascism and communism on the rise across Europe, far away in Australia a young spiritual seeker began questioning the historical foundations of Christianity.

In his quest for truth, Richard, Duc de Palatine (born Ronald Powell in 1916), joined “the biggest occult library in the Southern Hemisphere at the Theosophical Lodge in Melbourne,” where he studied “the extant writings concerning the Gnostics, Essenes and Secret Mysteries.”

By 1944, he became convinced “that one day he would cause to be formed a Brotherhood which would partially restore the "Sacred Lore" and encourage people to prepare themselves for the Illumination and Interior Communion with the God within.”

In the 1940s Palatine, a learned and charismatic figure, attracted much attention. His insight was uncanny, but for all this, he was perceived by many as being a very humble person who seemed to exude love and peace wherever he went.

In 1948 he told his friends his mission was not in Australia and he travelled to London, where in 1953 he was consecrated as Bishop Richard John Chretien Duc de Palatine by the Patriarch Hugh George de Willmott Newman. The name of Duc de Palatine is a personal and 'spiritual' title.

In October, 1953 the Most Rev. Richard, Duc de Palatine established in London the “Pre-Nicene Gnosto-Catholic Church,” with the stated object of

“restoring the Gnosis – Divine Wisdom to the Christian Church, and to teach the Path of Holiness which leads to God and the Inner Illumination and Interior Communion with the Soul through the mortal body of man.”

From his base in London’s Kensington, Palatine travelled on several occasions to France where he made contact with bishops of the French Gnostic Church. They encouraged him to fulfil his mission of transmitting the Gnostic tradition to the English-speaking world.

He was also received by representatives of France’s leading mystical orders, including the surviving Grand Master of the Johannite Templar Order. In a profile of Palantine's life, we read that he held high office in many esoteric bodies:

Through these orders and his many contacts, particularly in France which he frequently visited, Palantine was able to present, in a semi-public forum, his understanding of the hidden teachings -- the Gnosis of the Soul, which exposed the false vestiges of truth that had been foisted onto the people.

Through his London based Pre-Nicene Publishing House, Palatine issued a series of booklets on Christian Gnosticism, with titles like “The Inner Meaning of the Mystery Schools,” “The Christian Mysteries,” and “Christ or Jesus?”

He also published “The Lucis Magazine” as the official organ of ‘The Sovereign Imperium of the Mysteries.’ Reviewing Palatine’s early writings, it's obvious how far-sighted and spiritually gifted he was. Articles in his magazine ranged from discussions of “The Fallen Angels” and the “Dead Sea Scrolls” to the “Christian Fathers on Reincarnation” and “Spiritual Illumination”.

In the book The Key to Cosmic Consciousness, he is described as an “outstanding mystic and illumined teacher and writer” whose “knowledge and experience stems from his own illumination in 1956, after applying the teachings of the early Gnostic Fathers…”

Writing close to fifty years ago, Palatine contrasted the Gnostic spirit of tolerance with the dogmatism of the mainstream Churches:

Palatine's magazines and booklets were disseminated around the world and his ‘Brotherhood and Order of the Pleroma’ had branches in South Africa, Nigeria, the USA, and Australia.

In 1971 he moved to the United States where he continued his work up to the time of his early death in 1977. “He left behind a rich heritage, and because of his pioneering work a breach was made in the consciousness of the people…. but the keys to find the Door are still guarded and can only be found within the Wisdom Schools which through its Rite of Succession pass on the Keys to the Door.”

Since Palatine’s passing, the work of the Gnosis, of necessity, has taken on many guises and has appeared in different forms. In the United States the Gnostic tradition restored by Palatine is carried on chiefly by Dr. Stephan A. Hoeller, Regionary Bishop of Ecclesia Gnostica, who was consecrated in 1967 by Palatine.

In Great Britain and Australia the Gnostic work has taken on a private approach in order to implement links with the more esoteric side of the Gnostic tradition. The Universal Gnostic Alliance, a consortium of Gnostic organisations in the Asia and Pacific region, was established in Australia at Easter, 2005.

Formally chartered “to perpetuate the work of encouraging the study and propagation of the ancient and true universal philosophy of the inner Gnosis,” the Universal Gnostic Alliance is faithful to the vision of Palatine, and the great teachers of the Gnosis who went before.

~ Abridged from an article by Tau Mikhael that first appeared in New Dawn Magazine Special Issue No. 2. You can read the rest of the article -- A Hidden History of the Secret Church -- >>>Here

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About Tau Mikhael

Tau Mikhael is the Chief Bishop of the Universal Life Gnostic Fellowship and currently serves as the international secretary of the Universal Gnostic Alliance. An ordained minister since 1980, he holds degrees of Doctorate of Divinity and Theology. He has traveled extensively in Eurasia, Africa and the Middle East, and currently divides his time between Australia and South East Asia.

Site Publisher's Note

Richard, Duc de Palatine (born Ronald Powell) was by all accounts a very complex and often confrontational individual. Over his life he had many admirers and not a few enemies. While obviously gifted and a sincere seeker after truth, from the perspective of Inner Light, Palatine is not considered to have been a fully awakened individual.

Rather than being focused on the Gnosis of Light, Palatine seemed more concerned with priestcraft and the outward, ecclesiastic, ritualistic and successional forms of gnosticism which is not at all the concern of this site. We in no way recommend him as a role-model or his writings on esotericism, but only include the facts above for historical interest.

Significantly, one church-history scholar has noted: “As for such sacraments being performed by a clergy ordained within an apostolic succession, there is no such thing among the ancient Gnostics. On the contrary, the institutionalization of the apostolic succession was developed by the orthodox church specifically to combat and discredit Gnosticism ... It is most surprising, therefore, to see the 'Ecclesia Gnostica' (founded by a bishop consecrated by Palatine) boast about its apostolic ordinations performed by a valid bishop”

In trying to revive gnostic Christianity, if that is, in fact, what he was attempting to do, Palantine appears a misguided, if not contradictory figure. In view of all the oppositions and vicious persecutions of gnostic Christians by the Roman Catholic Church (see above) it's hard to comprehend why Palantine would turn to the ancient enemy for help.

As Bishop Leila Boyer, wife of Palatine’s successor George, reports: “He visited Pope John XXIII in the Vatican ... and asked (him) to embrace his work as an order within the Roman Church to enable it to reestablish its true mystical heritage, but was (of course) refused.

Further online information re Palatine etc.

• www.moderngnosis.org
• Modern Gnosis site
• Writings typical of Palatine

Further reading about modern gnostics and Palatine

• Smith, Richard. -- The Revival of Ancient Gnosis. The Allure of Gnosticism. Ed. Robert A. Segal. Chicago : Open Court Publishing Company, 1995.
• Keizer, Lewis. -- The Wandering Bishops – Apostles of a New Spirituality. PDF

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