Treatise on the Reintegration of Beings

Part of a series on
Martinism
Doctrine · Philosophy Theosophy Rosicrucianism Gnosticism Pythagoreanism Alchemy Hermeticism Angelology Christian Kabbalah
Practices Christian meditation Grimoires Ceremonial magic Tarotology Fasting Prayer Esoteric Christianity Christian mysticism Theosophy Mysteries Astrology
Martinists Martinez de Pasqually Louis Claude de Saint-Martin Jean-Baptiste Willermoz Jean-Antoine Chaptal Jacques Cazotte Henri Delaage Gérard Encausse Victor-Émile Michelet Démétrius Platon Sémélas Stanislas de Guaita Arnold Böcklin Albert Faucheux Henri-Charles Détré Robert Ambelain Harvey Spencer Lewis Ralph Maxwell Lewis Oswald Wirth Joseph de Maistre Jules Boucher Antoine Court de Gébelin Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre Nizier Anthelme Philippe Joséphin Péladan Arthur Edward Waite Éliphas Lévi Claude Debussy René Guénon Valentin Tomberg Gabriele D'Annunzio Marc Haven Robert Amadou Jean Baylot Jean Delville Camille Savoire Nikolay Novikov Lydia Dmitrievna Ryndina Ivan Lopukhin Alexander Valerianovich Troyanovsky Ivan Kazimirovich Antoshevsky Czesław Czyński G. O. Mebes Pyotr Mikhailovich Kaznacheev Augustin Chaboseau Jean Bricaud Mikhail Kheraskov Antoine Fabre d'Olivet Theodor Reuss Paul Sédir
Influenced by Emanuel Swedenborg Jakob Böhme Paracelsus Heinrich Khunrath John Dee Johannes Valentinus Andreae Robert Fludd Tycho Brahe Giovanni Pico della Mirandola Johannes Trithemius Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa
Basic concepts and symbols Reintegration Universal Pentacle Ieschouah Tetragrammaton
Martinist organisations Order of Knight-Masons Elect Priests of the Universe Order of Knights Beneficent of the Holy City Intimate Circle of Saint-Martin Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Cross Ordre des Supérieurs Inconnus Ordre Reaux Croix Gnostic Church of France
Related organisations Freemasonry Rectified Scottish Rite Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
Books Treatise on the Reintegration of Beings Of Errors and Truth The Man of Desire Saint-Martin: The French Mystic and the Story of Modern Martinism

The theosopher Pasqually wanted to understand the world from the religion, through inner reflection and illumination, he discovered God and the world.[1] The Treatise is a commentary by him to the Pentateuch of Moses, specially for two reasons:

• It was the sum of instructions for those who were initiated into the Order of Elect Priests;
• It is a commentary to the Pentateuch of Moses, made precisely from the standpoint of mysticism and theurgy, including operating instructions. Pasqually wrote these commentaries using gematria, Kabbalistic methods, Rosicrucian symbolism, Pythagorean-numerical mysticism, and elements of Neoplatonic philosophy.

Strictly speaking, however, the Treatise itself can not be regarded as Jewish-Kabbalistic. The doctrine of the Elect Priests sustained in the style of Christian Cabbalah, and had absorbed many ideas of the followers of this Renaissance movement. The final synthesis of these ideas led them to a coherent and orderly scheme, both philosophical and ideological. A work written in an apocalyptic style, the main purpose is to describe the spiritual hierarchy of the universe, then to offer the key to understand the still-continuing miserable situation of mankind, and to indicate the way out this situation.

Seal of Martinès de Pasqually

According to the Treatise, the doctrine of Martinès de Pasqually holds an eschatological cosmology close to the Judeo-Christian view: God, as the original unity, wished to emanate beings from his own essence. But Lucifer, who sought to fulfill his creative power, became victim to his own misdeed, being confined to a place along with other major fallen spirits that God has prepared for them as a prison.

Then, God sent a man in his androgynous body, endowed him with great powers. Following the chronology of the events described in the Book of Genesis, Pasqually concludes that man is the ‘junior creature’, because he appeared at the end of the Creation. Initially, man was created by the Lord as an androgyne, in a glorious body, not subject to decay and death. The Lord created man for the fulfillment of two important things on a cosmic scale: so that a person could replace the hierarchy of fallen spirits who rebelled against the Lord and were cast out of heaven, and, accordingly, no longer fulfilling their duty in the Divine Purpose; in order to keep the rebels, or, as Pasqually called them the ‘spoiled creatures’ under constant control, facilitating their reconciliation with God and the speedy correction of their nature.

However, Adam stepped back from his duties, and he himself fell in the prison, which he was instructed to watch over. He became a material and mortal being, and now he must make an effort to save himself and all of the original creation.

The fall of Adam led man to the loss of the original shining (glorious) body, and to its transformation into the present material body. In this regard, a person has lost the ability to think independently, and all the thoughts are the result of suggestions by good or fallen spirits. Therefore, the man doesn’t have the right of choice—the freedom of will—through which he can reject bad suggestions and choose the good, or on the contrary, thereby bringing himself into a state of even greater enslavement and dependence on the ‘spoiled creatures’. The most important thing that man lost, according to Pasqually, is the direct communication with God.

Léonard Joseph Prunelle de Lière’s Élus Coëns notebook with the seals of spirits of both good angels and evil demons.

In order to achieve reconciliation with God, the incarnation of Jesus Christ was necessary, which by preaching, suffering, death, and resurrection laid the foundation for reconciliation, and the Reintegration of the present generation of mankind. Previous generations, according to the Treatise, were reconciled by the most vivid Old Testament saints and prophets: Seth, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Elijah. For the final stage of reconciliation, it took Divine Condescension, that is, the incarnation of Jesus Christ. However, in order to follow the path of the Reintegration, according to the teachings of Pasqually, one should follow the path of internal self-perfection, and also make good use of the theurgic operations that Pasqually taught to the ‘men of desire’, whom he found worthy of initiation. Through these operations, the disciples must enter into relations with the angelic entities, which ‘pass through’ the theurgic operations. These angelic entities appear in their characteristic images or in the form of their hieroglyphic symbols (hieroglyphs of angelic names used in the drawings of circles and words of power for the Élus Coëns ceremonial magic[2]) to prove that the operator is on the right path of Reintegration. To attract the faithful to the Lord, the good angels follow the operation of an external cult, which is the theurgy passed along the initiatory chain from Noah to the Order of the Elected Priests (Élus Coëns). The preparation to perform a theurgic ceremonial followed by fasting and prayer.[3]

According to the British mystic Arthur Edward Waite, Martinès de Pasqually was the Grand Sovereign, Grand Magus and Operator of the Rite. In his book Saint-Martin: The French Mystic and the Story of Modern Martinism (1922), Waite made a brief summary of the rite and doctrine of the Order of Élus Coëns (‘Elect Priesthood’ as mentioned by Waite):

It (the Rite) was concerned with the communication of a secret doctrine by way of direct instruction and with a practice which must be called secret in the ordinary sense which attaches to the idea of occult art or science. The kind of practice was that which endeavours to establish communication with unseen intelligence by the observances of Ceremonial Magic […] It will be seen in a word that the Rite of Elect Priesthood had a very different undertaking in hand from anything embraced by the horizon of Craft Masonry or the rank and file of High Grades. The doctrine embodied a particular view concerning the Fall of Man and of all animated things belonging to the material order; it looked for the restoration of all, and on man as the divinely appointed agent of that great work to come.[4]

There are two versions of the work. The first, the so-called ‘original version’, was published by the Martinist researcher Robert Amadou in 1974, in Paris by Éditions Robert Dumas. The second version was also discovered by Robert Amadou, in 1978, known as the ‘manuscript of Saint-Martin’.[5] A facsimile of this version, was published by one of the Rosicrucian almanacs of France in 1993, under the title Traité sur la Réintégration des êtres.[6] An English translation of the 'manuscript of Saint-Martin' has been published by The Three Luminaries, and more recently by M.R. Osborne.[7]

The Treatise on the Reintegration of Beings had an impact on the development of both mystical and spiritual movements in Freemasonry and all the trends of European mysticism of the 19th and 20th centuries. The Treatise was known even in the 18th-century Russian Empire, in versions that have not survived to this day.

Jacques Cazotte is one of the early French-Martinist figures, author of the occult romance The Devil in Love and Ollivier, poème, who was initiated into the Order of Elect Priests by Martinès de Pasqually himself.[8][9] Cazotte himself claimed that it was due to Pasqually that he turned from atheism to Christianity.[10]

The teachings of Pasqually inspired the ‘occult revival’ in France at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Specialists of the Martinist Order included such occult figures as Papus, Constant Chevillon, Éliphas Lévi, Joséphin Péladan, Jean Bricaud, Maurice Barrès, Stanislas de Guaita, Henri-Charles Détré, among others. Their activities and books bear the imprint of Pasqually’s teachings.

In the 20th century, the Order of Elect Priests was revived by Robert Ambelain in 1942 under the name Ordre Martiniste des Élus Cohens.[11] Today, the doctrine of the Treatise is still taught at several Martinist orders. The Ordre Reaux Croix, which was founded in 2002 by a group of Norwegian Martinists, has the Élus Coëns as their theurgical branch.[12]

• Treatise on the Reintegration of Beings in Their First Spiritually Divine Property, Virtue, and Power
• MARTINEZ DE PASQUALLY AND THE ELUS COHENS Archived 2007-01-12 at the Wayback Machine