Martines de Pasqually (1710? - 1774) is definitely a
mysterious character. His name might only be a hieronym,
in which case his real identity has yet to be uncovered.
His origins are no less mysterious, though we can note
Robert Amadou's hypothesis that Martines was most likely
a Spanish Jew, marrano or half-marrano.
He was probably born in France circa 1710 in or near
Grenoble, but French was not his mother tongue. He lived
for a while in the military before devoting all his time
to his Order. He died in 1774 in Saint-Domingue, while
dealing with profane business. Martines, who Saint-Martin
admitted was the only mortal he had never figured out
completely, and to whom Jean-Baptiste Willermoz, another
disciple of his, knew no second, remains enigmatic more
than two centuries after his death. Many of his
contemporaries judged him hastily, but not the Unknown
Philosopher, who saw him as a master, in fact, as his
first master.
Martines de Pasqually considered himself a Roman
Catholic, and followed, even commended, the rites of the
Church of Rome, and his sincerity is dependable. However,
his theology was not strictly roman, but rather from
primitive Judaeo-Christianity, anterior to the first
great councils of the one and undivided Church.
Martines’s followers, now and back then, can only be,
them too, Judaeo-Christians. Some were and are more
Jewish than Christian, others more Christian than Jewish
(most élus coens were Roman Catholics), but their first
and foremost reference book was always and still is the
Judaeo-Christian Bible: Old and New Testaments. The
martinist is forever a man of the Bible.
With its corollary theurgical paths, martinism presents
itself in the West, as a branch of Judaeo-Christian
esoterism, depository of the doctrine of Reintegration.
That doctrine must be studied, understood and assimilated
whether moving on or not to a theosophia practica.
Because no one can engage in theurgy without a deep
theoretical understanding of the relations that exist
between God, man and the universe.
The martinist doctrine, which is an illuminism, was
transmitted by Martines de Pasqually to the Order of
mason Knights elect coens of the universe (Ordre des
Chevaliers maçons élus coens de l’univers, which will be
refered to as Elus Coens hereafter), of which he
presented himself as the “grand sovereign” or one of the
seven grand sovereigns, and to which he consecrated his
life while refuting being its founder. In no later than
1760, Martines de Pasqually started recruiting in masonic
lodges of the south of France. But before Martines, there
is no trace of that order, even in a non-masonic form.
Obviously, Martines did organise his school, which does
not exclude the involvement of predecessors, archives or
even of colleagues as he himself claimed.
The coen Order incarnates that society that, in the words
of a coen prayer, was formed since the beginning. It is
an avatar of the spiritual and informal Order of the
Eternel’s elect, which is why Martines claimed not to
have founded it. Although the coen Order took a masonic
form in the XVIIIth century, it would have taken other
forms in different times and different places. And
Martines deliberately placed his school under the
patronage of Joshua.
Externally, or even exoterically, the Order of the élus
coens took the appearance of a Masonic society, since the
Masons were one of the few societies tolerated by the
roman catholic Church. Additionally, because ever since
its origin, it is a privileged vehicle of
Judaeo-Christian esoterism. Thus, Martines naturally
selected his first disciples in Masonic lodges, and his
order initially presented itself as a Masonic “higher
degree” system.
However, for Martines de Pasqually, ordinary masonry is
“apocryphal”, and any Mason whom is not coen is only a
pseudo-mason. Profound differences between classical
Masonry, even mystical, which he tried to reform in vain,
and coen Masonry, as well as the need for independence of
the Order, brought Martines to put some distance between
his Order and the Masonry of his time.
According to the Statuts generaux of 1767[1], the Order comprises the
following degrees, which are divided into seven classes:
apprentice, companion, master (1st class); elect master
(2nd class); apprentice coen, companion coen, master coen
(3rd class); great architect (4th class); knight of the
Orient (5th class); commander of the Orient (6th class);
reau-croix (7th class)[2].
These degrees were conferred through complex initiation
rituals in which the candidate redrew certain sections of
the Scriptures, for example, and especially through an
essential ordination that was to make him a receptacle of
intermediary spirits between God and man, angels of
light.
Therefore, the élus coens are not ordinary freemasons.
For Martines they are in fact real masons: chosen priests
(which is what élu coën means), capable of celebrating
the primordial cult in the temple that they contribute to
build. However, the coen’s priesthood shouldn’t be
mistaken for that of the kohanim of the Old Covenant, nor
with the priesthood of the Church since the apostolic
days.
Indeed, the endeavour of the coen Order goes much further
than that of most rites of mystic freemasonry. The élu
coen Vialetes d’Aignan explains this endeavour in his
speech for the reception of the chevalier Guibert the
24th march 1788. It is, he says, “an order that, having
for goal to bring man back to his glorious origin, leads
him by the hand, by teaching him to know himself and to
consider his relationships with the entire nature, of
which he was to be the centre had he not fallen from his
origin, and finally to recognise the Supreme Being from
which he is emanated” [3].
According to Martines, the doctrine of reintegration and
the corresponding theurgy were transmitted to him through
many generations since Enoch. That lineage is that of the
elect, small or great, of the Eternal. But what is this
doctrine of reintegration? The word reintegration itself
is the key: it means rehabilitation, restitution of a
lost power and our return to the place from which we were
expelled.
Martines gave his teachings orally and through the
instructions for each degree of the Order. Further, he
produced the Treatise on the reintegration of beings, his
only work, which he never completed. It is an extensive
commentary of the bible, an 18th century midrach that
completes the numerous Order’s instructions with the
doctrinal bases essential for any coen.
[1] Pre-edition by Robert
Amadou, Institut Eleazar, then CIREM.
[2] See the series “The seven seals of the elect coens”,
Serge Caillet, in press in Renaissance traditionnelle, as
from n°122, April 2000, that analyses the ritual and
doctrinal content of each grade: Introduction, n°122,
April 2000, pp. 100–113; I. La classe du porche, n°125,
January 2001, pp. 41–63; n°126, April 2001, pp. 74—88; n°
127/128, July–Octobre 2001, pp. 193–209; II. Maitre élu,
n° 133, January 2003, pp. 30–53; III. Les grades “coëns”,
n° 141, January 2005, n° 38–57.
[3] “Discours coen ”, in Louis-Claude de Saint Martin,
Théosophie et théologie, Paris, Documents martinistes, n°
13, 1980, p. 69.