The Unknown Superiors Of Louisclaude De Saintmartin
Louis-Claude, Marquis de Saint-Martin, was born in Amboise, in the Touraine, on 18th January, 1743. His mother having died a short time after his birth, he was raised by his step-mother and father, both strongly pious people. He pursued his studies at the College of Pont-Levoy. Destined for the "robe", he studied law, and quickly became a barrister in the courts at Tours. This profession, with all it included in those times, with its worries and idle pettifogging, quickly disappointed him and, on a recommendation from the Duke of Choiseul, a friend of his father, he received an Officer's Commission with the Regiment of Foix shortly after leaving the Courts of Justice. He was garrisoned at Bordeaux, and it was there that he made the acquaintance of another officer in this regiment, M. de Grainville, who was affiliated with the Order of Elus Cohen, which had just been founded by Martinez de Pasqually. This officer initiated him into the Doctrine of the Order, and his innate mysticism and a certain predisposition for theological studies and high hermetic speculation, filled him with enthusiasm, and in October 1768 he was ritually initiated. In the letters of Martinez de Pasqually, notably that of 13th August, 1768, he was "Monsieur de Saint-Martin", whereas one finds him joined up with the "T.P.s" (Thrice Potent Masters, ritual formula) de Grainville and de Balzac. But in another letter dated 2nd October in the same year, he is "Master Saint-Martin". He has therefore received the three first Degrees of blue masonry, called "Saint John", and he was without doubt on the way to entering into the famous Porch Class.
Whatever the majority of historians may say about it, all his letters prove that Saint-Martin "operated" the rites of Ceremonial High Magic according to the instructions of his Master Pasqually, and had the expected results. He saw the "passes", felt the afflictions announcing the present of "La Chose", and later on, he never denied these results.
But if the doctrine he had received, this young officer of the Regiment of Foix and secretary of the Master for several years, marked him for the rest of his life with a real and indelible spiritual imprint, he only shows little interest for the "manifestations" of the Beyond, indeed, even a certain mistrust as to their moral benefit. Those who accuse him of fear, such as Bricaud in his "Account of Martinism" or various authors, commit an error. Saint-Martin had scrupulously observed the occult customs and secret ceremonies of the Reaux-Croix for more than six years. Did this fear come to him so late on? No. Yet his mystical orientation changed.
Saint-Martin was a pure speculative, and the operative side of both Mystical and Cohen Masonry impeded him. And around 1775, at the time of the appearance of his first work, the treatise "Of Errors And Of Truth", this evolution had already been going on for a year. And from 1777, during his stay in Versailles, he tried to lead his Cohen Brethren into pure mysticism. It was also three years since Martinez de Pasqually had died in Port-au-Prince.
Saint-Martin only had a little success among the Elus Cohen. Whether they retained a profound admiration for the memory of the disappeared Master (which is very probable), or whether they felt it repugnant to confide in someone whom some of them perceived to be their junior, Saint-Martin failed in the bosom of the Order.
But if he lost interest in that route, what is sure is that he demonstrated perseverance! Next he brought his efforts to bear in the different arena of hermetic societies, and esoteric areopagi. The XVIIIth Century was generally materialist, "libertine" in the obsolete sense of the word. Our new adept went to try to convert them; and it was through his series of books, and his success in the wider world, where all the noble ladies who agonized over the afterlife and the problems of the soul, and of God, that he was given a welcome full of goodwill.
Saint-Martin had had noble lady-friends and sweethearts. But if his fame among women was greater than among men, these friendships were based upon nobly spiritual sentiments, with nothing gross or base to tarnish them.
Nevertheless, having been taught in a disciplinarian school where one knew what one wanted, and where one worked more than one talked, Saint-Martin had to try to realize his dream which had been halted by the lack of confidence in him from the Elus Cohen. So he turned towards men, and created a spiritual movement based upon Christian esotericism. Understanding by intuition as well as experience that nothing survives over time without encountering obstacles, except that which is hidden ("to live happy, live in secret!"), he created his school under an esoteric and secret umbrella.
During one of his journeys to Strasbourg, (a town which was part of his life, along with Paris and Amboise - if one excludes the journeys abroad - and which he later called his "paradise"), Saint-Martin made the acquaintance of Rodolphe de Salzmann, a translator and commentator on the mystical German philosopher, Jacob Boehme.
Now, coming out of the "Brothers of the East", a initiatic order constituted in Constantinople in 1090 under the patronage of Emperor Alexis Comnenus, a secret mystic fraternity grouped together the adepts of a Rosicrucian school of the evangelical and protestant type. This order was that of the "Unknown Philosophers". Without doubt Gnosis, adapted to the Reformist environment, had lost a lot of its richness. But if one ignores certain purely localized variants in the area of metaphysics, the hermetic side had remained intact, and alongside spiritual and operative Alchemy came a number of other affiliations, the precious comfort of the teachings and proofs in anima vili of Henry Kunrath (author of "The Amphitheatre of Eternal Science",; Henry Seton, the Cosmopolitan, killed on the rack by the Elector of Saxony, Sendivogius, his disciple the Duke Saxonius Comnenus, Jacob Boehme, having preceded Rodolphe de Salzmann on the genealogical tree of the Order. And from 1646 in France, the public authorities had been led to investigate this mysterious society, following its denunciation by the "Brotherhood of the Holy Sacrament", a secret Catholic society, subsidiary of the Holy League, which saw in it works having the appearance of the Reformation, continued and even more heinous!...
At the end of this work we will give the Statues of the Society of Unknown Philosophers. It is to this Order, as much mystic as secret, that Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin was admitted, a Century and a half after its foundation (in 1643).
This explains the letter send to Lyon on the 4th July, 1790, justifying his resignation from all the esoteric chapters in which he had been up to that time. Here it is:
Strasbourg, 4th July, 1790
I also thank you my dear Brother and I am sorry for all the troubles you have endured for me.
<fourth paragraph>: Please also tell your dear older Brother that I was waiting for a reply from him which should not have taken so long! On not seeing it come, I can presume in advance of what nature it will be, and this has led me to take the decision to take my departure, and in consequence I beg to present and have accepted the resignation of my position in the inner Order, and would like to be removed from all the masonic registers and lists upon which I have been inscribed since 1785. My business no longer permits me to follow this career.
I will not weary him with a detailed explanation of the reasons for my decision. He knows well that in removing my name from the Registers, he is doing nothing wrong, since it means nothing! Besides, he knows that my spirit was never truly inscribed there, so that all that really lies upon the page is a superficiality.
We shall always be, I hope, as Cohens; we are still that through initiation, and if my demission creates a problem with that, then I will have to sacrifice my initiation, seeing that the masonic regime becomes every day more inconsistent with my manner of being, and the simplicity of my path. I shall respect the path of my dear Brother no less even to the grave, and he can be sure that I will not disturb it in my lifetime.
Farewell, dear Brother, give my greetings to your family, and to all the Brethren, both spiritual and temporal.
Ora pro nobis.
One sees by the terms used in this letter, nevertheless, the importance which Saint-Martin attached to his first initiation, which he had received from Martinez de Pasqually. He quit everything, for Masonry was to him nothing more than a burden, yet nevertheless he was anxious to remain a Reau-Croix in soul and spirit, faithful to the Brethren and holding them in his heart.
From his entry into the secular mystic order, he always devoted himself completely to his new apostolate. The journeys began. Here a point of history and chronology comes in. When exactly did he enter into a relationship with Salzmann, and when was he received, according to the rites, "beneath the Mantle, the Mask and the Cordelier"?...
Many years previously.
In fact, his first journey to London was in January, 1787. He stayed there until July, and he set off again soon afterwards, in September, for Italy, in the company of Prince Galitzin. In February, 1788, he returned to Lyon.
His other journeys, both to Sweden and Denmark, are less certain. Only the verbal tradition of his "Intimates" confirms them. Similarly the journey to Russia is even more doubtful. It is more likely that Prince Galitzin, who was one of the disciples of the "Unknown Philosopher" who later achieved the diffusion of the mysticism of Saint-Martin later, among the affiliates of the :Strict Observance".
Were his disciples simply composed of a large group, often ignorant of each other, and who being alone, were united by the Master through common teachings, or on the contrary, did they instead form a vast mystical fraternity?
Nobody knows which of these two hypotheses should be preeminent, since this "Society" was both.
The Ritual presiding at the sacramental delivery of this very real and incontestable esoteric "initiation", and which has remained such up till now, is certainly the most simple of all those elaborated by the Occultists and Mystics for a long time past. But from the large number of accounts it is hard to say whether that of the Elus Cohen were manifested in them at all. Without doubt none of the rituals of Freemasonry were attached. This makes sense, since the "Society of Unknown Philosophers" existed long before the Grand Lodge of London had been founded, and more than fifteen lustres48 in Time separated them...But for those led to study the two Rituals, that of the "Knight Elus Cohen of the Universe" and that of the "Unknown Superiors", the exterior "form" of the rite of Saint-Martin, with its outdated archaism and its XVIIIth Century French, is shot through with Cohen themes! There was a single difference, important despite everything: the Order of Saint-Martin opened its Works "To the Glory of the Uncreated Word", whereas the Elus Cohen opened theirs with "To the Glory of the Grand Architect of the Universe".
From 1829, in another letter which Joseph Pont, a friend and spiritual inheritor of J.-B. Willermoz, addressed to the Senator of Metz, J.-F. von Mayer, we find an allusion to the possibility of an initiation to a superior Elu-Cohen grade which Saint-Martin had transmitted to Gilbert, his close friend.
Besides, the Comte de Gleichen wrote in his "Souvenirs" that he had become the disciple of the "Unknown Philosopher" in a secret school opened by Saint-Martin in Paris (who had even transmitted the affiliation of Elus Cohen to him in 1779).
Finally, in some notes, dated from Paris on 20th December, 1795, and which were addressed, by a correspondent who sadly remains anonymous, to the Professor of Theology Köster de Göttingue, and also published by a German periodical of the time, it appears that there effectively existed a "Society of Intimates of Saint-Martin" or "Society of Saint-Martin", more distantly called "provincial branch of the Society of Saint-Martin of Strasburg". In the names cited in these notes, one finds various Elus Cohen, probably those few disciples of Martinez de Pasqually who followed Saint-Martin, and a some minor German princes.
We give a genealogical tree of these singular names which we have been able to discover in this "Society of Saint-Martin" in the past.
There remains an infinitely delicate problem to resolve.
1) Did Claude de Saint-Martin have the right to initiate profanes, and did he have something occult, in the "sacramental" sense of the word, to transmit?
2) If the answer is 'Yes', could this initiation carry the name of 'initiation to the grade of Unknown Superior'?
48 Archaic term for a period of five years - PV.
This title appeared for the first time in the letter of Martinez de Pasqually and dated 2nd October, 1765.
We find it again under the signature of J.-B. Willermoz, in his letter of 29th November, 1772, addressed in the name of the "Grand Lodge of Regular Master of Lyon", published by M. Sleel Maret. Here is the text:
"J.-B. Willermoz, Senior Presiding Grand Master, Guardian of the Seals & Archives of the Grand Lodge of the Black Eagle, Knight Rose+Croix, Conductor-in-Chief of the Chapter of Elus Cohen, S.I. R+".
Jean Kotska, pseudonym of Jules Doinel, tells us in his work ("Lucifer Unmasked") that in 1778 the "Chevaliers Bienfaisants de la Cité Sainte" carried the title of "Chevaliers du Parfait-Silence, Silencieux Inconnus" (Note that Doinel is an authority on questions, if complex, of Gnostic and Martinist relationships).
According to the Marquis François de Chefdebien de Saint-Armand (the famous "Franciscus Eques A Capite Galeato"), Knight-Beneficent of the Holy City from the work of Benjamin Fabre...), we know that Martinez de Pasqually, before repairing to Saint-Domingue, had designated a successor and five "Unknown Superiors" of the Order of Elus Cohen, who were: Bacon de La Chevalerie, Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, J.-B. Willermoz, de Serre, Duroy d'Hauterive, de Lusignan. This is reported to us by Prince Christian of Hesse, a Knight-Beneficent himself, and member of the "Society of Saint-Martin" in Strasbourg, in his letter to the Senator of Frankfurt-am-Main, Metzler, Grand-Profès of the "Knights-Beneficent", and thus linked to the Elus Cohen by the Willermoz branch.
From 1821, this type of initiation, from man to man, was known. We find that Varuhagen con Euse, in his Preface for Rahel's work ("Angelus Silesius and Saint-Martin") tells us that: "He (Saint-Martin) soon decided to found a society...But the foundation of this society was only effected slowly; he only accepted a few members and used great prudence.The new society seems to me to have had in the beginning the form of a regular masonic Lodge. The objective of the great journeys which he made later was most probably to procure a more extended participation".
And Papus, in his work "Martinez de Pasqually", on pages 211 and 212, tells us:
"From this time until 1887, the Ordre Martiniste was transmitted by groups of Initiators spread abroad mainly in Italy and Germany. From 1887 a big effort was set up for the true diffusion of the Order; and four years later (1891), the results permitted the creation of a Supreme Council of 21 members, having many lodges under its obedience, in France and well as in (the rest of ) Europe. Moreover, a large number of Free Initiators, "S.I. ", assured a definitive means of propagating the Order..."
These Free Initiators were united to regular Lodge members through spiritual communion in a common Doctrine, an affiliation effected according to the identical forms (although with less ceremonial and outside a regularly constituted Lodge), holders of a probative Charter and the words and signs of recognition and passage, which are scrupulously the same as those of the constituted organism.
For it is a fact that Martinist who pretend to derive their lineage from Martinez de Pasqually (such as the Lyonnaise branch which had as its head Jean Bricaud) does not possess words, signs, etc of recognition other than those of Saint-Martin!
The pantacle, emblem of the Order, is the same. It represents the Seal of Solomon (reminder of the Old Testament), the Cross (reminder of the New Testament) united by the Circle (image of the coiled serpent, traditional paradigm of Gnosis).
Dr. Gérard Encausse (Papus), the renovator of Martinism and promoter of the Supreme Council of 1881, and thus of the organization known by its modern name of Ordre Martiniste, had been initiated by Henri Delaage in 1880, and thus attached to the School of Saint-Martin, no that of the Elus Cohen!...
We will see later hoe the branch issued out of Martinez de Pasqually was reunited with that of Claude de Saint-Martin.
But from now, we note that the "S.\ I.'.'s" following Saint-Martin were recognized as regular by the Supreme Council. Here in fact is what is said in the "Ritual of the Martinist Order', published for the Orient of the Supreme Council by Teder (Charles Detré) in 1913, page 153, 3rd section:
<Section omitted>
Attributions. - 1) In the profane World, he organizes regional propaganda, in creating Free Initiators, and in striving to constitute study groups, in the region he occupies."
Page 148 of the same Ritual:
".The members of Lodges pay for the insignia and the right to wear them, rights and insignias conferred by that Lodge, but there is no payment for the initiatic grade that the Free Members receive among themselves, freely conferred by an "S.I.". A Free Member does not need to pay anything."
Page 138, same Ritual:
".The Free Initiators, in order to be regularly affiliated to a regular Lodge, must undergo the aforementioned examinations (studies on the masonic grades)". Thus they act not because of a masonic affiliation but from a previous study of masonic symbolism.
Finally, in a letter found in our archives and which was addressed by Jean Bricaud to an old member of the Supreme Member of 1891, and dated 1923, the perfectly regular character of Martinists issuing from the branch of Claude de Saint-Martin was recognized in this phrase, definitive on the question:
"But since you are a "Free Initiator" in the old usage, you remain free to act in your way on this subject. Etc."
In the old usage.That is what categorically justifies the legitimacy of the spiritual sons of Saint-Martin, in the eyes of the puritans of Martinism.
Saint-Martin transmitted to his few disciples, carefully selected for their intelligence, erudition and their high spirituality, the high grade of "Unknown Superior" which had been given to him by his Master, Martinez de Pasqually, before leaving to die in the Tropics. In doing this, he used the multi-secular right of all initiates to transmit the precious occult deposit before their death, and which is not only a right but a duty.
If he had believed is good to found in a single ceremony and in a single affiliation, the spark from the Cohen hearth, and the spark issued from a more ancient Order, nobody can find fault with him. For a man of flesh is necessarily at the genesis of all initiatic Orders!
But the Martinists of these two schools would be wrong to question this. As the mystery of the Orphic ritual says, "..Son of Earth and starry Heaven..", their race is divine, theirs too, and they have the common right and duty to draw the same living waters at the same spring of Mnemosyme!
- Talismanic Medallion
THE MYSTICISM OF THE "S.I.s" OF L.-C. DE SAINT-MARTIN
The mystery school founded by Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, like that which he joined after leaving the Elus Cohen, even if it continued to spread the general teachings of Martinez de Pasqually, nevertheless repudiated its magical "Operations". Saint-Martin considered that this type of practice could be dangerous for the mental equilibrium of adepts, and could lead to them to errors in religious matters. It would therefore appear useful to us to define this "interior path" which he sanctioned in place of the theurgic way, and which is really the simple mystical asceticism of the Western Christian, known in the East under the name of "Bhakti Yoga", or yoga of devotion and adoration.
No one organism can possess the channel of all Truth. We are almost always infirm or ill in some manner, and, precisely, one of these possible infirmities becomes an assistance for the superior faculties of the soul. In fact, the psychopathic character possesses emotionality, which is the sine qua non of moral perception. He possesses intensity, that inclination which is so essential to the practice of moral vigor; and he possesses a love of metaphysics and mysticism, which elevates our concern above the surface of the sensual world. So it is not surprising that this temperament, apparently unfortunate to the ordinary materialist, is very suitable for introducing us to the "spiritual realms" of the universe - or the closed corners of religious truths - which the nervous system of common man, being ignorant or hostile to this, has never attained. In fact, if an "inspiration" coming from the higher realms occurs, it is probable that a nervous emotional temperament is the key element of receptivity that it requires.
Besides, these preliminary remarks are relevant to all manifestations of the Invisible, and equally for those phenomena called mystic union, in which the soul normally claims to be in direct communication with God.
On the other hand, it is clearly evident that the risk of illusion and errors are thus multiplied, regarding the apparent security which scientific rationality offers. All the resources of psychology - knowledge acquired about the compound human, the neural processes of our intellectual operations, the anomalies and the strangeness which they can present - all this is insufficient to separate true possibility from premature judgment.
Man implicitly recognizes the possibility of telepathic inspiration by an extra-human order. In its sudden appearance, the inner work of an artist often appears to him to be the result of an activity external to his personal consciousness.
Certainly, it is necessary to be extremely well balanced and sure of one's hereditary antecedents from the viewpoint of mental health, if one doesn't want to lose one's reason, following an experience set in motion by troubling dialogues with the Invisible. It is necessary that all exponents of such special knowledge make known the inherent perils of psychic experiences, and above all of practicing ceremonial magic Operations. Truly, such operations are periods of contact with occult Forces, which are not approached without certain danger.
One should also be wise only to enter into relations with metaphysical Entities - interior or exterior - with extreme prudence. And the danger of these risks were spread by the school of Saint-Martin as surely as that of Martinez de Pasqually, although less brutal in its consequences.
We believe it necessary to point out these things.
Above all, it is necessary to distinguish the practice of the "way of the interior" from the vague or insignificant meaning (sens) of Mysticism, from the pejorative meaning (of affected piety or sentimentality); from the meaning - a little more generously - of the mystic life (simply designating the interior Christian life, that spiritual life of union with God through love); from the restricted meaning of extraordinary mystical events, or more visible conscious communication with the Invisible, and of a more specialized nature (connected with visions and revelations, both verbal and auditory, which are but secondary events, accessories, without any direct connection with God), and it is necessary to focus on the precise and narrow meaning of contemplation, in which the soul feels and knows itself united with God, by and through Love, but of such a type that these explosions of the divine in the breast of the mystic's consciousness appear to him to be both obvious and clear, and are incontestably generators of an increase in transcendental knowledge, indeed of a sure metaphysical revelation still ignored by Man.
It is necessary then equally to envisage how this mystical experience links to that activity called "subconscious", and whether this explains it partly or completely. Let us specify that the word "subconscious" is used to designate phenomena which seem governed by an intelligent psychic activity, completely other to the personal consciousness of the subject, and which, sometimes emerging into this person's consciousness, seems to belong to a foreign personality.
The events of mystic union thus clearly defined, are sometimes called phenomena of perfect contemplation, where suspension of natural reactions is complete - as opposed to phenomena of imperfect contemplation, where the mystic state is yet not sufficiently accentuated to absorb the entire soul - and drives out all distractions which are irrelevant to the main business.
Perfect contemplation consists of three states: simple union, ecstatic union, and transforming union. In having these clearly defined, superior states of soul, the mystical state manifests itself in the soul through supernatural contemplation, and through the instinctive orison of the mystic, called "silence" (de quietude).
It is moreover proper to note that an outward faintness of consciousness accompanies the mystical state, because in the superior state of transforming union this event does not ordinarily occur, and we have proved this with a subject who enjoyed his interior contemplation (at any rate this is what he told us), while all his faculties remained clear and left him able to attend to active business.
In the unfolding of the mystic state, one might observe the following stages.
The soul feels invaded little by little by a foreign personality, which imposes itself upon his attention and his love. It is similar to a disciple come to hear a famous master. A sympathetic person prepares for his coming, and gains a better understanding of the explanation of his doctrine! The master then appears, and those among the audience who love him understand him best, and he reveals himself best to them. Little by little the spirit of the disciple is penetrated by this personality which invades him, until he forgets the exigencies of exterior necessities. Hanging on the lips of his master, he allows himself be absorbed in admiration, veneration, even love, for him who holds him thus under a "spell" (in the occult sense of the word.)
Let us apply these points to these mysterious states of being, such as they manifest to consciousness, and we will get an idea of the "interior bliss" generated by these states.
These points, thus analyzed, pose three problems to the rationalist who encounters them.
Firstly, that of their passive origin, since they arise before personal consciousness as a vital act, yet received and endured, rather than produced and caused.
Next, that of their psychological mechanism, in which one must separate the affective and cognitive aspects, in order to show that it is not at all morbid, to explain their value and their nobility, and transcendence affirmed by the subjects, of an understanding without images, a pure and ideal comprehension (if one takes their assertions at face value).
Additionally, psychology totally accords with the mystic that this internal force which leads him is definitely not his conscious will (as affirmed by him); that this intelligence which directs his life is not his own reflected intelligence. His states, from that time, are truly manifestations of a power external to his higher consciousness, and the progressive realization in him of an interior god, who possesses him, penetrates him, transforms him...But this god, who is only an interior god, is the tantric Ydam49, the "interior divine". It is moreover psychological in nature and activity. That which goes beyond normal consciousness are subconscious forces, which can take on a divine image, in the religious sense of the word, when they unite creative fecundity and moral richness at the same time, conforming with any exoteric religious tradition.
It remains to prove that these subconscious phenomena serve as vehicles for the true external action of a transcendent God.
The fact that the mystical phenomenon reveals an appearance of affective emotionality is not surprising in itself. In fact, affective life constitutes the very foundation of our being. This is the especially important terrain on which we realize our desires, our inclinations, our character, upon which we build our
Post a comment