The Martinist Order of the Knights of Christ: filiations and orientations

The Ordre Martiniste des Chevaliers du Christ (OMCC) was founded by its first Grand Master, Armand Toussaint, Master Raymond Panagion, in the decade 1970–1979, to continue the work of spreading Russian Martinism in Belgium, a work undertaken at the request of his Master Hermius (the nomen of Serge Marcotoune). Since then, the OMCC has become an international order, established on four continents.

This filiation goes back to Prince Kourakine, who received Nicolas Novikov, one of the main leaders of Freemasonry and the Rose-Croix of Russia. According to other sources, it was Prince Galitzine, equally faithful to Saint-Martin, and not Kourakine, who would have received Nicolas Novikov.

In addition to this filiation, the Order is the depository of the Papus filiation, the Lagrèze filiation, and the Russian Martinist filiation through Robert Ambelain, a filiation which also goes back to Nicolas Novikov, but by another route.

We adhere to Robert Amadou’s thesis, according to which Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin never founded a Martinist order, nor transmitted Martinist initiations in ritual form. It is therefore a filiation of desire, a spiritual and intellectual filiation that has gradually been formalized ritually.

The OMCC is guided in its work by a college entitled the Grande Loge Internationale des Chevaliers Verts, founded by Armand Toussaint. This same hermetic college leads, under various names, the work of various traditional structures close to the OMCC, including the Eglise Rosicrucienne Apostolique and the Order of Knight Masons Élus Coëns of the Universe.

On the death of Armand Toussaint, we did not wish to elect a new Grand Master. We consider today that the Grand Mastership should be above all a spiritual function, outside any field of any power whatsoever, and not an administrative function, which is absolutely illusory.

The OMCC is above all a space for research and experimentation, which is part of the perspective of the paths of Awakening and nondual metaphysics.

The approach proposed within the Order—which can be described as meta-initiatory—insists in particular on the following points:

• The distancing of personal history and the peripheries, by the detachment of the person’s masks and the abandonment of identifications, prior to the opening of a space allowing the emergence of Being;
• The culture of the state of Presence as a fundamental operative key, doing/undoing/not-doing favoring the installation of the process in the zone of Silence;
• The breakthrough—successive and/or simultaneous, oriented and axialized by the quest for the Center—of the three place-states of Form/Substance, Consciousness-Energy, and Essence, up to the simple celebration in the joy of what Is;
• Self-emptying, carried and enlivened by Sophianic Grace, as the only necessary and sufficient way of return to the Center, the reintegration within our original and ultimate nature;
• Strict respect for the freedom of the members, aiming to promote autonomy and to make each one the only expert of their own quest, by the unveiling of their Solar Kingship;
• An approach of companionship combining rigor and flexibility, installed in a nomadic perspective of the initiatory quest, inviting to the traversal of forms.