Gnosis has chosen the first way.” Doinel's defection was a devastating blow to the Gnostic Church, but it managed to survive. Interim control of the Church was assumed by the Synod of Bishops, and at a High Synod in 1896, they elected one of their bishops, Léonce-Eugène Fabre des Essarts, known as Tau Synesius, to succeed Doinel as patriarch. Fabre des Essarts was a Parisian occultist, a Symbolist poet and a scholar of the Gnosis and Esoteric Christianity. He and another Gnostic Bishop, Louis-Sophrone Fugairon (Tau Sophronius), a physician who was also a scholar of the Cathars and the Knights Templar, entered into a collaborative relationship to continue the development of the Gnostic Church. Together, they began to shift the emphasis of the teachings of the Gnostic Churchaway from Gnostic theology and towards a more general view of “occult science.” In 1899, two years after Leo Taxil had exposed his hoax, Doinel began to correspond with Fabre des Essarts. In 1900 he requested reconciliation with the Gnostic Church and readmission as a bishop. As his first act of consecration as Patriarch of the Gnostic Church, Fabre des Essarts reconsecrated his former patriarch as Tau Jules, Bishop of Alet and Mirepoix. In 1901, Fabre des Essarts consecrated twenty-year old Jean "Joanny" Bricaud (1881-1934) as Tau Johannes, Bishop of Lyon. Between 1903 and 1910, he consecrated twelve more Gnostic Bishops, including Leon Champrenaud (1870-1925) as Tau Théophane, Bishop of Versailles; René Guenon (1886-1951) as Tau Palingénius, Bishop of Alexandria; and Patrice Genty (1883-1964) as Tau Basilide. After