Saint-Yves d’Alveydre, the Man and the Mission

In consulting Brazilian and French dictionaries and encyclopedias, extremely rare and sparing references are found for the term “sinarchy.”
France’s most famous encyclopedia, Larousse du XXe Siècle (1920 edition), defines it as follows: Simultaneous government of various princes who rule different parts of a state.

We may consider this a meager and overly simplistic definition for the study of the system devised by Joseph-Alexandre Saint-Yves, Marquis d’Alveydre—a complex and uncommon work, conceived by a man of great learning linked to the Ancient Traditions. He did not belong to any occultist school; reclusive and devoted to his own studies, he left behind only a few faithful disciples in addition to his thought, recorded in various works: Mission des Juifs, Mission de l’Inde en Europe, Mission de l’Europe en Asie, Mission des Ouvriers, La France Vraie and this The Archeometer.

The Sinarchy

Sinarchy is a program of action and political renewal based on an analysis of social reality, according to which every human community, considered as a closed organism, must, to be satisfactory, be in tune with and harmoniously correspond to the three main functions that exist in each human being.

Examined by Saint-Yves, these three functions acquire the dimension of a “social biology”:

• The first function, which is the foundation, corresponds to the human body and its “nutrition,” referring to society’s “economy.”
• The second social function corresponds to activity, will, and the soul. It ensures relationships among men through legislation and politics.
• The third, the Spirit, pertains to science, religion, and education, which must guide all human activity, as they pursue humanity’s higher goals.

From this simple scheme, tirelessly promoted by Saint-Yves, comes the second essential idea of the system, addressing how each of these functions should be represented in the specific Institutions that will manage and foster them. The three “social powers” should coexist harmoniously, without one dominating the others.

Hence the more fitting definition for sinarchy: The government of a State, authority exercised by several individuals or several groups at the same time.

Agharta, the Hidden City

Another highlight in Saint-Yves’s work is the reference to Agharta, the hidden city, where, from immemorial times, the initiates of Padesa preserve and perpetuate extraordinary knowledge. Its name, Agharta, means impervious to violence, inaccessible to anarchy. In Sanskrit, a language widely used by Saint-Yves in formulating his theories, Agharta means impossible to find.

Saint-Yves was not the first to mention Agharta. Prior to him, Louis Jacolliot had already referred to it in Historie des Vierges (1875), drawing on an Indian folk tradition. In 1924, Ferdinand Ossendowski published Beasts, Men and Gods, which describes his journey through Central Asia in 1920, and his descriptions closely parallel those of Saint-Yves. Other authors also speak of Agharta, such as Raymond Bernard in The Hollow Earth; Andrew Tomas in Shambhala: The Mysterious Tibetan Civilization; and the erudite cabalist René Guénon in The King of the World. The arguments and similarities among these authors’ ideas lead us to seriously consider the existence of a most ancient tradition evidenced by the collective testimony of an entire Asian population that somewhere in the world there is a “Holy Land,” a mighty center of cosmic radiation guarded by true Initiatic Schools, visited to this day only by extraordinary men, and by its supreme leader, known in India as Jagrat-Dwipa.

Having visited Agharta countless times in altered states of consciousness, Saint-Yves does not reveal its location for security reasons: “It is enough for our readers to know that, in certain regions of the Himalayas, among 22 temples that represent the 22 arcana of Hermes and the 22 letters of certain sacred alphabets, Agharta forms the mystical Zero, the impossible to find.” Yet he describes it, piquing his readers’ curiosity: “The sacred territory of Agharta is independent, synarchically organized, and composed of a population that rises to nearly twenty million souls.”

The wisdom and existence of Agharta are revealed to the occultist Saint-Yves, who delineates the city’s profile as one that is university-like by vocation, since its inhabitants devote themselves mainly to study and personal evolution. Saint-Yves continues:
“Such justice reigns there that the son of the last of the pariahs can be admitted to the sacred University; offenses are amended without prison or police. The universal language spoken there is vattan. Agharta’s organization is circular; its districts are laid out in concentric circles. In one of these circles, 5,000 pandits or sages dwell: their number of 5,000 corresponds to the hermetic reasons of the Vedic language.”

He goes on, describing “a solar circumscription of 365 bagwandas, then another of 21 black and white Arquis. The circle closest to the ‘mysterious center’ is made up of 12 gurus, each with ‘7 names, hierograms, or mentrams, of 7 celestial, earthly, and infernal powers.’ Finally, at the center lives the sovereign pontiff, the Brahatmah, and his two assistants, the Mahatma and the Mahanga.”

Note that Saint-Yves does not designate the supreme leader of Agharta as the “King of the World,” but presents him as a “sovereign pontiff.” The pontifical nature refers to the head of an initiatic hierarchy, and the term “pontiff,” meaning “bridge builder,” derives from a Masonic title of the High Degrees in which the pontiff is a builder of bridges between humans and the Great Architect of the Universe. The ultimate goal of true religion is to connect, to build the bridge with the Solar or Christic Spark within us. Brahatmah, the High Pontiff, means “protection of souls in the Spirit of God”; his two assistants are Mahatma “representing the Universal Soul” and Mahanga, “symbol of the entire material organization of the Cosmos,” a hierarchical division present in other Mystery Schools represented by the Ternary “spirit, soul, and body,” applied by Saint-Yves in line with the constitutive analogy of the Macrocosm and Microcosm. In Sanskrit, these words refer to principles and can only be applied to human beings insofar as they align with these same principles and are connected to functions rather than individualities.

Also noteworthy is the description of the mysterious circle formed by 12 gurus who represent the supreme Initiation and correspond to the zodiacal band. This structure is likewise found in the Dalai Lama’s “Circular Council,” formed by the twelve great Namshahans, or, in the West, among the Knights of the Round Table.

Saint-Yves continues his account:
“In the underground cells, countless djiwas study: there, the student feels the invasion of the Invisible. Little by little, holy visions illuminate his dream or his open eyes. A library of many thousands of kilometers stretches beneath all of Asia, containing only books ‘engraved on stone in characters indecipherable to the common man.’ It is impossible to move them: ‘Memory must preserve their image.’ At the end of the initiation, every initiate is able to see a pyramid of fire forming in the ethereal space, constituted by the ‘spiritual flame of the souls’ of Agharta, a pyramid encircled by ‘a ring of cosmic light.’”

Saint-Yves further clarifies that Agharta is the inheritance of an ancient “solar dynasty” (Sârya-Vansha), which formerly resided in Ayodhyâ— identifiable as the same “Solar Citadel” of the Rosicrucians or the “City of the Sun” of Campanella—tracing its origins back to Vaivaswata, the Manu of our current cycle.

Saint-Yves remains circumspect about discussing his mystical ecstasies, which may fit the popular definition of “astral projection,” i.e., out-of-body journeys in which his Spirit is taken to Agharta and other Initiatic Schools in Other Dimensions—or, perhaps, even in the physical plane of Earth, as Saint-Yves d’Alveydre himself suggests.

In the words of the mystic Saint-Yves, the epopte¹ receives the secret of awakening while the body sleeps. In the Mysteries, the third or final part of the sacred rites is called “Epoptia” or revelation, reception of the secrets. It signifies that degree of divine clairvoyance in which ordinary vision becomes paralyzed, everything earthly vanishes, and the soul, free and pure, unites with its Spirit or God. However, the true meaning of such a word is “superintendent, supervisor, inspector, watcher, master builder,” and is equivalent to the Sanskrit word evâpta.

Paul the Apostle used the adjective “epopte” for himself, showing that he was an Initiate who had received the highest degree of the Mysteries.

By calling himself an epopte, Saint-Yves seems to be revealing his inner world as an Initiate and confides something about his experience in an altered state of consciousness: “Wrapped in a shroud that covers his head, hermetically closing his ears, his eyes, and his nostrils, leaving only an empty space for the mouth, with his arms crossed over his chest, he offers himself to the Angel of Death and surrenders himself entirely to God.”

In 1893, living in Versailles, Saint-Yves d’Alveydre lost his wife. He transformed the deceased’s room into a funeral chamber, where he would often go to seek advice from her soul. Barlet, his disciple and only biographer, explains: “This kind of communication had nothing in common with Spiritism; we shall see, in regard to his doctrines, that he always strongly condemned its practices. He had no mediumistic faculty, and he did not use any medium. His ceremonies, far more sacred, belonged to an entirely different realm. Such acts, like his out-of-body experiences, were part of that secret knowledge which Saint-Yves d’Alveydre never wished to make public, stating: ‘If I published everything I know, in full, half the inhabitants of Paris would go mad; the other half, hysterical.’”

It was the soul of his wife, during one of his contacts with that Other Dimension, who inspired in him the idea of the Archeometer, the precision instrument of the high sciences and their corresponding arts, and its cosmometric translator, its cosmological gauge.

Before we delve into more details about the “Archeometer,” let us speak a bit more about the earthly life of its creator.

¹ Epopte (gr.): An Initiate. One who has reached the final degree of Initiation. [St. Paul, by applying this term to himself (I Cor. 3:10), declares that he is an Adept or Initiate, endowed with the faculties to initiate others.]