Louis-Claude of Saint Martin\'s day

Louis-Claude of Saint Martin's day , known as the Unknown Philosopher . Born the January 18th 1743 with Amboise, died in Aulnay (close to Seals) the October 13rd 1803.

Biography

The name of Louis-Claude of Saint Martin's day is to be attached in the literature to the current illuminist, reaction to the materialist spirit of the “philosophers” Encyclopédistes of the 18th century. The illuminism proposes a reading of the Christian texts in the light of the Néo-platonisme and of the occult sciences, stressing the interiority of the mystical search , and rejecting the emberlificotage Scolastique. About at the same time as Saint Martin's day, German D' Eckartshausen writes a certain number of works, among which the cloud on the sanctuary , which Eliphas Lévi will recommend later to its pupil, the baron de Spedialieri. Extatic Swedish Emmanuel Swedenborg is also attached to the illuminism: but if its Treated curious about the charms of the marital love in this world and the other is accessible (but without much interest in my opinion), the reading of the majority of its works is however considered difficult.

The descent of the illuminism will be many and fertile: the Romanticism and the symbolism will draw there their design of the world like universal analogy. Balzac, between much of others, was deeply influenced by the thought illuminist: one will realize some easily by reading Louis Lambert , the research of the absolute , or the lily in the valley .

The “unknown philosopher”

Louis-Claude of Saint Martin's day was born in Amboise (Indre-et-Loire) on January 18th, 1743, in a family of minor nobility. As of childhood, the education which lavishes to him an enlightened mother-in-law supports at his place the blooming of noble feelings and a great sensitivity of heart. After studies of right, he becomes lawyer, in accordance with the desire of his parents. But it hardly likes the profession, and thanks to the support of an influential friend, he obtains in a 1765 (at 22 years) patent of second lieutenant to the regiment of Foix then stationed to Bordeaux. The purpose of the military career was at that time to leave much leisures, bus Louis-Claude of Saint Martin's day was by choosing it to find more time for its esoteric studies! Fabre d' Olivet will have the same idea later.

Via one of his friends of the circle of the officers, the captain of Grainville, Saint Martin's day was allowed since 1765 in the Ordre of the Knights Masons Elected officials-Cohen of the Universe , founded a few years earlier by the theosophist miracle-worker Martines de Pasqually, whose doctrines were presented in the form of a key of any theosophy Judeo-Christian, being directly connected to the secret lesson of Egypt, Greece and the East. Teaching and the rites cohens provided him the main part of the philosophical topics which it did not cease developing in all its works. He left the army in 1771 to devote himself to his vocation and was the secretary of Martines during several months.

In 1773 and 1774, it lived Lyon at Jean-Baptiste Willermoz (1730-1824). This other disciple of Martines created in 1778 the '' Scottish Rite Rectified '' (the RER), practiced nowadays by many masons, and in whom it was going to make pass the essence of the theosophy martinesist. During this stay at Willermoz, Saint Martin's day wrote its first work, errors and truth, or the Men recalled to the principles of science . When to this book, in 1775, the author appeared was in Paris and became already the “unknown Philosopher” who it was going to remain for the posterity. The natural Tableau of the reports/ratios which link God, the Man and the universe (1782) takes again and prolongs the lesson of the Erreurs … As of this time, Saint Martin's day is detached from the active ways of the magic to be directed in an “interior” direction more and more: the Repairer, according to him, showed the way of a direct contact with the divine one, by the prayer. Saint Martin's day defies even finally Franc-maçonnerie, in spite of a membership of short duration to the rectified rite of Willermoz. Its stay with Strasbourg (1788-1791) can be regarded as an historical event: it indeed meets there Mrs. de Böcklin who reveals to him the philosophy of Jacob Boehme of which it will translate five works.

In the French revolution, Saint Martin's day sees a provisional punishment sent by Providence, had with the decline of the thrones and the furnace bridges, and does not hesitate to assemble the guard in front of the Temple, become prison of the royal family then. According to White Louis, in History of the Revolution , it is with Louis-Claude of Saint Martin's day even as France owes its famous currency: Freedom-Equality-fraternity. An error alas! Robert Amadou published on the question an special issue of traditional Rebirth or it shows the error, with a sales leaflet of more than 100 pages! In fact, this currency is not even that of the French revolution of 1789! It appears about 1848.

After the Man of desire (1790), then the New Man and Ecce homo (intended to inform the duchess of Bourbon), published in 1792, it writes mainly under the influence of Boehme, of which it reconciles teaching with that of sound “first Master” Martines. At the same time its theosophic correspondence with the Bernese Niklaus Anton Kirchberger (1739-1799) begins. Then he writes other works, whose the Ministry for the man-spirit (1802) is undoubtedly worked out the most and that which reconciles best the lesson of Boehme with those of Martines. At the same time, it writes translations of the books of Boehme and publishes them. He meets Chateaubriand at the Valley-with-Wolves, in January 1803, and dies out on October 13rd with Aulnay, close to Seals (the Seine), in the senator Lenoir-Laroche.

The philosophy of Saint Martin's day

The whole work of Saint Martin's day shows its fidelity with the lesson of Martines: it denied the value forever nor the effectiveness of the théurgie cohen, but estimated not to require more for this one once it believed to have drawn some enough from spiritual advantages. If philosophy saint-martinienne is attached narrowly to the systems of Boehme and Pasqually, it does not owe practically anything in Swedenborg nor with Mrs. Guyon. For Saint Martin's day as for his Masters, God, before time, produced by emanation of the spiritual beings. Part of these angels fell into the sin from insubordination. Then God created a universe to circumscribe the evil thus introduced and to be used as prison with the fallen angels. At the same time, it emanated the paramount Man, Adam Qadmon, androgyne with the glorious body, viceroy of the universe, to be used as geôlier with these demons, to bring them to résipiscence:

God known as: Let us make to the Man with our image, like our resemblance, and that it dominates over fish of the sea, birds of the sky, the cattle, all the wild beasts and all the small beasts which crawl on the ground.

God created the Man with his image, with the image of God it created it, male and female it created it. ( Gen I, 26-27 )

But the Man, armature in temptation by them, was precipitated in his turn in this universe outwards of which it should have remained. While penetrating inside, it broke the harmony, became of it man and woman separately, mortal, prone to the sorrow, the diseases:

But of the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God said: You will not eat any, will not touch you there, under penalty of death. ( Gen III, 3 )

But God knows that, the day when will eat you, your eyes will open and you will be like gods, who know the good and the evil. ( Gen III, 5 )

It is thus a fallen angel which not only remembers the skies, but must find its last size and its capacity to order from all the spirits, goods or bad. The angels remained in obedience can help the Man if this one is put in hamonie with them. The prayer, even deprived of ceremonies, is the most effective method: Saint Martin's day disadvises the theurgic practices highly. Eliphas Lévi tells on this subject that a disciple of Martines, being delivered to operations whereas it had contracted a stain, would certainly have left there the life without the intervention of the Master. For Saint Martin's day, there is an angel attached to the life of each man, who deliberately chose the exile to help with his rehabilitation. This angel suffers when we move away from God, because let us move away we it from there at the same time: it perceives the divine light only through our heart.

Saint Martin's day lengthily describes the consequences of the fall, of which it draws the essence of its cosmology, and indicates the ways by which the Man could regenerate itself by involving nature in gigantic Réintégration. Never it fears of too exalter the role of the Man in the divine economy. Saint Martin's day underlines the major bonds of that one with the Creator, insists on what there is the best in him: admiration, the love, the solidity of the human reports/ratios, the priceless value of the grain of sénevé which remains hidden in the heart of each one but which can carry us to the skies, to even transfigure nature, to return to the Man his last splendor. Because it is always of the Man that share the unknown Philosopher, for whom it are necessary to explain the things by the Man, and not the Man by the things. Any serious study on the “Philosophy of Nature” at that time - with the romantic direction of the term - should start with an attentive examination of its work, particularly of the Spirit of the things (1800).

If Saint Martin's day tends to be detached from the world, he always escapes the pure mystic, insofar as there remains an insatiable observer of nature; he integrates each concrete notation in an at the same time cosmogonic, cosmological and eschatologic system theosophic where each data is always seized in a whole of the units, secrecy of the analogical step or doctrines of the correspondences.

The Martiniste Order

The martinism is not the exact prolongation of the Ordre of the Knights Masons Elected officials-Cohen of the Universe . In 1772, before to have finished the organization of its kind, Martines de Pasqually left for Saint-Domingue, of which it never returned. Two of its disciples continued to diffuse his teaching, with different sensitivities: Saint Martin's day and Willermoz.

But neither Saint Martin's day, nor Willermoz founded company bearing the name of Ordre Martiniste . It is known only that around the first a group was constituted to which certain letters of friends refer under the name of “Circle of the Close friends”. The initiation transmitted by LLC of Saint Martin's day remained until the end of the 19th century by two different filiations, but which seem both authentic: at that time two men are agents: Dr. Gerard Encausse, alias Papus, and Augustin Chaboseau. For more details, one will be able to refer to the review Rosicrucian brotherhood n° 163 of autumn 1992. Providence making well the things, Papus and Chaboseau, both medical students, meet thanks to a mutual friend: P. Gaëtan Leymarie, whose bookstore exists always Notre-Dame district.

They are transmitted what they received and decide in 1891 to create an initiatory order that they call Ordre Martiniste . Its review, created by Papus, is Initiation. The order obtains the Supreme Council, composed of 12 members, who elects Papus with the load of Grand Master. The O.M. knows a fast extension consequently: Paris account soon four cabins, and the order is established also abroad. The number of April 1898 of Initation announces that in 1897, there existed 40 cabins in the world, and that in 1898 their number reached 113. (Ah! good old day…)

With the war of 1914-1918, the order falls in sleep. Several independent martinists groups were born at that time, to know an often transitory destiny. There remains however nowadays of other obediences martinists. In 1931, on the council of his son, A. Chaboseau brings together the survivors of the Supreme Council to take again the situation in hand. Those élirent it with the load of Large Master, whom it left in Victor-Emile Michelet since 1932. The “traditional” qualifier is added at that time in the name of the order, to mean that the order is pressed on the true bases of the martinism, and in reaction to the expansion of the independent groups.

When arrives the war of 1939-1945, the order is again threatened. In 1939, Ralph Maxwell Lewis, Imperator of the Old and Mystical Order of the Rosicrucian brotherhood is charged by the Supreme Council with installing the Ordre Martiniste Traditionnel with the the United States. When later a.M.O.R.C reorganizes in Europe of post-war period, it is decided that the O.M.T. will carry on its activities in its center. For this time, Imperator of a.M.O.R.C has been also Souverain Large Master of the O.M.T., and pareillement the Large Master of the French jurisdiction of a.M.O.R.C takes up at the same time the duty of Large Master of the O.M.T. Actuellement, Imperator of a.M.O.R.C is French: F. Christian Bernard; and the Large Master of the French jurisdiction is F. Serge All Saints' day.

There remains our day another filiation authentic of the Ordre Martiniste initial, the Martiniste Order, otherwise called Ordre Martiniste " Papus" . The O.M.T. and the O.M., if they share the same ideals, practice a different ritual however.

Note: This biography borrows largely from that (in copyleft) of the http://www.la-rose-bleue.org site. Other portraits of Louis-Claude of Saint Martin's day are visible with the address http://www.la-rose-bleue.org/Biographies/Saint-Martin.html

Works

the New Man , diffusion rosicrucian, collection martinist. (To be read absolutely, a good main door in the work of the unknown philosopher).
the Ministry for the Man-Spirit, diffusion rosicrucian, collection martinist.
the Man of Desire , available on http://gallica.bnf.fr
Of the Errors and the Truth , diffusion rosicrucian, collection martinist.
Ecce Homo , diffusion rosicrucian, collection martinist.
natural Table of the reports/ratios which link God, the Man and the Universe , diffusion rosicrucian, collection martinist.
Martines de Pasqually - Treated on the rehabilitation of the beings (according to the manuscript of LLC of Saint Martin's day), diffusion rosicrucian, collection martinist.

External bonds

traditional the Martiniste Order, by itself.
the Martiniste Order, by itself.
the Martiniste Order of the Netherlands (resulting from the Martiniste Order), by itself.
Martinésisme and Martinisme, by Jean-François VAr.
Louis-Claude of Saint Martin's day, the unknown Philosopher This site aims to make known the thought of Louis-Claude of Saint Martin's day. He places at the disposal of the researchers a documentation base on the man, his work and his historical, social and philosophical context.
Eléazar Institute: The raison d'être of the institute is to preserve and make known the heritage martinist by means of course by correspondence, of meetings and seminars.
Official site of the review '' Initiation '' This famous review founded by Papus in 1888, is directed today by Michel Leger. Yves-Fred Boisset is editor association since 1984.
Mystica Verba Profaris Site particularly centered on the martinism and the martinesism.
On livres-mystiques.com: Works of L. Cl. of St Martin says the Unknown Philosopher.

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