Course XXVI - Teaching 14: Martinism

The consolidation of the Esoteric Orders occurs in eighteen century.
Martinez de Pasqualis represents the modern prototype of Founder of Esoteric Orders.
At the age of 18, he starts for Portugal to the East; from there he returns many times; seemingly he lives in Turkestan (or Hazret), on the plateau of Pamir; his last return is at the age of 42, when he begins his mission as a Founder, for ten years, during which he fills all France and neighbor countries with secret societies, which would be the scene of the great Revolution that is in preparation.
Just two manuscripts containing his teachings remain: “Treatise on the reintegration of beings to their early state, virtues, and spiritual and divine powers”; this treaty is composed of several sections, which do not describe the present state of things, but the re-establishment of man and beings in general in their primordial state. This writing offers the sure and masterly thought of de Pasqualis. The first school founded in France is that of Bourdeaux, with a body of symbols completed by theurgic practices to get help from Higher Entities in the development of the evolutionary plan. These theurgic operations are really important in this school, and all of them form a true worship, whose final result is to lead man toward the above-mentioned reintegration.
The purpose of this contact with Higher Entities is to enable man to hear the Word within, and according to his disciple Saint-Martin, his Master had very great powers in this sense.
His life is quite mysterious; he arrives at a city without any apparent reason, and leaves it, but none knows when or how. He never seeks fame or money. He lives a humble life and many times is in financial straits, but always with dignity and lodging in his house members of the Order that come from Bourdeaux. From Bourdeaux he went to Lyon, and later to Paris, founding new lodges in every one of these cities.
The first lodge is founded in 1754 and Saint-Martin joins to it by advice of several officers of the garrison who are members of the lodge.
His most well-known disciples are Cazotte, D’Hauterive and the Abbé Fournié.
The Abbé Fournié tells how after a casual meeting, de Pasqualis says: “You should come with us, we are good people. You will open a book, and after you look at the first page, that of the center and that in the end, and you will know its content if you read only some few words”.
“You see people of any kind walking by the street; those people do not know why they walk; you will know”.
He daily instructed: “raise yourself ceaselessly toward God, continuously increase your virtues, and work for the general good.”
According to this Abbé, one day, while praying to God for His assistance in his terrible internal fights, he heard the voice of his master, dead two years before and, as soon as he looked at the direction of the voice, he saw Martinez de Pasqualis along with the Abbé’s parents, who had died some years ago, and also a sister, deceased 20 years ago, and a being who was not of the human kind. Some few days later he saw Jesus Christ crucified, and finally, in the third time, Jesus, glorious and triumphant over the world appeared, walking before him with the Virgin and several persons more.
His visions continue but he keeps silence because of the unbelief and scorn of his contemporaries. When the Revolution of 1789 breaks out, Cazotte shares its same principles but with higher purity; terrified by its excesses, he conceives of numerous ways to counteract them by the same honesty and clarity of his religious proselytism, but is arrested because his ideas are discovered in certain letters corresponded with his secretary of the civilian list, called Ponteau.
D’Hauterive, a close friend of Saint-Martin, along with another de Pasqualis’ disciple, for three years studies astrology, magnetism, somnambulism, signs and ideas, beginning and origin of forms, Holy Scriptures, et cetera.
The Marchioness de Croix is an outstanding disciple, and her mystical gifts enable her to reach a state between ecstasy and vision.
Another disciple, Willermoz, perceives Martinez de Pasqualis in a vision; the Master warns about revolutionaries who would confiscate all his books and teachings; so, two days before, Willermoz saves two big trunks where he preserves zealously a wisdom that later would form the foundations of secrets societies, spiritualism, et cetera.
In the so-called School of the North, the most conspicuous members are the Prince of Hesse, the Count of Berraztorff, the Countess of Reventlow and the well-known Lavater, who was so famous in Switzerland. Later, Reventlow and Lavater leave the School, likely at the request of Liebisdorf, a close friend of Saint-Martin; then they follow the purer mystique of Saint-Martin that is different from his Master Martinez de Pasqualis’ teachings, whose schools rather deal with theurgic practices.
After his mission in Europe, de Pasqualis sails to the island of Santo Domingo, and dies in Puerto Príncipe in 1799.
The close disciples of de Pasqualis continue the works of the Order until 1782, during which the Martinists form an alliance with the Baron Bund’s Order of the Strict Observance; the archives are entrusted to J.B. Willermoz for the creation of the Reformed Rite. These negotiations continue until their interruption in 1789 by the Revolution.
Martinez de Pasqualis, like a draught over Europe, prepares the French Revolution: he forms a necessary aspiration and creates secret societies of a kind that later would be devoted to politics, like the Carbonari in Italy, the Enlightened in France, and later, certain lodges like that of Lautaro, which bring the revolutionary ferment to America, while those lodges founded by his disciple Saint-Martin purify their ritual and just seek the knowledge and Divine Union.