[1] 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.

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.

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.

[2] 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.

Saint-Yves believed that an ancient synarchist world government was transferred to Agarttha (or Aggartha) within a hollow Earth at the start of the Kali Yuga age, around 3,200 B.C.

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 color-coded diagram he developed, showing symbolic correspondences between elements in astrology, music, alphabets, gematria, and other areas.

[citation needed] Saint-Yves's main disciple was the prominent occultist Gérard Encausse alias Papus who established a number of societies based on Synarchist ideas.