An Apocalyptic Vision Finds a Logical, Tragic End : Religion: Solar Temple members foresaw environmental doom as the post-Cold War end.

The deaths of more than 50 members of the Order of the Solar Temple in Switzerland and Quebec remain obscure, the motives as yet tangled and the perpetrators unclear. But whether the deaths were the result of murder, suicide or some combination of the two, it is still possible to make some preliminary observations.

However tangled the motives for the deaths, the Solar Temple had a following--and the existence of this following compels us to seriously examine the group’s beliefs. Foremost among those beliefs was the conviction that an overwhelming, imminent cosmic disaster was inevitable; its vast destruction the necessary prelude to anticipated world transformation. This apocalyptic vision of the Earth on the edge of a final calamity is by now a familiar theme among millenarian groups.

The Solar Temple, however, was distinctive in part because it drew its apocalyptic vision of the end of history from unusual sources. Unlike more widespread Christian millennialism, the Solar Temple drew from occultism and ecological doomsayers. Religious fundamentalism remains a major source of apocalyptic ideas and imagery, but they may also be found in the occult and New Age, in neo-Malthusian social thought and in scientific predictions of environmental collapse.

Scenarios of ecological disaster have become particularly prominent among contemporary apocalyptic sectarians, especially those influenced by New Age ideas. At a time when many natural disasters have lost their power to shock, and the end of the Cold War has reduced fears of a nuclear holocaust, environmental disasters emerge as a potent expression that the world is ending.

While the attraction of apocalyptic sects is in part attributable to the charisma of leaders like the Solar Temple’s Luc Jouret, the beliefs themselves figure importantly in the decision of adherents to give themselves totally to such affiliations. The Solar Temple appears to have had a core of highly committed members, recruited through Jouret’s practice of creating organizations within organizations, so that as their commitment grew, followers could move to more demanding inner circles of the movement.

Both the beliefs themselves and a structure of organizations nested within one another reflect a principal reason for the appeal of such groups--the belief among members that they and they alone know the true nature of reality. This secret knowledge exerts a powerful appeal, while at the same time offering a convenient explanation for why the group has failed to attract a mass membership. The general population is deemed too ignorant, deceived or spiritually impoverished to grasp the message. Sect members also believe they are the elite who will enjoy and perhaps rule in the perfect new existence that will follow the predicted catastrophe.

The Solar Temple experience reaffirms the volatility of those millenarian and apocalyptic groups that organize in physically isolated communal settlements.

Such separation can have potent consequences. By severing ties to the larger environment, members cut themselves off from information that might contradict their beliefs. Withdrawal often produces factionalism within the group, and rivalries over leadership are a common result. Lastly, separation often embroils a group in the very society it despises and seeks to escape. Its withdrawal may stimulate suspicion by the authorities and sometimes leads to clashes between communal millenarians and the authorities. Disputes erupt over weapons, taxes, the treatment of children and other issues where the demands of the state collide with a group’s claims to a separate existence.

Millenarian groups have a centuries-long history in the West. Such activity ebbs and flows, although the proximity to the year 2000 helps explain the present heightened interest. The decimal system, with its round numbers, leads us to invest dates that end in zeros with special significance. Nowhere is this clearer than in the millennial year that approaches. Hence, for all its strangeness, the Solar Temple is emblematic of a rising cultural mood that sees a historic watershed in the year 2000.

The proliferation of millenarian groups has not been matched by a more sophisticated understanding of their character. Instead, they tend to be lumped together as cults, dismissed as inherently disreputable, manipulative and irrational. In fact, despite their common belief in imminent transformation, they often differ dramatically.

The vast majority of members of millenarian groups join them and remain in them out of conviction, believing them to make sense of the world. Classifying the groups as cults substitutes a pejorative label for understanding.