A New Historical Notice on Martinèsism and Martinism: Followed by The Secret Teachings of Martinèz Pasqualis - Paperback

by Albéric Thomas (Author), Franz Von Baader (Author), Tau Phosphoros (Translator)

A New Historical Notice on Martinésism and Martinism brings into English for the first time two essential documents of the Western esoteric tradition: the Nouvelle Notice Historique sur le Martinésisme et le Martinisme by Albéric Thomas (Un Chevalier de la Rose-Croissante), and Franz von Baader's essay on the doctrine of Martinès de Pasqually -- published here under Baader's own title, The Secret Teachings of Martinèz Pasqualis -- translated into French by René Philipon and here rendered into English from that translation.

First published in Paris in December 1899 as No. 5 in the Second Series of the Bibliothèque Rosicrucienne -- the imprint of the Ordre Kabbalistique de la Rose-Croïx -- this volume appeared at the height of the French esoteric revival and amid vigorous controversy over the origins and nature of the tradition now known as Martinism. Its principal author, Alexandre-Albéric Thomas (Tau Marnès), was a bishop of the Gnostic Church, a Supérieur Inconnu of the Ordre Martiniste, active secretary of the Grande Loge Misraïmite, and secretary of the journal La Gnose. Working from primary archives never previously subjected to systematic scholarly scrutiny -- the Villaréal archives of the Ordre des Élus-Coëns, the records of the Philalèthes, and documents in private hands -- Thomas produced a work of meticulous historical scholarship that remains the foundational study of its subject. The Nouvelle Notice Historique traces the history of the Ordre des Élus-Coëns from its founding by Martinès de Pasqually in the 1760s through its dissolution in the upheavals of the French Revolution and the dispersal of its archives. It examines the relationships between Martinès's operative theurgical tradition and the parallel worlds of the Stricte-Observance templère, the Philalèthes, the Rectified Scottish Rite, and the Illuminés of Weishaupt. It documents the life and thought of Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin -- Martinès's most celebrated disciple -- and argues, on the basis of extensive documentary evidence, that Saint-Martin neither founded nor transmitted any formal Martinist order: the word Martinisme, Thomas demonstrates, was coined by the public and derives from a persistent confusion between Saint-Martin and his teacher. Throughout, Thomas engages in pointed critical dialogue with the historical claims of Papus (Gérard Encausse), whose synthetic but historically imprecise accounts he subjects to rigorous examination. Following the Notice, Baader's essay offers a philosophical and theosophical appreciation of Pasqually's doctrine of Reintegration, framing it within the Christo-theosophical tradition of Boehme and Eckhart. Together, the two texts -- the historical and the philosophical -- present the teaching of Martinès de Pasqually from complementary perspectives. The translation includes a substantial introduction tracing the French esoteric milieu of the fin de siècle: the careers of Papus, Thomas, Saint-Martin, Martinès de Pasqually, and von Baader; the polemic between Thomas and Papus; and the relationship of both to René Guénon, who co-founded the Ordre du Temple Rénové with Thomas in 1908 and was expelled from the Ordre Martiniste alongside him. All footnotes are translated in full. This volume will be indispensable to students of the Martinist tradition, members of Gnostic churches and esoteric orders, scholars of Western esotericism, and all who seek a rigorous historical account of one of the most significant initiatic currents of the modern West.