Saint Yves d'Alveydre

Alexandre Saint-Yves Marquess of Alveydre
Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre in 1892.
Born	(1842-03-26)26 March 1842 Paris, France
Died	5 February 1909(1909-02-05) (aged 66) Pau, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, France
Nationality	French
Occupation	Author
Known for	Occultism
Movement	Synarchism
Spouse(s)	La Comtesse De Keller

Alexandre Saint-Yves, Marquess of Alveydre (26 March 1842– 5 February 1909) was a French occultist who adapted the works of Fabre d'Olivet (1767–1825) and, in turn, had his ideas adapted by Gérard Encausse alias Papus. His work on "L'Archéomètre" deeply influenced the young René Guénon. He developed the term Synarchy—the association of everyone with everyone else—into a political philosophy, and his ideas about this type of government proved influential in politics and the occult.

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. In 1863 he relocated to Jersey where he connected with Victor Hugo. In 1870, he returned to France to fight in the Franco-Prussian War during which he was injured.

He then began a career as a civil servant. In 1877, Saint-Yves met and married Countess Marie de Riznitch-Keller, a relative of Honoré de Balzac, and friend of the Empress Eugénie de Montijo, a move which made him independently wealthy. He dedicated the rest of his life to research and had a large number of influential contacts including Victor Hugo. 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 irregular Freemason style orders. Saint-Yves supposedly inherited the papers of one of the great founders of French occultism, Antoine Fabre d'Olivet (1762–1825).