The OTS was a neo-Templar order, claiming to be a continuation of the Knights Templar, and incorporated an eclectic range of beliefs with aspects of Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, and New Age ideas.

Di Mambro, a French jeweler and esotericist with a history of fraud, co-led the group with Jouret, a Belgian homeopath known for lecturing on alternative medicine and spirituality.

Following increasing legal and media scandal, including investigations over arms trafficking and pressure from an ex-member, as well as conflict within the group, the founders began to prepare for what they described as "transit" to Sirius.

Due to the death of all high ranking members of the organization, the only one alive to be held responsible was Swiss composer Michel Tabachnik, who had involvement with Di Mambro and was the president of the Golden Way Foundation.

[13] In a way similar to ancient gnostic systems of thought, the OTS did not have a "normative theology", instead utilizing allegory and symbolism in an interpretive manner to clarify their own beliefs in the context of existing practices.

[13] Though it contained tenets of gnosticism, its approach to this was experimental, and its members also partook in a variety of occult subjects, with occultists of varying systems of beliefs being invited to do workshops for the OTS.

The OSTS wrote their seven principles as follows:[20] Some commentators have suggested influences from Eastern religions; Emmanuelle was referred to as an avatar, though this term was not used in any philosophical sense, and Jouret believed the world to be in the Kali Yuga, as in Hinduism.

In particular, the preoccupation with the star Sirius and her emphasis on the theosophical concept of the Ascended Masters had influenced the Rosicrucian revival; Di Mambro also utilized her Great Invocation to begin Temple ceremonies.

[26] Di Mambro personally claimed he was a reincarnation of, among others, an Egyptian pharaoh, one of the Twelve Disciples, Longinus (the Roman soldier who pierced Jesus's side during the crucifixion)[b] and an Ascended Master, Manatanus.

[9] According to George D. Chryssides, what the OTS offered was a "mystical mood" that was available to all, not just those who were "spiritually gifted"; in a way similar to traditional Catholicism, through ritual the core messages of the group could be made available to those who were not well versed in the systems of thought used to understand it.

[41] Underground sanctuaries were built by the group, hidden behind false walls and only accessible through secret passageways: to enter them, a member would have to take a ritual number of 22 steps (probably a reference to the 22 paths of the Tree of Life in Kabbalah).

[44] OTS members were familiar with similar ideas prior: in 1987, Jouret had for sale at one of his lectures a comic strip,Voyage Intemporel, that tells of a group of UFO believers who are picked up before a great cataclysm.

[77] The group reached its membership height in January 1989, with 442 members: 187 in Metropolitan France, 90 in Switzerland, 86 in Canada, 53 in Martinique, 16 in the US, and 10 in Spain, from which they gained more than $36,000 in monthly revenue overall.

[79] In 1990, Di Mambro's son Elie discovered that the apparitions that appeared during OTS ceremonies were faked, operated by Tony Dutoit, who confirmed this, before leaving the group.

[86] Klaus's husband had left her for a "cosmic marriage" to another woman, and she wanted money she had given to the organization returned; she sued the group, and attempted to get negative press coverage on the OTS.

His solution to this issue followed the OTS practice of "cosmic coupling", which ignored "earthy marriage"; he set up Rose-Marie with another man, André Friedli, later one of the killers in the 1995 incident.

The police of Canada, which was then investigating Q-37 (a mysterious group that threatened to assassinate Canadian public officials, which was eventually determined to have never existed), believed the OTS may have been involved.

[91][81] Jouret and the other two men were given only light sentences after the crime (one year of unsupervised probation and a $1000 fine intended to be paid to the Red Cross), but in the aftermath the media took interest in the group.

Two days after the men were arrested, the Sûreté du Québec announced an inquiry into the financial aspects of the group, with the Australian police launching a parallel investigation later in the year.

Though she had been raised from birth to be a messiah figure, by the age of 12 she had become uncooperative, rejecting her role in the group and taking an interest in typical teenage pop culture.

[106] On 5 October, Swiss examining magistrate André Piller was called by the police to respond to a fire at Cheiry, arriving half an hour later, where the bodies were discovered.

[120] The leadership of the OTS cared deeply about the group's legacy, and spent a large amount of time preemptively creating a "legend" through both the manifestos they mailed to various media and scholarly sources, and by destroying all evidence that would have conflicted with their own story.

This failure left behind a large number of the Temple's written documents, some of which were found on the group's surviving computers, as well as audio and video cassettes, able to be looked through by investigators.

[98] On the morning of 16 December 1995, 14 members of the OTS, including three children, were immolated in a circular star-formation in an isolated clearing on the Vercors massif, near Saint-Pierre-de-Chérennes in France.

[124][125] The investigation conducted by the Grenoble Gendarmerie hypothesized that the 14 people, including three children, took sedative pills; then Jean-Pierre Lardanchet and André Friedli shot each member in the head one by one with two .22 caliber rifles.

[99] Following the first failed attempt to initiate the mass suicide (that included them against their will), the children had negotiated their right to live with their parents, who eventually agreed that they did not have to die.

[137] After the deaths, Swiss cantonal authorities founded the Centre intercantonal d'information sur les croyances, an organization meant to provide information on cults.

[140] In the following years, the French media accused other cults/sects of being like the Solar Temple, plotting their own mass suicides; included among them the Unification Church and Scientology, as well as Aumists and Raëlians.

The leader of the Raëlians, Raël, responded to the affair by saying: "If those idiots in the Solar Temple decided to kill themselves, that is not our problem" and "why do the journalists always call me for comment when there's a collective suicide?

[155] As described by Susan J. Palmer, "false or unverifiable trails have been laid: secondhand testimonies are traded by journalists, ghost-written apostate memoirs are in progress and conspiracy theories abound.