Martinez de Pasqually
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Jacques de Livron Joachim de la Tour de la Casa Martinez de Pasqually (1710? – September 20, 1774) (aka Martinès de Pasqually, Martinès Pasqualis, Martinez Pasqualis, and Martinez Paschalis) was a theurgist and theosopher of uncertain origin. He was the founder of L'Ordre des Chevaliers Maçons Élus Coëns de l'Univers[1](commonly referred to as the Élus Cohens) about 1758 in Bordeaux, France. In 1768, while the first order he had created was still in operation, he founded a second order, named L'Ordre Martiniste des Élus-Coëns. He was a friend, tutor, and initiator of Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin and Jean-Baptiste Willermoz. Speaking technically, Martinez de Pasqually's system (his writings and the esoteric orders based on them) is referred to by scholars of esotericism as Martinezism, in order to distinguish it from the writings of Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin - and the esoteric orders based primarily on Saint-Martin's writings - which are referred to as Martinism.
Biography
Martinez de Pasqually, whose biography is continually being researched due to the lack of documentation, first appears in the history of esotericism and esoteric orders around the year 1740.[2]
His exact date and place of birth, as well as his true nationality, is unknown. A number of authors propose that Martinez was a Spanish Jew, but later research concludes that this is unlikely.[2]Certain similarities between Martinez' theurgy and Portuguese hermetic thought, led philosopher José Pereira de Sampaio Bruno (1857-1915) to argue that Martinez was probably of Portuguese origin.[3] Others [who?] claim that Martinez was born in Grenoble. In reality, we know nothing with certainty about his origins. Also, his activities before 1760 are poorly understood. This is largely due to the fact that he used several different names and signatures on official documents during his lifetime.
In 1772, Martinez travelled to the Caribbean island of Santo Domingo to collect an inheritance. At the time he went there, it was a French colony (which was soon to become Haiti), and it was not a territory controlled by the Portuguese government. The historical records indicate that Martinez' Élus Cohen-related activities in the Caribbean had an influence on early mystic groups located there. Pierre-André de Grainville (June 21, 1728 - 1794), one of Martinez' most fervent disciples, came from the Caribbean.
Establishment of Élus Cohen Temples, and Related Activities
For twenty years - from 1754 until the year of his death (1774) - Martinez worked ceaselessly to establish and promote his esoteric spiritual orders.
In 1754, Martinez founded the Chapter of Scottish Judges in Montpellier.
In 1761, he became affiliated with the Masonic lodge La Française in Bordeaux, and founded an Élus Cohens Temple there.
In 1764, Martinez reorganized the La Française lodge and renamed it Française Élus Écossaise, indicating that its members now had the ability, and permission, to begin working higher Masonic degrees and rituals. However, unfortunately for the members of the Française Élus Écossaise lodge, in 1766 the directors of the Masonic province of Bordeaux declared that they were abolishing all Masonic constitutions which authorize the working of any Masonic degrees higher than the basic first three (the Regular Blue or St. John's degrees: Entered Apprentice, Fellowcraft, and Master Mason).
This same year (1766), Martinez travelled to Paris and co-founded a new Élus Cohens temple. The other co-founders of this temple included Jean-Jacques Bacon de la Chevalerie (1731-1821), Jean-Baptiste Willermoz, Jacques-Henri de Froger d'Ignéaucourt, the Marquis de Lusignan[4] (1749-1814), the alchemist Onésime-Henri de Loos (1725-1785), P. A. de Grainville, and several others who were to play important roles in the history of the Order.
In 1767, Martinez established the Sovereign Tribunal, which thenceforth directed the whole Order of the Élus Coëns.
In 1768, Martinez met with Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin. The personality and teachings of Martinez made a deep and lasting impression on Saint-Martin. Conversely, Martinez himself was influenced by Saint-Martin, who decided to leave his military career in 1771 and become the personal secretary of Martinez, replacing Abbé Pierre Fournié (1738-1825). From this period the notable development of the rituals of the order started, including Martinez' drafting of his magnum opus the Treatise on the Reintegration of Beings, the main doctrinal foundation of the Martinezist theosophy and theurgy.
In 1772 Martinez embarked on a trip to Santo Domingo to receive an inheritance, and subsequently died there on September 20, 1774. Thereafter, the Order disintegrated.
In 1776, the Élus Coëns Temples in La Rochelle, Marseilles, and Libourne fell into the grasp of the Grand Orient of France, the mainstream French Freemasonic order which had come into existence in 1773.
In 1777, the rites were no longer in operation and institutional use, except in some circles in Paris, Versailles and Eu.
Finally, in 1781, Sébastien de Las Casas, third and last 'Grand Sovereign' of the Élus Cohens - successor of Armand-Robert Caignet de Lestère (1725 - December 19, 1779) - ordered the closure of the eight remaining temples that still recognized his authority. Neither Las Casas nor Caignet de Lestère played a very important role in the orders development.
Despite the official closure, members of the Élus Coëns continued to conduct initiations and to practice theurgy. On the other hand, the theosophical teaching of Martinez was not lost. It spread - even long after the death of Martinez - through the Masonic system which had been established by Willermoz shortly after Martinez' death.
Besides Willermoz and Saint-Martin, the last known personal disciple of Martinez was Abbé Pierre Fournié. It was around 1768 that Fournié met Martinez, who would make him turn his life around completely, and who employed him as his secretary. Initiated as an Élus Coën, the tonsured cleric Fournié resided mainly in Bordeaux, where he mediated the correspondences between different members of the Order.
In 1776, Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin described Abbé Fournié as an Élus Cohen who was exceptionally favoured in supernatural manifestations. Fournié later wrote a work titled What we have been, what we are, and what we will become (London: A. Dulau & Co., 1801). At the time of the French Revolution Fournié emigrated to England, where he remained until his death. In the period 1818-1821, Fournié befriended the Munich theosophist Franz von Baader.
The Structure of the Élus Cohens
This doctrine, he intended for an elite chosen from the ranks of his contemporary masons, and gathered under the banner of the Elus Coëns (Elect Priests). Quickly this order gained quite a reputation in French Masonic circles, but the theurgic operations remained reserved for the higher degrees. Martinez did not, to a greater extent, graft his system solely on freemasonry. Until 1761, it is to be located in Montpellier, Paris, Lyons, Bordeaux, Marseilles, and Avignon.
In 1761 he built a special temple in Avignon, where he resided himself until 1766. At that time, the Order of the Elect Coens was worked as a high-degree system superimposed on the Blue Lodges: The first class had three symbolic degrees, and that of 'maître parfait élu', then the grades Coens proper: apprentice Coën, fellowcraft Coën, and master Coën, Grand Master Coën or Grand Architect, Chevalier d'Orient or Knight Zorobabel, Commandeur d'Orient or Commander Zorobabel, and finally the last degree, the supreme consecration of Reaux Croix.
In 1768, Jean-Baptiste Willermoz was ordained Reau-Croix by Bacon de la Chevalerie. Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin commenced the system in 1765, rising quickly to Commander of the Orient. The years 1769 and 1770 saw the Coen-groups multiply extensively in France. In 1772, Saint-Martin was ordained Reau-Croix.
Recent Discoveries on Martinez de Pasqually's Ancestry
According to the researches of George C. and the elements discovered by Michele Friot and Michelle Nahon, namely a certificate of Catholicism (published in Bulletin de la Société Martines de Pasqually, Bordeaux) and the letters from Martinez regarding the Guers affair, neither Martinez nor his father could be Jewish. The third reason is that at the time, Jews were not accepted as Freemasons in France. These facts disprove the hypothesis advanced by French esotericist and Martinist scholar Robert Amadou (1924-2006), who proposed that Martinez was a Spanish Jew (Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin et le Martinisme, Paris, Éditions Le Griffon d'or, 1946).
The theory of Martinez being Portuguese is also contested: The fact that Martinez traveled to Santo Domingo to receive an inheritance, does not support the theory of Portugal as his ethnic background. The island of St. Domingo (Hispaniola) was never under Portuguese rule, seeing that the French settlers, the 'Frères de la Côte Français' seized control over areas gradually abandoned by the Spaniards.
In a word, the western part was under French sovereignty and that of the Spaniards was located to the east. (Henri Bernard Catus 27 May 2009). The place of residence for Martinez, namely Leogane and Port-au-Prince, was French and occupied by the regiment of Foix, the same military operation from which Saint-Martin himself was recruited.
The wife of Martinez is believed to come from the very rich French settlers of the island. Martines married Angelique Marguerite Collas de Mauvignié, daughter of Anselm Collas de Mauvignié, on August 27, 1767, at Gornac, France (near Bordeaux).
However, if Martinez spoke French very well, he wrote very badly. His son, according to a police report, spoke Spanish very well. The hypothesis of a Spanish origin should therefore be retained. Research done in Grenoble by G.C. on all civil records on marriage certificates shows that Martinez is not registered in Grenoble. But it is possible that children born in the military forces at the time were not recorded in parish registers. The city of Grenoble archives contain a document stating that a Captain Pasqually was stationed there, but it may be a namesake at the recovery of bodies of troops from Spain and used in the French army.
P. A. de Grainville (sometimes referred to as Chevalier de Grainville), who was one of Martinez de Pasqually's most loyal secretaries, also attained the degree of Reaux-Croix. He was born on the island of Bourbon (now Reunion Island), a native of Normandy (historical archives of the Army Château de Vincennes Paris). He ended his military career in 1780 with the rank of lieutenant colonel.
Doctrine
The doctrine of Martinez is described as a key to any eschatological cosmology. God, the primordial Unity, had a desire to emanate beings from his own nature, but Lucifer, who wanted to exercise his own creative power, fell victim to his own faults. In his fall, which included his followers, he found himself trapped within an area designated by God to serve as their prison. God sent man, in an androgynous body and endowed with glorious powers, to keep Lucifer's rebels at bay and work towards their reconciliation. Adam prevaricated himself and fell into the very prison he was to contain, becoming a physical and mortal being, and was so thus forced to try to save both himself and the original creation. It can be done via inner perfection with the help of Christ, but also by the theurgic operations that Martinez taught to the men of desire he found worthy of receiving his initiation.
This is obtained by practicing certain rites, where the disciple is to enter into relations with angelic entities that appear in the operations as passes. These are to appear mostly in the form of characters or hieroglyphs of spirits invoked by the operator, as proofs that he is on the proper way of Reintegration.[5]
Legacy
After World War 2 Robert Ambelain created a new "Martinist Order of the Élus Cohen" as a revival of the Order of Pasqually. This was officially closed, as publicly announced in the Martinist magazine L'Initiation, in 1964.
However, several strains of martinist-orders have continued to operate the Elus Cohens in succession of the Ambelain resurgence.[5]
Today the Elus Cohens is mainly worked in two different manners, one in the fashion of Robert Ambelain, heavily influenced by his own Gnostic Church, the rite of Memphis-Misraim and his personal take on the kabbalah.
There also exists another manner of operation, where Pasqually's original system is practiced more in tune with the intents of the system as it were in the 1770s, where neo-gnostic tendencies and kabbalah is removed, in favor of the original doctrines. Ordre Reaux Croix is working the Elus Cohens in a similar manner, and also including women, as Pasqually himself did on two occasions.
There are currently three Orders that are trying to philologically rebuild what the original Coëns did; they are in Spain, France and Italy. These are reserved circles that do not actively advertise their activities.[5]
References
- ^ Order of Knight Masons, Elect Priests of the Universe
- ^ a b "The Treatise and the Élus Coëns". The Three Luminaries. 2020-06-26. Retrieved 2021-10-31.
- ^ Sampaio Bruno, José Pereira de (1904), O Encoberto. Porto: Livraria Moreira
- ^ Marquis de Lusignan (December 22, 1749 - February 10, 1814) - His full name at birth was Hugues Thébaud Henri Jacques de Lusignan-LeJai (Lezay). In histories of Freemasonry he is often referred to simply as the Marquis de Lusignan.
- ^ a b c "Martinès de Pasqually and Martinism". The Three Luminaries. 2020-06-23. Retrieved 2021-10-31.
Sources
Bibliography
Books
- Martines of Pasqually, Treatise on the reintegration of beings (from the manuscript of Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin), Diffusion Rosicrucienne, Collection Martin.
Studies on Martines Pasqually
- Franz von Baader, Les Enseignements secrets de Martinès de Pasqually, précédé d'une Notice sur le martinézisme et le martinisme, Bibliothèque Chacornac, 1900 ; rééd. Robert Dumas, 1976 ; Editions Télétès, 2004.
- Gilles Pope, Les écritures magiques, Aux sources du Registre des 2400 noms d'anges et d'archanges de Martinès de Pasqually, Arché Edidit, 2006.
- G. Van Rijnberk, Un thaumaturge au XVIII (2) s. : Martines de Pasqually Sa vie, son oeuvre, son ordre I, Paris, Alcan, 1935; t. II, Lyon, Derain-Raclet, 1938
- Jean-Marc Vivenza, Martinez, Le Martinisme, l'enseignement secret des Maîtres, Martinès de Pasqually, Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin et Jean-Baptiste Willermoz, fondateur du Régime Écossais Rectifié, Le Mercure Dauphinois, 2006.
Works on the Elus Cohens
- Robert Amadou, "Rituels d'initiation des élus coën".
External links
Media related to Martinès de Pasqually at Wikimedia Commons
- Biography of Pasqually Martines, Jean-François Var.
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