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 généraux 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.