The Universal Figure
When trying to grasp the
entire creation at one glance, there are few
possibilities: you must resort to a figure that,
through heavy use of symbolism, allows extensive
interpretation while remaining true to the world-view
of the person or society that produced it. One of the
most striking interpretations of creation, the universe
and how man fits in it, is the one the Martines de
Pasqually taught his disciples. Louis Claude de
Saint-Martin drew an interpretation of the
universal figure in his own copy of the
Treatise on the Reintegration of Beings, and this
is what I'll be discussing in this post.
The Universal Figure is of particular interest to all
those studying martinism, and is indispensable to the
students of the Institut Eleazar, as
most of the first year’s lessons refer to what is
given here. It is, to put it another way, a
universal key to the Martinesist teachings; it is to
Martinesism what the tree of sephiroth is to cabala.
In his Treatise on Reintegration, Martines de Pasqually
often refers to the structure of Creation, and
attributes to Moses himself a description of the
universe (see note 40 of Leçons de Lyon, referenced
here). Saint-Martin attached
to his copy of the Treatise a drawing, which is in
fact a map. In his introduction to the Leçons de
Lyon. Robert Amadou offers the description that
Jean-Baptiste Willermoz (founder of the Free-Mason
Rectified Scottish Rite, and Elu-Coen school-fellow
of Louis Claude de Saint-Martin) gives of the
Universal Figure or Table. Let us follow Amadou’s
recommendation to listen carefully:
The divine immensity
that we also call divine and uncreated world [...]
dominates and separates the universal space and the
created worlds, is a boundless and limitless immensity
that increases unceasingly and will increase without
end to contain the immense multitude of spiritual and
intelligent beings emanated from the Creator. God is
its centre, and this centre fills everything [...].
This divine triangle is surrounded by the immense
multitude of spiritual and intelligent beings that are
emanated from it and form together four distinct
classes.
Those four classes are: (i) The circle of superior
denary spirits who are the agents of the universal
denary power of the Creator; (ii) the circle of major
octenary spirits, agents of the Word of God; (iii) the
circle of inferior septenary spirits, agents of the
operating divine action; the circle of minor ternary
spirits. The universal space was created to serve as a
place of exile, separation and punishment for the
spirits that rebelled against the Creator, since they
could not be destroyed because of their inherent
indestructible nature.
That space is bounded
and surrounded on all sides by a huge impregnable and
igneous circumference, philosophically named central
fire axis, formed by the multitude of inferior spirits
that remained loyal, and were ordered by the Creator to
protect [him] from any demoniac action, during the
length of time set by justice.
It is in that fabulous space that, during the explosion
of chaos, all parts of the created universe were set in
action and in motion, the skies, the stars, the
planets, the celestial and terrestrial bodies, and
generally all active and passive beings of nature,
where all its parts and each part in particular,
operate their daily actions with an admirable
precision, in accordance with the laws of order they
had just received from the divine Creator.
[The universal space] is made of two main parts: in the
centre of the lower part, called terrestrial world, the
general terrestrial body of the earth itself is set,
surmounted by the three inferior planets called
Jupiter, Venus and the Moon, that spread their
influence and operate more immediately their action on
it, in correspondence with the four superior planets.
The upper part of the universal space, called celestial
world, contains the four superior planets Saturn, Sun,
Mercury and Mars, which together form the four
celestial regions, dominate the universal, and are in
correspondence with the four spiritual circles of the
supercelestial world above them [...]. It is in the
centre of the four celestial regions of this temporal
quaternary that Moses placed, with the tree of life,
the terrestrial paradise, that the material
geometricians search on earth. It is in the same
regional centre that he placed the emancipated man,
pure and holy, image and resemblance of God, and that
he established the seat of his universal domination on
all created beings and things.
Above the celestial world and the four planetary
regions that form it, there is another large space,
named supercelestial immensity or world, created at the
same time as the inferior worlds. That immensity
surrounds, protects and powerfully defends the igneous
circumference of the central fire axis that bounds and
limits the universal space against any demoniac action;
it separates the uncreated divine immensity from the
three inferior created worlds; it is inhabited and
filled by the multitude of spiritual beings that the
Creator has submitted to the law of time, where they
form, similarly to the divine immensity, four distinct
classes by the number of their actions, by their
virtue, their faculty and by the degree of temporal
power that was bestowed upon them.
The fourth circle, that the wise called circle of
quaternary minor spirits, is aspected by the divine
centre to which it is united by its perpendicular line.
It is in this circle that it pleased the Creator to
emanate and establish the general class of human
intelligences called men, by the absolute act of his
sixth thought of creation, to serve as their
chief-town, sixth thought of which we made a sixth day,
as if in God there could be any time, day, or interval.
It is from this same circle that it then pleased [God]
to emancipate and extract the first man that we call
Adam, although it was not his real name, and to send
him, pure and holy, to inhabit the centre of the four
superior regions of the celestial world and establish
there the seat of the universal domination that [the
Creator] bestowed upon [Adam] for all created things.
It is also in this regional centre that the other
minor-men of his class were to be emancipated and sent
according to his demands to the Creator, so that they
would come and help him all together in is honourable
functions by opposing the multitude of rebellious
spirits and by compressing their perverse
action.