French engineer, resistance fighter, writer, philosopher and spiritual teacher.
His father was a successful engineer in the international oil industry. He grew up with the three European languages. After finishing the lyceum in Geneva, Lionel studied Mechanical engineering at the Technischen Hochschule in Zürich, later cybernetics in the United States. In the thirties he worked in Paris as an engineer in his own firm. Later he wrote about the merits and risks of technology. As a lecturer on alchemy he warned for the dangers of technology that was not rooted in old wisdom.
Early during WW2 he and his family escaped to England. He became an officer of the British Secret Service and went back to occupied Europe to help smuggle persecuted people out of the by Nazi’s occupied territory. Some 1300 people were saved. He wrote about the extreme dangers of his work and the “accidental” happenings that saved him in “Un chemin sur la Braise” (1976). He was widely decorated for his heroic work. But the war also transformed him as he during the war met in Spain his later spiritual teacher Garcia.
After the war he rebuild his firm, but was also involved with reconciliation. In 1946 he invited German children to his father house at the lake of Geneva.
At age 55 he sold his technical engineering firm and began a spiritual journey, took the pilgrims staff as he called it. He saw himself as a lonely caller in the spiritual desert and wanted to teach people of “the laws form above”, their neglected calling “inner voice”, Observer and Master (Christ in me) in them. He wrote around 30 spiritual books and essays about spirituality, mysticism, the Cathars, alchemy, astrology and the tarot and became an appreciated spiritual teacher in many countries.
Most of his work is translated into the German language and many other languages.
Frédéric Lionel died 22 December 1999 peacefully in Paris.
See also: Nachruf auf Frédéric Lionel, Frederic Lionel