Secret Societies
Elus Cohen
Theurgic Societies
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Origin 1761 to 1780
The Order of Knight-Masons Elect Priests of the Universe, known as the Elus Cohen, was an esoteric and theurgic order founded within the world of eighteenth-century French Freemasonry by Martinez de Pasqually. It taught a system of ceremonial magic and theurgy aimed at the reintegration of the human being with the divine, working through elaborate rituals to invoke angelic and spiritual presences. Its doctrine of the fall and the return of humanity to its original state deeply shaped later French esotericism. The order was a seedbed for the Martinist tradition that followed.
Facts
Status
Status TodayRevived or reconstructed in the modern era 1 Revived in the twentieth century within the Martinist current, which preserved and reconstructed its theurgic material. Status TodayHistorical; not practised continuously 1 The order lapsed after Pasqually's death in 1774 and was effectively dormant by the 1780s. Origins
Origin Period Learn More
The Theurgic Order Behind Martinism
The Order of Knight-Masons Elect Priests of the Universe, known as the Elus Cohen, is the source from which the whole Martinist current flows, and its distinguishing feature is a commitment to theurgy, ritual operations intended to contact the divine.
Theurgy within a Masonic frame
Founded in France in the early 1760s by Martinez de Pasqually within the world of eighteenth-century Freemasonry, the order taught a system of ceremonial magic set inside a Masonic structure of grades, drawing on the Kabbalah and on Christian theosophy. Its central concern was reintegration, the return of fallen humanity to its original divine state, pursued through elaborate theurgic rites reserved to the higher grades, which is what sets it apart from the purely symbolic Masonry of its day.
The inheritance
After the death of Pasqually in 1774 the order declined, but its teaching passed to students who shaped the later tradition, above all Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, who moved away from ceremonial theurgy toward an inward mystical path, and Jean-Baptiste Willermoz, who carried elements of it into other Masonic systems. The modern Martinist orders organised in the late nineteenth century trace their descent to this eighteenth-century foundation, so that the Elus Cohen stands behind a family of currents far larger than itself.
The Operations, and the Sign They Were Waiting For
Pasqually's order was theurgic in the strict sense: it performed operations intended to produce an effect from outside the operator. Members worked to a calendar, in prepared rooms with drawn figures and specific incense and hours, over long sequences, and the object was the Passe, a perceptible sign that the operator's reintegration was proceeding. Members recorded whether they received one. Some did, some did not, and the correspondence discusses the failures as freely as the successes.
The doctrine behind it is a full cosmology of fall and return. Humanity was created to a function it lost, the material world is the consequence, and the work of the initiate is to be reconciled and to assist in a general restoration. Every later Martinist body carries some version of this, and it is why the tradition has an ethical seriousness that the ceremonial detail can obscure.
The interesting turn is Saint Martin's. Having been Pasqually's secretary and worked the operations, he concluded that the ceremonial apparatus was unnecessary and turned to an interior way, and it is his version that gave the later movement its name. A tradition that begins with the most elaborate ritual programme in eighteenth century Europe is now best known for the position that none of it was needed.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Saint-Martin was initiated into the Elus Cohen around 1768 and served for years as Martinez de Pasqually's secretary before drifting from its ceremonial theurgy toward his own inward, non ritual mystical path.
Derived from This
Why this is disputed. The Martinist Order, founded by Papus in the 1880s, takes its name and its claimed spiritual transmission from Louis Claude de Saint Martin, an eighteenth century member of Martinez de Pasqually's Elus Cohen. Papus presented Martinism as carrying that lineage forward, but historians of the nineteenth century occult revival note Saint Martin himself moved away from Pasqually's ceremonial theurgy toward a more inward, mystical practice, and that the Elus Cohen had already dissolved decades before Papus revived the name, so whether Martinism continues an unbroken tradition or reconstructs one is argued rather than settled.
Founded By
Organized the Elus Cohens through French masonic lodges from the 1750s, with temples at Bordeaux, Paris and Lyon; its inner grades practiced his theurgy of reintegration.
Sources
1. The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Oxford University Press, 2008discussion of Martines de Pasqually and the Elus CohenView the Source 1. The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Oxford University Press, 2008on Pasqually, the Elus Cohen and MartinismView the Source Western Esotericism: A Brief History of Secret Knowledge
Kocku von Stuckrad, Equinox, 2005on the eighteenth-century theurgic orders
The Life of Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, the Unknown Philosopher
Arthur Edward Waite, Philip Wellby, London, 1901
Martinez de Pasqually (reference article)
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