By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Following our comprehensive introductory discussion, we will proceed with six articles, including a history of the Order of Malta. And since there is an overlap between self-invented orders of St. John, this usually also involves mimic Bishops. We will, among others, cover this in part one.

 

The Strange World Of The Mimic Orders Of St. John And Its Mimic Bishops

The top photo is the Order of St John_ Russian Tradition Investiture Service in London. Here the often referred to Michael Foster introduced Bishop Howard Weston-Smart as Chaplain to the Order of St John_ Russian Tradition.

One should add that the Joseph-René Vilatte line also linked independent Catholicism to Western Esotericism. And when Jean-Baptiste Bricaud (also known as Tau Jean II) was made a Bishop, Vilatte’s esoteric bequest went worldwide. Bricaud managed to gather five significant groups of esotericists, including the Ordo Templi Orientis of Theodor Reuss and the neo-Gnosticism of Jules Doinel, who founded l’Église gnostique to revive Catharism.

Many Western esoterics continued to trace their heritage to the Bricaud nexus, partly because of the status conferred by succession from Vilatte.4 Even today, the Ordo Templi Orientis considers apostolic succession a “valued part of the group’s history.”2 About Ruess, see also Steiner, who created his own Church called the Christian Comunity.

And as the San-Luigi comments continue, there would be a continuation of elements of the work of the Eglise Gnostique Universelle through the churches led by Robert Ambelain and his successors; this would essentially be a work of revival and rebirth that continues in many Gnostic churches of today, perhaps illustrating that its inner traditions and their spiritual teachings are capable of creating their organizational frameworks through the transmission of initiatic and episcopal successions.

Later in 2009, the Order changed his name to:

 

Again using a different name, the following document dates from 8 May 2010:

Then when on 19 May of the same month a Hong Kohn Chapter, was created the name of the Order changed to:

Tau Synesius consecrated the twenty-one-year-old Joanny Bricaud as a bishop of the Gnostic Church in 1901. Papus, who wanted to see a more directly Martinist and Roman Catholic-modelled body than the more general esotericism of Tau Synesius, encouraged Bricaud to found his church as a schism of the Gnostic Church, which he did in 1907, adopting the name Gnostic Catholic Church and the title of Tau Jean II. In February 1908, the Episcopal Synod of the Gnostic Catholic Church elected Bricaud as its Patriarch, which event marked the point at which Bricaud’s jurisdiction, subsequently known as the Eglise Gnostique Universelle, became acknowledged as the successor jurisdiction to the Gnostic Church of Doinel, the Carmelite Church of Vintras and the Johannite Church. Papus conditionally consecrated Bricaud in 1911, from which date the Eglise Gnostique Universelle was considered the official church of Martinism. Eventually, in 1926, the remnant of Tau Synesius’ church also chose to unite with Bricaud’s Eglise Gnostique Universelle. 3

Bricaud:

The first to create the Cathar myth was Napoléon Peyrat, a bourgeois and talented fabulist who concocted in the 1870s an account of the Cathars, which, though primarily made up, still passes as truth in esoteric circles like Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy today.

Doinel’s consecrations merged with Vilatte’s line when Doinel joined Bricaud. Many Western esoterics continues to trace their heritage to the Bricaud nexus, partly because of the status conferred by succession from Vilatte.

And while the above-mentioned British Association was not, some other Orders can be of more questionable repute, or are (of which there is a fairly large number that is as to mention one) selling fake diplomatic passports or of a borderline criminal type.

We already mentioned the Duval Brimeyer development. Another worthy of mentioning is the MIDA scam of MGR Gerard Berrier, also naming himself Gerard Berger de Martigue.

Gerard Berrier was able to employ a large following which included a General and other officials who were entrapped:

The MIDA presented itself under several usurped names as "The Commandery of Africa of the Military and Hospitaller Order of Saint John" and the "Apostolic Order of Saint John." 

In April/Mai of 2019, the scheme started to fall apart. On 17 April 2019, the prefect of Mfoundi decided to suspend the organization's activities, which was a Ponzi scheme. A form of fraud that lures investors and pays profits to earlier investors with funds from more recent investors. Hence the administrative authority considered it a "swindle" and favored the "corruption of youth." And on September 13, 2019, the Mfoundi High Court charged MIDA with "fraud and money laundering of a sum estimated at 12.3 billion CFA francs between 2016 and 2018.”

The organization's leaders, at the time in prison, did not stop being active. From their place of detention, those at the origin of the case continue to manipulate the subscribers through various maneuvers”, reported the daily Le Jour in its edition on newsstands on 15 May 2019.

The habeas corpus appeal filed by the lawyers for the defendants was rejected on Thursday, May 24, 2018, by the investigating judge of the High Court of the Mfoundi administrative center.

The decision was made after almost 3 hours of debate. This is where hundreds of subscribers to the activities of Mida massed since the morning outside the courthouse and repressed by the public security forces are disappointed by the judge's sentence and express their anger at the end of the hearing.

Training at MIDA:

Most significantly, the Berrier's Apostolic Order of Saint John obtained territories and sovereignty for his FÉDÉRATION DES DEUX RIVES. 

In France, Berrier used the money he made through his Cameroon scam to present himself as what was expected to appeal to the French public.

Also, recently in 2023, Berrier, pictured on the table above, is still selling his claimed TELEPATHIC EXPERIENCES, communication beyond the senses.

To conclude, a 'real' bishop is not a successor of a sole apostle as only the synod/college of bishops in toto are heir to the college of the apostles. Therefore none of the mimic bishops has a ’real’ apostolic succession. There is no Holy Ghost in mimic-Bishop-consecrations. The instrumental con is of no apostolic value.

Most mimic Bishops and mimic orders dish out papers and diplomas with no value.

The alleged 'Bishop' Gerard Berrier, who more recently called himself Gérard de Martigues, is listed here, but it's not legitimate. Also, the Sovereign Apostolic Order of the Knights and Hospitallers of Saint John listed on the same site is not legitimate either. None of the self-invented Orders, however, will use the actual name of the Order because they know the real name is copyright is protected.

 

1. Joanne Pearson, Wicca and the Christian Heritage: Ritual, Sex and Magic, pp. 45–47. Apiryon (Tau Apiryon), “History of the Gnostic Catholic Church,” Ordo Templi Orientis, 1995.

2. Augustine, In epistulam Ioannis ad Parthos (Tractatus VII, 8) (c. 416 CE), in Augustine, Homilies on the First Epistle of John, trans. Boniface Ramsey, Works of Saint Augustine series (Hyde Park, N.Y.: New City Press, 2008), pp. 104–14. Pearson, Wicca and the Christian Heritage, p. 47.

3. See James Ingall Wedgwood, Beginnings of the Liberal Catholic Church, February 13, 1916 (1937; Lakewood, N.J.: Ubique, 1966); Peter Anson, Bishops at Large (1964; Berkeley: Apocryphile Press, 2006), pp. 185–87, 192–98, 323–442; Robert Ellwood and Harry B. Partin, Religious and Spiritual Groups in Modern America, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1988), pp. 107–9; and Siobhan Houston, Priests, Gnostics and Magicians: European Roots of Esoteric Independent Catholicism (Berkeley: Apocryphile Press, 2009), pp. 67–120.

4. Reference above is to the organization led by Besant based in Adyar. The number of members in the Theosophical Society at its height is usually given as forty-five thousand, for example, in Anne Tyler, Annie Besant: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 328. Catherine Albanese, A Republic of Mind and Spirit (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), chap. 6, “Metaphysical Asia,” pp. 330–93. Besides the Liberal Catholic Church, other esoteric sacramental groups started by former Theosophists include Rudolf Steiner’s Christian Community, Dion Fortune’s Guild of the Master Jesus (later called the Church of the Graal), and Richard, Duc de Palatine’s Pre-Nicene Gnostic Catholic Church.

 

 

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