Jules Doinel

Jules-Benoît Stanislas Doinel du Val-Michel (December 8, 1842, Moulins, Allier — March 16 or 17, 1903), also simply Jules Doinel, was the founder of the modern Gnostic Church. After spiritual experiences in 1888-89, he proclaimed 1890 the beginning of the Era of Gnosis Restored, assumed the office of Patriarch of the Gnostic Church. He titled himself Tau Valentin II, after Valentinius, the second century Christian gnostic thinker. Doinel was "spiritually consecrated" in a spiritual experience in 1888 and not into a line of Apostolic Succession. 
For a time, after 1895, he converted to Roman Catholicism and began a collaboration with Léo Taxil, an anti-Masonic writer who was subsequently exposed as a serial hoaxster. Doinel wrote a book entitled Lucifer Unmasked under the name Jean Kostka in 1895, in which he associated many of his prior activities with the diabolic. Taxil unveiled his hoax in 1897, and in 1900 Doinel was readmitted as a bishop in the Gnostic Church.
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Category:1842 births
Category:1903 deaths
Category:People from Moulins, Allier
Category:Anti-Masonry
Category:Anti-Gnosticism
Category:Gnosticism
Category:French Roman Catholics
Category:Converts to Roman Catholicism
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