The Martinist Tradition

Let us recall, with Robert Amadou, what is covered by the term “Martinism”: “In the family of initiatory doctrines, illumination (…) belongs to the genre of Christian (that is to say, Judeo-Christian) esotericism” (Robert Amadou, Martinisme, 2nd revised and expanded edition, CIREM, 1997).

It is, first of all, the Primitive Cult of the Order of Knight Masons Élus Coëns of the Universe, founded by Martinez de Pasqually (1710–1774) of which Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin was the secretary and undoubtedly the best student.

It is the Theosophy of Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin (1743–1803), at the crossroads of two founding experiences, the experience of a Réau-Croix who successfully carried out all the Coëns operations, meeting the work of Jacob Bœhme of which he will be a translator. Let us recall that Jacob Bœhme, often described as a mystic, was also a highly-skilled operative hermeticist.

It is the Masonic system of the Rectified Scottish Regime founded by Jean-Baptiste Willermoz (1730–1824) from the Templar Strict Observance, imbued with the doctrine of reintegration of Martinez de Pasqually. The Profession and the Great Profession, the crown of this system, are a synthesis of the doctrine conveyed by the Primitive Cult.

Finally, there is the Martinist Order, and its many offshoots, founded in 1887 by Papus (1865–1916). Today, all of the Martinist orders constitute a living and influential movement carrying the principles and symbols of Illuminism.

The Martinism “of Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin” offers a direct path, an immediate access to perfect knowledge, to Gnosis, without any other intermediary than Silence which thus makes the initiate another Christ, a New Man. Not a religious gnosis, which connects, but a Gnosis that loosens, that liberates.

This Gnosis installed in the Self, but not circumscribed to the Self, can violate a psychic apparatus not prepared for this ultimate experience, which is a death to the world and a death of the conceived world. Traditions assist in the reception of experience, essential rather than existential, in its assimilation, and its wise installation, precisely in existence.

Very classically, and like the great traditional currents, Martinism, or more broadly Illuminism, considers Gnosis as a knowledge that can be transmitted in time, both through teachings and through practices.

The teaching is organized around principles resulting from a revelation considered to be of divine origin, concerning which we will not forget that, while it originates in the experience of Being, it is colored according to the language and culture that claim to convey it. There is thus a progressive, gradualist, temporal, and tempered transmission that passes through the mysteries, the rites, the arts, and the symbols, which Jacob Bœhme tells us are “the signature of things.”