Jean (or Joanny) Bricaud (11 February 1881, Neuville-sur-Ain,

Ain Ain (, ; frp, En) is a department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region in Eastern France. Named after the Ain river, it is bordered by the Saône and Rhône rivers. Ain is located on the country's eastern edge, on the Swiss border, where ...

– 24 February 1934), also known as Tau Jean II, was a French student of the occult and

esoteric Western esotericism, also known as esotericism, esoterism, and sometimes the Western mystery tradition, is a term scholars use to categorise a wide range of loosely related ideas and movements that developed within Western society. These ideas ...

matters. Bricaud was heavily involved in the French neo-Gnostic movement. He was consecrated a

Gnostic Gnosticism (from grc, γνωστικός, gnōstikós, , 'having knowledge') is a collection of religious ideas and systems which coalesced in the late 1st century AD among Jewish and early Christian sects. These various groups emphasized pe ...

bishop on 21 July 1913 by bishop Louis-Marie-François Giraud.Ecclesia Gnostica Position Paper Concerning the Thelemite or Crowleyan Gnostic Churches
by Stephan A. Hoeller (written in the early 1980s) He was the

Patriarch The highest-ranking bishops in Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, the Catholic Church (above major archbishop and primate), the Hussite Church, Church of the East, and some Independent Catholic Churches are termed patriarchs (and in certai ...

of the '' Église Gnostique Universelle'' ( French for "Universal Gnostic Church") and a central figure in the various lines of the apostolic succession of subsequent Gnostic churches, as well as a spiritual heir of

Jules Doinel Jules-Benoît Stanislas Doinel du Val-Michel (8 December 1842 in Moulins, Allier – 16 or 17 March 1903), also known simply as Jules Doinel or Tau Valentin II was an archivist and the founder of the first Gnostic church in modern times who cla ...

(Valentinus II). From 1916 he was head of the ''Ordre Martiniste''. He was a friend of the

occultist The occult, in the broadest sense, is a category of esoteric supernatural beliefs and practices which generally fall outside the scope of religion and science, encompassing phenomena involving otherworldly agency, such as magic and mysticism a ...

s Papus and August Vandekerkhove.

References

External links

* * 1881 births 1934 deaths People from Ain French occultists Bishops of Independent Catholic denominations Gnosticism Martinism Place of death missing 20th-century occultists {{France-reli-bio-stub