Early years Born in Paris, from a
family of Parisian intellectuals and son of psychiatrist Guillaume-Alexandre Saint-Yves, he started his career as a physician at a naval academy in
Brest which he soon abandoned after becoming ill. In 1863, he relocated to
Jersey where he connected with
Victor Hugo. In 1870, he returned to France to fight in the
Franco-Prussian War during which he was injured. He then began a career as a civil servant. In 1877, Saint-Yves met and married Countess Marie de Riznitch-Keller, a relative of
Honoré de Balzac, and friend of the Empress
Eugénie de Montijo, a move which made him independently wealthy. He dedicated the rest of his life to research and had a large number of influential contacts, including Victor Hugo. Saint-Yves later knew many of the major names in French occultism such as Marquis
Stanislas de Guaita,
Joséphin Péladan and
Oswald Wirth and was a member of a number of
Rosicrucian, and
Freemason style orders. Saint-Yves supposedly inherited the papers of one of the great founders of French occultism,
Antoine Fabre d'Olivet (1762–1825). In 1877, he published the
Lyrical Testament, a collection of poetry, and
Keys of the Orient. In the latter book, he presents a solution (based on developing a religious understanding between Jews, Christians and
Muslims) to the
Question of the Orient, brought about by the decay of the
Ottoman Empire which caused tensions in the
Near and
Middle East. He also began to study the development of industrial applications of marine plants (
Utilising extracts from seaweed was published in 1879) but he could not perform the operation for lack of capital. In 1880, he was granted the title of
Marquis of Alveydre by the government of
San Marino. His book
Mission des Juifs (1884) was favourable to
Jews. The material from it was used for
The Secret of the Jews, an
anti-semitic tract attributed to
Yuliana Glinka.
Development of synarchy Saint-Yves used the term "
synarchy" in his book
La France vraie to describe what he believed was the ideal
form of government. In reaction to the emergence of
anarchist ideologies and movements, Saint-Yves had elaborated a more conservative
political-theological formula over a series of 4 books from 1882 onwards which he believed would result in a harmonious
society by considering it as an
organic unity. This ideal was based partially on his idealised view of life in medieval Europe and also on his ideas about successful government in India,
Atlantis, and Ancient Egypt. He defended social differentiation and
hierarchy with co-operation between
social classes, transcending
conflict between social and economic groups: synarchy, as opposed to
anarchy. Specifically, Saint-Yves envisioned a
European society with a government composed of three
councils, representing
economic power,
judicial power, and
scientific community, of which the
metaphysical chamber bound the whole structure together. These ideas were also influenced by works such as
Plato's
The Republic and by
Martinism. They also influenced the young
René Guénon who published several articles on ''L'Archéomètre
in his early life. L'Archéomètre
was edited and published by Gérard Encausse alias''
Papus after Saint-Yves' death. As part of this concept of government Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre, gave an important role to
secret societies or, more precisely,
esoteric societies, which are composed of
oracles and who safeguarded the government from behind the scenes. He saw the
Rosicrucians as having fulfilled this role in medieval Europe and was involved with a number of Freemason and other groups who claimed descent from the
Knights Templars.
Contact with Agarttha During 1885, Saint-Yves was allegedly visited by a group of Eastern Initiates, one of them being named Prince Hardjij Scharipf. It was then that he associated synarchy with "
ascended masters" based in caverns of
Agarttha, who supposedly communicated with him
telepathically. He wrote about this secret location in his ''Mission de l'Inde en Europe
published in 1886. Worried he had revealed too much and apparently under the influence of his oriental contacts, he destroyed all but two copies of this book. One of which was owned by Gérard Encausse alias Papus'', who edited and published it in 1910. Saint-Yves believed that an ancient synarchist
world government was transferred to Agarttha within a
hollow Earth at the start of the
Kali Yuga age, around 3,200 BC. Saint-Yves d'Alveydre was the man who really introduced the concept of Agarttha to the Western world. This concept was later developed by
Zam Bothiva and the
Fraternité des Polaires in France, and more importantly by the
Thule-Gesellschaft in
Nationalist circles of Germany.
Final years After Saint-Yves's death, portions of the writings he left behind were compiled by a group of his friends and devotees, driven by
Gérard Encausse alias Papus, into a volume entitled ''l'Archéomètre''. The title is Saint-Yves's name for a colour-coded diagram he developed, showing symbolic correspondences between elements in
astrology, music, alphabets,
gematria, and other areas. This book has been translated into Spanish and was translated into English for the first time in 2007 (publication pending). ==Influence==