dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

Sex, money, strange rituals and mysticism, charismatic leaders, weapons, doomsday belief.

All these elements above typically associated to varying degrees with cults, came to a head on this day in international death and murder starting in a quiet town in Quebec.

Morin Heights, north of Montreal in the Laurentian Mountain region is known as a tourist town, mostly connected with skiing.

On October 4, 1994, while the town was slowly gearing up for the winter ski season, a fire broke out in a house that left five people dead.

At first it was thought to be an accident that left two charred bodies, but investigators soon found three stabbed bodies, including a baby, in an adjacent building. They discovered the fire had been deliberately set with a series of timed incendiary devices, but not all had gone off.

The partially burned houses in Morin Heights. where investigators found 5 dead, by murder and suicide, including a baby. (Radio-Canada- Le Point)

They had stumbled onto the first deaths of an international cult known as the “Ordre du Temple Solaire”- (Order of the Solar Temple), whose dogma consisted of a strange mix of Catholicism, Rosicrucian beliefs, elements of ancient Egyptian beliefs, shamanism, doomsday scenarios and combined with Templar-like mystical rituals, and regalia, and a strict hierarchy, where one advanced through financial donations.

It was a cult where, in Quebec, it had attracted several high-ranking members of the provincial power authority, Hydro-Quebec.

Beginning with talks of love, well being and fulfillment, as one became pulled in, eventually as well, the belief that death through fire (to purify the soul) would result in a new life on “Sirius”.

Joseph di Mambro, believed to the top man of the cult shown in a cult video (via TV M6 France- Youtube)

Collective suicide and murder

The day after, in Switzerland in two separate incidents, 48 more followers of the cult were found dead. While some were believed to have willingly committed suicide, others were thought to have been killed.

The dead included cult founders Luc Jouret, 46, a Belgian-born physician who claimed he was a reincarnated from the time of the Templars and even a reincarnation of Jesus, and Joseph di Mambro, 70, of France who split his time between Quebec, France and Switzerland. Di Mambro had already been suspected in an arms smuggling and money laundering operation.

Luc Jouret- the apparent number 2 in the cult shown in a 1985 video (via CBC)

In the 1980’s Jouret had already begun gathering followers to his strange beliefs of “personal development” and in 1986 moved to Quebec along with several followers where others joined as he began preaching about impending doom as he and followers were dressed in long hooded robes, often with the red cross of the Templars.

Ritual scene taken from an OTS video, Joesph di Mambro is sitting just to the right of the candelabra in the photo (TV-M6 France)

https://www.rcinet.ca/en/2018/10/04/history-canada-october-41994-an-international-cult-tragedy-begins/