Nathan's testimony. France

My name is Nathan MOREL, I attended New Acropolis in France, in Marseille, from 2011 to 2019.

As a result of my past experience as an active member of the movement, and of the controversies surrounding its activities, it seemed necessary to contribute to restoring the truth about it, and to support the testimonies of former members of New Acropolis available on the Internet.

I learned about New Acropolis by word of mouth. At that time I was interested in esotericism and spirituality, I was sympathetic to the humanist and universalist values of its charter, and to its presentation speeches as a cultural association that promotes philosophy and civic engagement. I still uphold these values today. I hope to explain how New Acropolis betrayed that promise.

I enrolled in a cycle of courses on Eastern and Western philosophies. I was warmly welcomed and discovered a friendly community, zealously conducting all kinds of ancillary cultural and volunteer activities, which played a major role in my decision to join.

In retrospect, this first cycle of courses, called “comparative study of Eastern and Western philosophies,” turns out to be an aggregate of philosophical illustrations carefully selected to serve the spiritualist and totalitarian ideology of the movement. All of the teaching provided would deserve an exhaustive critique, but that is not my purpose here.

Soon after this first cycle of courses, I was invited to become a member of the organization and, after an individual interview and a surprising initiation ritual, I obtained that status.

As a member, I was now required to pay an annual fee of 660 euros and we addressed new topics. This second cycle fully revealed New Acropolis’s adherence to the esoteric doctrine of the occultist and medium Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, revisited by the founder Jorge Angel Livraga.

At the time, I did not have the means to perceive that the questionable beliefs taught to me, aside from being very probably false, would serve as fallacious arguments to justify the increasing radicalism of my commitment.

No one believes in or joins New Acropolis under duress. The accession process is on the one hand achieved through progressive exposure to magico-spiritual ideas and practices, playing on the effects of contagion by the collective, and of disclosure as one is initiated and rises in the hierarchy.

On the other hand, New Acropolis offers opportunities to newcomers. There is a genuine benefit when one takes on responsibilities and power. Being led to speak in public, to lead teams of volunteers, to transcend one’s fears during artistic performances, while revealing one’s intimacy in collective debriefings, results in developing self-confidence and strengthening the feeling of social recognition and belonging.

For all these reasons, the slope of my voluntary servitude became increasingly steep, accentuated by a master-disciple relationship that gradually developed with the director of the Marseille center.

This relationship, initially benevolent, proved over time to be very authoritarian, subtly mixing fear and fascination in a destabilizing pattern of hot and cold, and prolonged exposure ultimately resulted in the loss of my psychological, intellectual and economic autonomy.

Economic because, indeed, shortly after joining the Living Forces, he offered to hire me on a "contrat d'avenir" in the association "les fruits de la terre" for ecological activities. Previously, he discouraged me from resuming my studies because he considered it incompatible with my commitment and, I quote, “that could wash my brain.”

After a few months of employment, I asked to terminate the contract and, in response, he demanded back the money he had invested in me. He required that I present to him in my spiritual reports a reflection on the supposed violence I would have committed in my act of breaking away.

Entry into the Living Forces

After a year of participation in the school, the center director proposed that I become a Living Force and it was after several individual interviews that I wrote a letter of application to this internal school.

To become a Living Force, I received an individual weekly lesson for several months, the content of which, punctuated by readings of texts called “bastions,” written by the founder of New Acropolis, should have alerted me by the number of shocking or ludicrous assertions they contained. I was required to reproduce the ideas of these bastions without criticism, criticism being considered a trap of the mind. Once again, I should have seen the process in which I had engaged, that is to say gradually becoming an empty shell reproducing stereotyped speeches, placing a snitch inside myself to flush out any critical thoughts toward the movement.

I passed the four trials “earth, water, air, fire” to become a Living Force. These trials, carefully ritualized, provoked in some cases deep altered states of consciousness in me. These states, in their own way, contributed to biasing my judgment regarding what I considered spirituality and what I considered a voluntary and enlightened commitment.

During the final admission trial into the Living Forces, I discovered what this “internal school for the application of teachings” is in practice.

Thus I discovered the paramilitary organization of the Living Forces.

The uniforms: black shirt for the security knights, and brown shirt for the work knights.

The ceremonial parts, with attention positions and executive orders, marching in step and cadence, mystical martial songs glorifying suffering and sacrifice to the cause, bellicosity and the spirit of conquest. Thus our voices proclaimed words such as “our standards will fly over the world,” “we are the heirs of Rome,” etc.

During ceremonies we practiced the so-called “Roman” salute, arm and palm extended, sadly well-known and moreover illegal in France, toward standards with symbolism strangely similar to the great far-right totalitarianisms.

Within the framework of the Living Forces, we also practiced devotion to ancient gods such as Ares or Ptah, reciting at each ritual their respective prayers, one knee to the ground, arm raised facing the standard.

In the hymns, God is systematically mentioned, as well as in the code of honor whose first point is: “believe in God.” All of this has nothing to do with the cultural pretensions of apolitical and non-religious philosophy that New Acropolis’s public facade presents.

During my induction ceremony in the temple, I was ordered to swear the following oath:

“Faced with the solar eagle, the sacred fire, the axe of Ares Dionysos, in the presence of my immortal soul and that of my comrades in search of wisdom. I, known today as Nathan MOREL, commit to serve loyally and effectively as a knight of the OINAF security corps.

If I do not do so, may the Gods, Karma and my masters demand it of me.”

Thus I was inducted as a knight of the security corps of New Acropolis France.

I had reached the culmination of an indoctrination process that opened the door to a whole new way of life, whose cornerstone would be obedience and devotion.

I had entered a strict pyramidal order. I no longer really had a choice about the vast majority of my activities, my schedule, what I could say or not say within the movement. New Acropolis, through my master, had taken possession of my life. I believed I had joined voluntarily; I would never have imagined that my consent could be induced.

Life as a Living Force proved to be extremely stressful. My responsibilities accumulated disproportionately, the effort was sustained and uninterrupted. I regularly suffered from intense exhaustion, exactly like the other Living Forces I rubbed shoulders with, because we were all steeped in a culture of sacrifice, of suffering as a source of consciousness, of work as purification, and of commitment as proof of moral strength. It then became impossible to say no, thus exposing me to my master’s painful disapproval.

As I mentioned at the beginning of my testimony, the relationship I had with my master changed. The good advice and proposals of the early days had become implicit orders, sometimes explicit, suggested by key formulas such as “for a disciple, the advice of the master is always orders” or “the acropolis does not take a little, does not take a lot, it takes everything.”

For several years, my master’s sneaky and authoritarian manner, his fits of anger and his reminders to obedience, mixed with affectionate, falsely friendly attitudes, acerbic criticism and demeaning insinuations, profoundly and permanently poisoned my psychic life.

During my time as a Living Force, I was also a trainer for students in the courses, but also in a substructure for young people called Perseus and an instructor for Living Forces applicants.

My training, apart from learning the doctrine, mainly consisted of learning to handle different forms of language, in order to convey ideas or behaviors according to what we thought the person was capable of hearing.

I knew, and we all knew, that many of the “teachings” and internal actions could not be presented as they really were. It was necessary to use language modes called 1st, 2nd and 3rd circle depending on the circumstances.

A bit like a Russian doll, the organization is structured in three concentric circles, isolated from one another, filtering the good recruits from the bad, drip-feeding the important points of the belief system, allowing a certain control over individuals and information.

I understood that New Acropolis’s political aim sadly approaches the great idealisms of the 20th century. It is totalitarian by its cult of the leader, of the collective and of the superman, by its project to build a “philosophical” empire uniting political and religious powers in a king-priest. It is obscurantist by its doctrine resembling New Age occultism steeped in initiatory folklore, opposed to the dissemination of knowledge that would contradict its worldview.

And finally, New Acropolis promotes a very particular form of spiritual racism through its belief in theosophical evolutionism, defining “spiritual lineages” and claiming that each race is an “experiment of consciousness” that replaces another. New Acropolis defines itself historically as the germ of the 6th race, and the nest of the future divine avatar who will rule them all.

I cannot be exhaustive on all the corrupt points of their belief paradigm. It also seems important to specify their appetite for pseudosciences and pseudo-medicines. I believe I witnessed several delays in care for serious illnesses, or lack of care for chronic or psychiatric illnesses.

Deceptive practices concerning the image of the movement

I was an actor and witness of astroturfing, a technique consisting of simulating spontaneous comments on the Internet to manufacture a positive opinion of the movement.

We were invited to post comments as if we were not members, but very pleased with this or that activity. There were also click campaigns to push favorable New Acropolis results up in search engines, the systematic creation of satellite associations around the centers, the role-playing exercises we did during training to defuse accusations of sectarian drift, and finally the infiltration of Wikipedia to try to influence certain pages.

My departure

In conclusion, I now wish to describe the circumstances of my departure.

Summer 2017, my partner, herself a Living Force and in training to become a center director, suffered a severe burn-out and developed an anxious depression of rare intensity. She left the movement and severed our ties overnight, taking with her several people with whom I had formed friendships.

I particularly remember the director’s words: “that bitch left the New Acropolis like she leaves a guy.”

Following that, I secretly slid into a suicidal depression, as if detached from myself. I did things automatically, but took my responsibilities less and less seriously, weary of the blind and stereotyped behaviors of my comrades, my superiors and myself.

Summer 2018, in a state of advanced exhaustion, disillusioned and no longer having faith, although perfectly able to simulate the perfect “acropolitan” so as not to attract trouble, I met a new woman, a recent Living Force living in another city.

The breaking point was reached when I learned that, together, her hierarchical superiors discouraged her from entering a relationship with me, while my own superior suggested I manipulate her through her son to “put her in my pocket” and bring her to Marseille.

At the same time, I discovered video makers on the Internet developing topics on critical thinking, the scientific method, epistemology, media education and sectarian drifts. They played a major role in my deconversion process.

February 2019, I submitted my request to leave the Living Forces. It took me several more months to gradually detach myself from the movement, slowly emerging from the mental and emotional confusion that New Acropolis and its leaders had created in me.

September 2019, I told my ex-master that I would not return. This was followed by a sibylline email asking me to destroy all internal documents and to return the ritual items I had in my possession, further proof of their perfect awareness of what these are and what they hide.

Three years have passed as I write these lines, and I wish to testify to those who can hear that we need one another, that we need meaning in our lives, but not at any price.

Nathan, January 2023