The Martinist Doctrine: Could It Have Been Apart of Freemasonry of the 1700's?

Like all other esoteric doctrine, that of Martinism, as it was defined by Martinez Pasquales in his Treatise on the Reintegration of Beings uses exoteric means in order to make understandable the more subtle and refined esoteric points which are incomprehensible to the uninitiated when explained in themselves. The legend or myth upon which the Martinist doctrine is based is the reason why it is so intrinsically attached to the Western tradition and more particularly the Christian current.


Concerning the First Cause or God, Martinism is in agreement with the conclusions arrived at by the Christian theologians as well as the Hebrew Kabalists such as the Divine Ternary, or persons; emanations etc...but as far as the rest of the doctrine is concerned, it is more Gnostic since it affirms the equal necessity of faith and knowledge and postulates that divine grace, in order to be effective, must be followed by action, free and intelligent in Man. His is why Martinez Pasquales presented the Doctrine of his school under the Judeo-Christian aspect.


THE DOCTRINE

According to the Martinist Doctrine, the world, considered as a material domain which is subjected to our senses, as well as the spiritual regions above, are not the works of God as considered in His absolute form.


The Gospel of Saint John says: "In the beginning (which refers to the beginning of time, a period when relative beings began to manifest) was the Word" (the Logos, the Divine Word).


"The Word was near to God (and not with God). ...and the Word was God" (not the God but an Elohim or sons of God. The word Elohim is a Hebrew word meaning "Him-the-Gods").


"All things were made by Him, and nothing was made without Him."


The Logos is the one the Kabala calls Adam Kadmon; the one who created the inferior beings by His word "by calling" (bringing) them into manifested life. These beings are inferior only in relation to Adam Kadmon, the archetypal Man, by they inhabit the spiritual realms.



During this creation God used an intermediary. In Genesis chapters 1-3 it is said that the earth (which there means the primordial matter or chaos) was empty and without form, and the Spirit of God moved upon the waters (the Egyptian Nous is comparable to this matter). The term "Spirit of God" is referring to a spirit distinct from God in the sense that it wasn't God Himself since God is necessarily His own spirit.


Later we are told that God placed man in the "Garden of Eden" to watch and cultivate it. This "Garden" is a symbol referring to divine knowledge accessible only to relative beings.


The Man which Genesis refers to in its pure symbolic form is not a being of flesh but a spirit emanated from God and is made of a body (which is sometimes called the glorious body) created by God who infused it with a Divine spark which was, according to Genesis, the "very breath of God". According to this analysis, we see that archetypal man is semi-divine. He came from primordial matter (from chaos, made of symbolic earth and water) from where he got his form, and from the breath which animates him and makes him part of God.


Adam and the creative logos are the same thing. However, Adam and the Redemptory Logos are two different beings.


Parallel to Adam Kadmon, there were other beings from a previous creation. These beings were of a different nature and plane. These were the "Angels" of which it is said that "some were good and others evil". They got those qualities according to their fulfillment of the plan for which they were emanated from God. The "good" Angels were the ones who reintegrated after their mission was over and the evil ones were the ones who refused to reintegrate, choosing the self instead of the All-in-God. The "evil" Angels are the ones who withdrew themselves from God by an act of free will. They are the ones referred to by Pasquales as the "perverse beings".


Since anything that is corrupt tends by its very nature to corrupt other things, especially in the spiritual realms, these perverse beings of which the collectivity becomes an egregore of evil, symbolized by the serpent, was jealous of this being (Adam) who was superior to them and an image of God from whom they pretended to have withdrawn. These beings acted telepathically on Adam and incited him to go beyond the limits of his natural possibilities.


Being mixed by nature, half corporeal and half spiritual, as well as androgynous, Archetypal Man was to maintain a certain harmony, a necessary equilibrium in the domain where God put him. He was to be the Architect of the Universe more subtle than our own, the "kingdom" which was not of this world as mentioned in the Gospels.


Under the impulse of the perverse beings, Archetypal Man made himself an independent demiurge, thereby breaking the very laws he was ordained to observe. He dared to make himself a creator in turn and to be equal to God by his deeds. By attempting this feat, Archetypal Man only modified his original destiny. It is from this tradition that comes the custom of dedicating to the Gods or God the first fruits of the harvest or the first-born of a flock. And since God alone in his infinite possibilities can create or extract something out of nothingness, Archetypal man could only modify what already existed.


Archetypal Man, by wanting to create spiritual beings, only objectified his own concepts. By wanting to give them a body he only integrated them into grosser matter. By wanting to animate chaos, he only trapped himself.


In effect, God being the "I am that I am" rejects the possibility that any oblivion could exist. In order to create primitive matter, God only removed part of His infinite perfections from a part of His infinite essence. This partial retraction of His spiritual perfection resulted in the creation of a relative material imperfection. This is why in this world the creation of whatever it may be can never be perfect since it is not of God.


By imitating the absolute, Adam Kadmon tried to create the first matter. Being an inexperienced alchemist, to attempt such an endeavor only precipitated his fall.


Archetypal Man is an androgynous being: both male and female, positive and negative. It is the negative, feminine element that Adam is going to objectify outside himself. It is the left, feminine, passive, lunary, material side that he is going to separate from the right, masculine, active, solar, spiritual side. This is what gave birth to Eva, the Archetypal Woman.


It is this new matter, the Eva or Archetypal Woman, that Adam penetrated in order to create life. The Archetypal Man thus degraded himself by trying to be like God. This new domain is what the Gnostics called the "hylic" world, which is our material universe filled with pain and imperfections. The little good that exists here comes from the virtues of Archetypal Man. Since being split into two beings, the sum of these imperfections cannot be in its totality with those two beings apart...thus we have the fall.


This is why the old cults deified nature. She was the mother of all that "was under the heavens". Isis, Eva, Demeter, Rea, Cybele, Erzulie, are the symbols of the material nature which is emanated from Adam Kadmon, personified under the aspects of the "Black Virgins" who are symbols of the prima materia.


The superior essence of Adam Kadmon thus integrated in the new matter to become the new SULPHUR, which is the alchemical expression referring to the soul of the world. The second essence which is the plastic mediator, that which constituted the "form" of Adam, his superior double became the MERCURY of the alchemists, referring to what the occultists call the astral world or intermediary world.


The matter which is from the second chaos, which is the SALT of the alchemists, is what became the support, receptacle or prison.


ADAM=SULPHUR
EVA=SALT
CAIN=MERCURY


This is why universal matter is alive and, also, why it can be more or less conscious and intelligent in its manifestations. Through the four kingdoms of nature; mineral, vegetable, animal and human, it is the Archetypal man, the Adam Kadmon, the demiurgic intelligence who is in action dispersed and imprisoned. This new universe also became the refuge of the fallen angels. They came into it in order to be further away from the Absolute.


The perverse beings thus have a primordial interest to see that man, dispersed but everywhere present in matter which constitutes the visible universe, continues to organize and animate this domain which they have claimed.


Just as the soul of Archetypal Man is prisoner of Universal matter, so the soul of individual man is prisoner of the physical body. Physical death and the reincarnations which follow are the means through which the fallen entities exercise their control over man.


The Wisdom, Strength and Beauty that are still manifesting in this material universe are the efforts of Archetypal Man to regain his position which he occupied before the fall. The opposite qualities are being manifested by the fallen entities so as to maintain the climate that they made him create in order to exist as they wanted when they refused to re-enter Omneity.


Archetypal man will not regain his first splendor and freedom unless he separates himself from this matter which binds him everywhere. For this to occur, all his individual cells (individual human beings) will have, after their natural death, to reconstitute the archetype by REINTEGRATING, thus escaping the cycles of reincarnation.


Only then will the Microcosm remake the Macrocosm. The individual human beings, who are but the reflection of the Archetype, will equally be the reflection of the divine as the Archetype himself is the reflection of God, of the Word or Logos, of the "Spirit of God" mentioned in Genesis.


This is why he is the "Great Architect of the Universe"; and all cults of adoration to this latter are ipso facto "satanic" because this adoration is offered to Man and not to the Absolute. In Freemasonry he is invoked but never adored.


But, since Man has to descend into the demoniacal atmosphere of this material world where he is constantly breathing the fruits of his malefic intellect, as Pasquales tells us, he is thus in a bad position to resist the constant temptations to which he is subjected. The CREATOR re-established the equilibrium by detaching from His Spiritual Divine Circle a Major Spirit to be the guide, counselor and companion of the Minor who descends from the celestial immensity to be incorporated in the material world; to work, according to his free will, on the earth plane.


But the counsel of a Superior Spirit is not enough, Fallen Man still needs the help of a "Minor Elect". The help that this "Minor Elect" will bring to him in order that he may achieve the "reconciliation" is of a two fold nature. He transmits to Man directly the instructions of the CREATOR on the theurgic practice which must be rendered; he also communicates to the Man of Desire to whom he is sent, the gift he has received himself by giving him the mystical seal without which no Minor can be reconciled.


This mysterious ordination is the essential condition of man's reconciliation, because without it, no matter how great the personal merits of the Minor, he remains in privation; that is, without any communication with God.


To escape the cycles of reincarnation in this infernal world, man must detach himself from everything that attracts him to matter as well as disengage himself from the slavery of material sensations. He also has to elevate himself morally. The fallen entities, however, constantly fight man's tendency towards perfection by tempting him constantly so as to make him stay in this world where they can maintain their rulership over him.


Individual man must constantly fight against these entities by unmasking and rejecting them from his domain. He will achieve this partly through initiation, which attaches him to the elements of the Archetypes already reunited and which constitute the exoteric "communion of Saints"-and secondly by the liberating knowledge which teaches him the faster means of helping the rest of blind humanity as well as enhancing his personal work.