Pierre Bernard

Who was Pierre Bernard?

Pierre Arnold Bernard was a pioneering American yogi, scholar, occultist, philosopher, mystic and businessman; he held a notorious reputation as a con man, seducer and philanderer.

Due to his practice of keeping his origins obscure, little is known positively about his early life. He is reported to have been born Perry Baker or Peter Coon in Leon, Iowa, 31 October 1875, the son of a barber. He also called himself Homer Stansbury Leeds at some point.

He claimed to have traveled to Kashmir and Bengal before founding the Tantrik Order of America in 1905, variously reported as starting in San Francisco, Seattle, Tacoma, Washington, or in Portland, Oregon; the New York Sanskrit College in 1910; and the Clarkstown Country Club, a seventy-two acre estate with a thirty room mansion in Nyack, New York, a gift from a disciple, in 1918. He eventually expanded to a chain of tantric clinics in places such as Cleveland, Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York City. Bernard is widely credited with being the first American to introduce the philosophy and practices of yoga and tantra to the American people. He also played a critical role in establishing a greatly exaggerated association of tantra with the use of sex for mystical purposes in the American mindset.