MARTINISM & THE CHURCH How Martinist theosophy has shaped the Apostolic Church of the

Golden & Rosy Cross, and the Pre-Nicene Church

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MARTINISM AND THE CHURCH

Background

In his famous book Evenings of Saint-Petersburg, Joseph de Maistre, the eminent politician, shrewd author, Catholic apologist, vehement supporter of monarchy, and enthusiastic Martinist wrote of his beloved Order: “This doctrine is a mixture of Platonism, Origenism and Hermetic Philosophy on a Christian foundation.”

Before we consider the positions of Origen and Plato

which would be relevant to a Church founded upon the principles of Martinism, we should put things in context; we must remind ourselves of the times in which they lived. The Enlightenment placed its emphasis upon the advancement of science and knowledge, whilst simultaneously the authority over the population which the Catholic Church had previously enjoyed a monopoly upon was waning. Many Roman Catholic priests were enacting ritual as a merely pharisaical exercise with no genuine enthusiasm or faith. Refusing to perform exorcisms, blessings or other services ordained in their missals, they viewed such practices as superstitions to be abandoned in favor of the new worldview being disseminated by the so-called ‘Enlightenment’. ( Louis Claude de Saint-Martin made the observation: “Later on, when the art of healing no longer belonged to the Priesthood, when the Doctor believed he could stop being a Priest, the sources of leprosy remained unknown, as they still are, and the sources of remedies were therefore closed to him”). Many of the philosophers of this brave new age held atheistic inclinations, and the scientific mindset in vogue encouraged them to hold the position that that which could not be verified by empirical observation was illegitimate. It was during this period that the first Encyclopedia was compiled, which soon became a bible of sorts for those who flew the flag of the Enlightenment,

Louis Claude de Saint-Martin

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and it was enthusiastically used as an instrument for the purposes of denying the spiritual aspect of life and even the existence of divinity itself. Scientists developed inherently materialistic notions which theorized that religion originated in early man’s terror of natural disasters, eclipses, thunderstorms, earthquakes, lightning and eruptions.

Amidst this milieu of disbelief and materialism, finding the once great Catholic Church nearly incapable of rising to the challenge of these impulses, Louis Claude de Saint-Martin and Jean-Baptiste Willermoz felt it their duty to speak out by raising the voice of Illumination against Materialism. Both were members of the strange Masonic Order of Elect Cohens, which was founded by Martinès de Pasqually. The Elect Cohens taught and practiced a synthesis of a kind of quasi-gnostic theosophy with white magical practices called theurgical operations. The order believed themselves to be the descendants of a primitive priesthood entrusted with the preservation of the sacred deposit of knowledge which it had been man’s privilege to know in unveiled form before his Fall; as

custodians of this holy doctrine, they believed it was their responsibility to properly unveil the understanding necessary to make use of it to those who were deemed worthy. Over the ages, illiteracy regarding the meaning of this sacred trust mixed with superstition and additional misinformation. This had rendered it nearly impossible to understand. For this reason, man would subsequently have to return to his primitive state and redeem himself before God, in order to be once more reunited – or reintegrated – into the First Cause, the Original Source of All Things.

Paradoxically, the problem mankind found themselves confronted with was that the very

blueprint of this Path of Return lay within that sacred kernel of knowledge which had become so shamefully distorted over the intervening years. Thus, Saint-Martin and Willermoz were divinely inspired to seek that primitive knowledge -that kernel of eternal truth- which they came to believe was a sacred deposit which had been passed through the priesthood, finally arriving in the purview of the early Christian Church, which became in its time the “Sanctuary of the Gnosis”. This original church of ‘Primitive Christians” was guided by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, which “Bloweth where it listeth”. This was prior to the advent of the Council of Nicaea and the subsequent ecumenical councils which followed, whose rigid dogmas tore the sacred doctrine apart and occluded the thread of succession. Indeed, Saint-Martin went so far as to say: “From their side, the spiritual leaders themselves, in order to attract new support, indulged the wishes and passions of the Princes; and allying themselves every day to the temporal, they distanced themselves more and more from their original purity, so that some Christianized the civil and political world, while other brought the civil world into Christianity, forming a monster out of this mixture”. He went further, suggesting even the apostolic succession itself was tainted: “I don’t consider the claimed transmission of the Church of Rome, which, in my opinion, transmits nothing as a Church, although some of its members may sometimes transmit, whether through their own personal virtue, or the faith of

Jean-Baptiste Willermoz

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the hearers, or because of a particular will to do good”.

Willermoz, who was a devout Christian, longed for the return of the early or primitive

Church. He was horrified by the papacy, believing not only that it had lost everything of value it once may have held but also that it was responsible for myriad horrors. He faithfully believed that the Great Work was contained in the wisdom and practices of early Christianity, consisting of a method of spiritual alchemy to be performed upon the self to elevate and purify it. Put in Martinist terms, this process initiated a transition from being a ‘Man of the Stream’ to a ‘Man of Desire’ by employing a praxis of knowledge and meditation. This led to the person becoming a New Man, reintegrated with the First Cause and restored to primitive glory as a Man-God. Though essentially Christian and in keeping with the esotericism of the early Ecclesia, this is certainly not something you would find in a Roman Catholic catechism!

What did Origen and Plato say which contributed to the theology – or theosophy – of

the religious beliefs of Saint-Martin and Willermoz, so perfectly stated above by de Maistre? Greek philosophers, upon observing Christianity in its early days, were curious about

this new phenomenon. We must remember that most educated people of the time had studied philosophy and would therefore approach Christianity through that lens. The goal or the meaning of life according to many schools was the attainment of happiness. In this context, however, ‘Happiness’ had a different connotation to what it does now; it could be understood to mean fulfillment or working out one’s true goal in life. For the Stoics this was the acquisition of true wisdom.

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The Platonists believed that the world

was material, but they also believed in immaterial beings which were intelligible as opposed to sensible (or sensual) beings. Thus, there are certain things which are only intellectually perceptible. This concept was reflected in the later Kabbalistic idea of the four worlds, by which the concept of a perfect object becomes increasingly real until it manifests in the physical world. Another useful analogy is what we call the ‘flash of inspiration’. Imagine yourself working out a difficult mathematical formula. Suddenly you have that ‘flash of insight’. “Now I see it!”, you exclaim. ...But what are you ‘seeing’, exactly? This is intellectual vision, perceiving a non-material truth by the eye of the mind. What you ‘saw’ is eternal, yet unmanifest. The material world is formed according to the pattern of these immaterial concepts, yet it is not eternal. I see a chair in my mind’s eye. It is eternal, yet however many chairs I build, they will not endure. Platonism gives us a way to see ourselves as having a soul, which is understood to be an immaterial and immortal being inhabiting the physical and temporal body, which is described as a ‘prison of the soul’. This ontological perspective is similar to Pasqually’s vision of man fallen from his original abode of glory. Platonist discourse reflects upon the preexistence of the soul prior to the formation of the body and elaborates upon the falling of the soul into the material body. Therefore, the natural tendency of the soul as an alien prisoner of the physical body is to return to its place of origin. Finally, Platonism also held that the world (and the universe) is essentially a good place, and this also accords with Martinism, which teaches that the Universe was created by the six superior spiritual powers or archangels on the order of God, Who can only be good. This is perhaps one area where the ACGRC diverges from many schools of Gnosticism, who see the Earth and the cosmos as being negative creations of the authority occupying the lowest tier in the chain of Archons, the ignorant Ialdabaoth.

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The aforementioned aspects of Platonic thought are closely allied to the contemplations of the early church leader Origen, who proposed the idea of the preexistence of souls. Unfortunately, this idea caused him to be accused of heresy. Origen’s teaching was that before God created the material world, He created a large number of incorporeal souls which were devoted to love and contemplation of their Creator. Eventually this ardent fire of love cooled, and when He created the earth these souls assumed corporeal bodies; those who were the most disillusioned among them acquired the bodies of the demons. It is relatively easy to relate this to the Martinist teachings of Pasqually and Saint-Martin. Although Origen was never completely expelled from acceptance, his doctrine of the preexistence of souls was rejected, and it stands as another example of how Martinist Christianity is not completely orthodox; it also is another example of its alignment with early Christianity.

As a final aside, we may note that in Pasqually’s creation myth, God emanated a number

of divine beings of various levels of competence and ordered them to perform the acts of creation. Following this, He inspected their work on the seventh day and declared that it was ‘Good’. This creation clearly differs from that in Genesis or could be viewed as an alternate interpretation of it. But does one myth – an attempt to explain the unknowable – really have greater claim to the truth than another? Surely the greatest insult to both is the approach of Fundamentalism, which not only usurps and reinterprets the Divine Books of religion, but also declares them as only literal, when the very people who wrote them intended for them to be interpreted as symbols and allegories of a truth they could never hope to pierce.

A provisional comment may be appropriate in this section. Both Pasqually and

Willermoz saw the actions of God and his powers in the act of creation as being ritualistic. This is hardly surprising as all the actions of man communicating with his God, from Adam, to King Solomon in his Temple, to modern times have enacted magical rituals to communicate with their God. Perhaps our question should become this: did God and the higher spirits He emanated including man perform theurgic operations or magical ceremonies to accomplish their goals? Why would man and the angels not emulate the behavior of their Creator? Pasqually’s great theosophical work, Treatise on the Reintegration of Beings into their Primitive Estate provides a new interpretation of the Old Testament and certainly follows this logic, as it depicts every main character of the Old Testament performing theurgical operations or rituals.

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Perhaps the final point worth considering is the fact

that while these worthy founders of Martinism did not support the hopelessly corrupt Church of the time, they did maintain a strong belief in a primitive Christianity which still subscribed to all the offices of the Priest, including the seven sacraments, healings, blessings, and so forth. Perhaps it is the Holy Eucharist, which as the ultimate magical ceremony from a Christian perspective embodies everything that they believed in; it is a theurgical operation par excellence, which involves the four elements, the delineation of sacred spaces, purifications, invocation of the hierarchy of angels, and the calling down of God into the bread and wine. Curiously, in examining most of their prayers, there are copious mentions of God, Jesus, and St. John. Interestingly however, calls to the Trinity are few and far between.

It was they who sought the restoration of the

Primitive Church, which possessed original secrets hidden from the profane, and the transmission of that deposit by means of a sacred rite and the continuing practice of operations including the most visible one which still exists, yet still mysteriously concealed beneath a veil of incomprehension – The Mass.

Reasons Not to Follow Church Councils For the first three hundred years the Church was a decentralized movement of heterodox

groups operating and living to some extent underground. Few aristocrats were drawn to a Church which met in secret and required an actual commitment of faith. Religion to the average Roman or Greek was more a matter of going to a Temple and ostentatiously making a sacrifice and a donation to the Temple’s upkeep, to keep in the public eye. These were exercises in policy and visibility rather than belief, often to fulfil the Emperor-du-jour’s edict that everyone was required to come and sacrifice to his latest deified image. Therefore, the Christians were with few exceptions comprised of the poor and slaves. This was certainly a group easy to blame when things went awry, and equally easy to persecute when the arenas needed more fodder for entertainment. In recent times, however, the veracity of this history of widespread persecutions and atrocious acts of cruelty have been questioned: after all, wasn’t it the Christians who rewrote history?

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Allied to this need for a relative level of secrecy in their meetings, the faith was clustered in groups which were mainly oriented in cities and along trade routes, as depicted in the Epistles of St. Paul. Communications were rare, and in all such cases, it was not long before local areas created their own traditions and ways of doing things, coalesced around their favorite Gospels (of which there were many in those days), and developing their own oral interpretations of those Gospels. There were very few senior members of the Church at that time who considered this a potential issue of concern; those who did were the peripatetics, who moved from city to city either for their trade, or because they felt called to evangelize like St. Paul and a number of other individuals whose names have been lost to time, as they did not leave us epistles or histories of their exploits.

In 313 A.D., the Emperor Constantine decided that Christianity would be useful to him in uniting his Empire He issued the Edict of Milan, which enabled Christianity to exist without persecution; he later reinforced his decision and strengthened its reach. Politically speaking, this was a shrewd idea, since his empire was composed of many different peoples speaking many different languages and worshipping many different Gods. Due to cultural syncretism, we must remember that in many cases converting to a new God wasn’t that much of an issue for most people at the time (with the clear exception of the Jewish nation). Since sacrificing to a god didn’t require faith or a belief, for most minor rulers and aristocrats it was simply a case of the Emperor asking them to worship a new addition to the pantheon, which they did without issue. Frankly, not having a vote, the poor of any nation and the slaves didn’t matter: as long as

they pretended to follow the new Christian religion they would be largely left alone to continue their old ways. From Constantine’s point of view this stratagem was a means to ensure that every single subject in his Empire, which sprawled from Constantinople to Northern Africa, would be united by a single bond. Whatever their language and their local culture, they would all be Christian, and that could be used to forge a common identity across all the disparate groups. He was soon disabused, however, of the simplicity of his plan: he was soon to learn that there were so many different flavors of Christianity that they might as well be worshipping different gods! Thus was born the idea of standardizing the religion by creating one set of Gospels and one set of beliefs to which everyone in the Empire had to subscribe. The non-compliant could be punished and excluded from the benefits of belonging to the dominant Church which would now hold sway across the Empire. That was a powerful argument.

Emperor Constantine

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The First Ecumenical Council was arranged hastily in Nicea, Turkey to be held in 325 A.D. It was deliberately held at a location distant from most bishops who might have disputed the points of the agreements, and it was very conveniently located for the ease of the Bishops of the Eastern Churches. It was only a short distance from Constantinople (now Istanbul) which was the seat of the Emperor, who could be present with ease to preside over the council and direct it in a manner which suited his agendas. This council literally created the ‘Jesus’ we now know. While they didn’t ‘invent’ his divinity, which is attested to in the Gospel of John and the Epistles, they did define his nature. From a certain perspective, it could be argued that this in itself was a form of sacrilege! While one can find rudimentary statements of belief in the Epistles, it wasn’t until the Council of Nicea that a single creed was formulated as a kind of test of a ‘true Christian’: the obverse of this creed is that now any individuals or groups who refused to subscribe to this singular dogma could be expelled from the Church and labelled as an apostate or a heretic. It is a tragedy that the first meeting of the devotees of the Prince of Peace which represented the wonderful diversity of Christian beliefs across the vast world weaponized this unprecedented event, using a list of human decisions as a basis of exclusion and persecution! It is easy to witness how the very spirit of this assembly expressed an impulse which was contrary to the truly Christian ethos. Although the Biblical Canon (the books to be included) was not to be finalized until Athanasius in 367 A.D, the majority of its books had been determined by Nicea. Importantly, which Gospels were definitively to be excluded was also determined. Several positions of underrepresented Christians which were deemed threatening or questionable were definitively eliminated. A powerful bishop, Arius, had preached that Jesus was simply a righteous man, and several Gnostic bodies held a variety of views about Jesus, such as one which held that he was a man upon whom the Christos (a heavenly Light-Power) settled at his baptism yet left him on the cross to die as a man. These perspectives as well as many other positions were declared anathema; unfortunately, obligatory persecution naturally followed these condemnations.

Far from the founders’ original vision of a perfect, Universal (Catholic) Church, during the first general meeting its leaders created an acid test to determine who was allowed to be in

The First Council of Nicaea

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the club, and they ruled with an inflexible hand upon aspects of Jesus’ divinity which had no basis in the original source materials, deciding during this process which books the general public were allowed to read and what were to be declared ‘Heretical’ and forbidden. At this time, the one Church split into the Exoteric Church of the masses and the Esoteric Church of the few. Let us be unequivocally clear: these were human decisions, not divine. Almost all of them took place in a political atmosphere, and despite appearances, not so much to clarify a point as to marginalize those who had a different viewpoint by calling them heretics and offering the Emperor a clean set of rules to spread across his Empire to ensure uniformity. Worse still, since all opposing voices were brutally silenced, the Church became stuck in a time warp for centuries until a few brave people began to question the very foundations of some of these decisions. In our time, we are fortunate enough to be free to accept or reject what we wish from those councils. In those times, one was truly given no choice. An organized cabal of individuals within the movement hijacked it from within, employing the control they acquired to oppress those who dissented, only offering the options of conversion by the sword or death by the blade. This imperialistic wedding of church and state became the very raison d’etre of its machine, establishing a precedent which was to endure for centuries. It was only much later, long after the church had ‘won’, that philosophers were permitted to apply their thought-processes to develop some of its basic theological ideas, and in some instances to ameliorate them. One such soul was Thomas Aquinas. Even he was unable to question any decision taken prior to his, however, since to question an earlier Council or Church Father was to deny the infallibility of the Church, and thus court heresy. This law was established as a convenient argument to stifle opposition.

Often, when people talk about ‘gospel truth’ or ‘the bible never lies’, they have clearly made very little study of its real history. Not only is such a statement frequently self-contradictory, (anyone can find a quote to suit their cause), the text has been altered several times – whether unintentionally by copyists or deliberately to support a thesis. The Bible can rightly be used to support a philosophical standpoint such as the dual nature of Christ: if Jesus’ will was one with the Father and Spirit, how could he ask the Father to ‘take this cup away’ in Gethsemane? On the other hand, Jesus’ penultimate word on the cross: ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me”, was used by some Gnostics to prove that the divine power of the Christos deserted Jesus the man at that instant, yet this argument ignores the context of the statement within Psalm 22, from whence those very words come. A cynical individual might argue that the appearance of this utterance in the Gospel narrative simply shows that the agenda of the author was to have Jesus speaking as many prophetic phrases from Elijah and the Psalms as possible in order to cement his posterity.

People were born with intelligence and have a right to exercise it. Where is free will in

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mandating that people must blindly believe what another has dictated without recourse to their own inner experience and personal search for meaning?

It wasn’t only the Ecumenical Councils which dogmatized Christianity and imposed a set of rules to be unquestioningly accepted as a matter of faith. Once the Church had become the established religion of the Empire and all opposition was eradicated (remember that iconoclasm was not a Puritan invention: many devout Catholics of those early times were happy to take axes and hammers and fire to the ancient places of worship, from Eleusis and Delphi to the Egyptian Temples, burning sacred texts and histories in their furor), the next wave of indoctrination issued from the mouths of a series of dogmatic authoritarians, many of whom were known as ‘Heresiologists’.

Some, like Eusebius, contented themselves with

rewriting history to eulogize Christian actions, especially those of the Emperor Constantine. Others continued their neurotic (un)holy war against anyone who disagreed with them. Irenaeus comes to mind as a bishop (of Lyon, perhaps a sad revelation given the later role Lyon was to play in all we hold dear) who waged war against the Gnostics through a series of five books titled ‘Against Heresies’. One of the most revered of the heresiologists, -perhaps the most terrifying of all- was Augustine of Hippo, who developed the delightful dogma of inherited guilt, or reatus. This sick doctrine taught that an infant was eternally damned at birth, and for that reason even unbaptized babies and the new-born dead, who had expired prior to any possibility of

contact with a priest would go straight to hell. It is notable that even later Catholics admittedly struggled

with this bizarre doctrine, and as a result, the compromise of Purgatory was devised, Ironically, this idea seems to have been based upon earlier pre-Christian ideas of the realm of the dead. Whether this was intentional, or unconscious is uncertain. Purgatory or Limbo, while not heaven, at least wasn’t quite as horrible as Hell! All of this madness was decided in the name of a man who once said: “Suffer little children to come unto me.” We may be sure that few or none of the ‘little children’ who came to Jesus had been baptized. Augustine’s other choice dogma was that of Predestination. He developed this defense against the arguments of Pelagius, who argued that after the Fall people could choose not to sin, and thereby would obtain god’s approbation and guarantee themselves a place in heaven. Against this ‘heresy’ Augustine developed the dogma of Predestination. The doctrine of Predestination holds that God selects some people for damnation and others for salvation, or more accurately, selects some to be saved from the damnation which comes for us all, and leaves the others to it. Since he saw this as a unilateral divine fiat regardless of human choice or action, its inescapable conclusion is a rather depressing dogma. Regardless of our aspirations to live a noble and good life, if we are not predestined to be saved, eternal damnation will be our unavoidable lot. When addressing the question of how we might be able to work out who is on the list, Augustin simply offers the view that God is essentially inscrutable, and that it is not in man’s power to know or understand

Augustine of Hippo

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God’s choices. Centuries later, both Martin Luther and John Calvin eagerly affirmed the idea of predestination, and enthusiastically argued that original sin completely destroyed liberty, using the delightful term “total depravity”.

While the more depressing sides of man’s intervention in the pure message from God have been exemplified here, our point is to help the reader understand that there is a core or central body of knowledge which we can study ourselves, using techniques developed by theologians and historians over the centuries. With a discerning mind, we may endeavor to peel back the layers of dogma and try to understand the core message of the ‘Eternal Gospel’. During the coursework methods of Scriptural Interpretation will be taught to be used in the study of the Testaments, Gospels, and other early writings. Techniques such as exegesis, reinterpretation of quotes in light of prevailing politics or norms of a given period, symbolic interpretation as contrasted with literal interpretation, and other techniques will be elucidated, The issue of multiple writers interpreting the same source will be explored; for example, there is a prevailing belief that there is a ‘missing’ Gospel the theologians call quelle or ‘source’, from which the three Synoptic Gospels drew a number of their stories in common; there is a notion that the Old Testament was largely written by four different people or schools of thought prosaically called the Jahweists (J), the Elohists (E), the Deuteronomists (D) and the Priestly caste (P), and there is a major problem concerning the use of translations, transcriptions and alternative texts. Perhaps the core truth which Saint-Martin and Willermoz sought with such enthusiasm throughout their lives is that there is a nucleus of wisdom which would enable mankind to know his origins and the means to restore himself to his primitive glory. The problem with human involvement with anything is that the result is almost never neutral: the conclusion will inevitably be influenced by prejudices, politics, greed or other all too human motives. Logic rarely wins. Bartering, money and backdoor dealing usually are the order of the day. This is precisely why we need to acquire the tools to identify and to strip away these false or distorted versions in order to arrive at the truth within.

These are some of the primary reasons why the

ACGRC and the Pre-Nicene Church decided to stop before the first Ecumenical Council of Nicaea, when human beings began to dictate how and what everyone was allowed to think; we have elected instead to focus on the early writings and practices of the church as the true source of all wisdom. This doesn’t mean that the entirety of what the Councils and authorities declared after this point is completely invalid: what it does do is to allow us to examine them with freedom of conscience and choose to select or reject them as our personal spirit moves us, without fear of being excommunicated, ridiculed, or ostracized. Every Christian has the right to answer the important question St. Matthew asked – and asks – us, with a clear mind and a free heart:

“What think ye of Christ?”

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Why Have Churches at all? Religious centers or gathering places have existed from the earliest times, in every land

and for every faith. Indeed, Jesus told Peter that he would build his church on him. The notion of groups of people coming together, as in the Temple or Synagogue, was already well-ingrained. Christ also said: “when two or three are gathered together in my name, there will I be also”, implying his agreement with communal worship.

On the other hand, his idea of church was more likely that of the Synagogue, a meeting

place to experience communitas, pray together and learn. And the idea of intent was also important, instead of simply following the rulebook like the Pharisees, Sadducees Romans and Greeks. Hence, we bring to your attention the comment in the Gospel of Thomas, saying 77b: “split wood, and I am there; lift up a stone, you will find me there”. This also reminds us that the work is individual, and what transforming work we must do upon ourselves. Many of us are familiar with the old story of the man who goes to church, then goes home, beats the wife and kids and kicks the dog. We have heard similar messages about Masons who go home, taking with them none of the values they are meant to absorb. Similarly, in esoteric groups, we know those who see the communal meetings as good social events but do no private work at home.

Do we need a Church at all – or for that matter, a Masonic Lodge, a Martinist Chapter,

etc.? ...Absolutely! Firstly, they are a place to share a feeling of common purpose and community. Secondly, they build the egregore, that collective soul and numinous body from which all members draw their strength. It is a place of education and clarification, and where teachers can offer guidance, interpretation and suggestions – but never dogma.

An equally important part of the Church, or body, is that it is a

place to share knowledge gained and to share experiences. Remember the injunction to the Rosicrucian monks in the Fama Fraternitatis, from which a not insignificant part of Martinism comes. Although they were to live in other countries, and to live by the rules of that country, adopting local dress and never to draw attention to themselves (very much like the lessons of the Associate Grade in Martinism), they are nevertheless to assemble once a year in the Domus Sancti Spiritus, or Invisible College, and give an account of their learning, their adventures and experiences. Similarly, in Martinist Chapters, the members are called upon to share their

experience and understanding of what they are studying, and to present papers to the group to expand their overall knowledge. So also with churches. Church gatherings are a place to convene in a united act of celebration and prayer, to learn from the leader whom in this case is the Priest or Bishop, and to learn from one another’s experiences. We are neither anchorites, nor stylites. We do not sit in caves or on top of poles to be nearer to God, hoping to obtain a stray word which might fall in our direction. We are social beings and many of us work better in groups. A church communitas is an uplifting, supportive and regenerative resource for everyone.

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What does the ACGRC offer? 1. A body of people aligned with the teachings of Martinism, its aims and

experience (even the dress of ecclesiastical officiants reminds us of Martinism in any church which has the most rudimentary ritual: black cassocks, surmounted by white surplices. Is it any wonder that on days dedicated to the Holy Spirit the priest wears a red chasuble to radiate fire?)

2. A place where all the sacraments are freely offered to anyone, regardless of

creed, age, sex, sexual orientation, color, or personal beliefs. 3. A place where the ritual accords with and adds to those ceremonies performed

in a Martinist Chapter. 4. A place where there is no barrier – save that of being over 21 – to becoming a

priest. 5. A place where there is no dogma, where no one will tell you that you must

believe what they say or you are not a good Christian, or will be sent to hell, or barred from communion.

6. A place where a creed is not a force of conformity, but a uniting prayer to

remind us of what we study, our road to reintegration, our love of God and our identification with and gratitude to the Repairer.

7. We are Christian, whatever that word may give rise to in the individual hearts

of all those who come, regardless of whether Jesus is an avatar or exemplar, whether He is the Son of God, a man on whom the Christos descended for a time, or wholly God.

We are quickly becoming the only Christian Martinist body left, as the others move towards dropping the requirement of Christianity, as they turn their spiritual Orders into New Age societies where numbers, the flow of money, and a desperate desire to boast in public have supplanted Saint-Martin’s values of silence and circumspection. The lesson of the Unknown has been lost in all the noise.

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What is Priesthood in the Martinist sense?

A priest is first and foremost a servant, but a priest is also a guide and a leader in that they offer spiritual succor to those who need it, and wise counsel to those who come for advice.

A priest is also an initiate in the sense that Pasqually, Willermoz and Saint-Martin envisaged the original keepers of the true secrets and passed them on from generation to generation through a line of apostolic succession – this is a notion which we hold dear in the Martinist Order, where every initiate can truly trace their lineage back to our founders.

A priest is erudite; they have studied extensively and earned the right to give advice to

others. No doctor would set up shop without first studying and practicing for years to earn the right to prescribe medications. No mechanic would open a garage and take in peoples’ cars if they didn’t know a tire from a trunk; and yet, with the bizarre rules in the United States, nearly anyone can send in a credit card number and obtain a Certificate to say they are a priest. Mercifully this is mostly used by family members or friends who for some odd reason wish or are asked to officiate at a single wedding. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case, and there are many cases of people blindly following so-called prophets into bankruptcy, loss of assets, loss of self-esteem, and sometimes into death itself. The role is one of power and authority, which is why taking the step to become a priest is not to be undertaken lightly or with a lack of due circumspection.

A priest may be all things to all people. In becoming a priest, one loses any right to a

public viewpoint on politics, wealth, color, sexuality, or guns; they will welcome anyone with open arms, and they must endeavor to seek out the root cause of any prejudice which lingers, in order to eradicate that seed of prevarication. In our system of teachings, neither the world nor anything in it is inherently bad or evil. Similarly, a priest is well educated in as many aspects of Christianity as possible. While our Church may not be explicitly Gnostic, that doesn’t mean we cannot use Gnostic and other texts in our services. Our aim is to educate rather than indoctrinate those who come to our portals. We can provide the tools, but as Saint-Martin taught us, the journey on the path of reintegration, the Cardiac Path to becoming a New

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Man or Woman, is one which must be undertaken alone.

As in the Catholic Church and other denominations and faiths, there are different types of priests.

Some will choose to represent the

Church in a traditional manner, by operating on a regular and continuing basis in a church or in their home, creating their own congregation of regular parishioners. While a small, independent Church doesn’t have the resources of the multi-million dollar enterprises which go under the name of ‘a Church’, the small, family unit is perhaps the closest thing to Jesus’ vision, and certainly the most likely to practice the values and virtues of a true Christianity, following in the footsteps of the early church which met in exactly this manner, in the rooms of a parishioner’s home, and followed their worship with an agapé.

Others may be called more to what might be termed a more monastic role. Here the priest doesn’t maintain a regular series of services, but their services are freely known, and they will always be there to perform a house blessing, a wedding, a funeral, a visit to hospital, to provide advice or just a sympathetic ear: in other words to provide all the services expected of a priest, but when asked to do so, rather than opening one’s doors and building a permanent congregation. This may be a preferable route for those whose work and family commitments prevent them from committing to a permanent schedule.

Finally, there are those who might be equated with the scholars, theologians and Church Fathers of old. Their interest in the priesthood is more one of receiving one of the most powerful initiatory experiences possible to humankind. Given its importance, they will naturally not think they have a right to receive it without a profound understanding of what it is, its context and its history; any more than they would join an esoteric society and expect to be pushed from grade to grade without any formal test of their knowledge and abilities. However, while their educational and practical path to ordination might be common to the

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other two paths, their end goal is somewhat different.

Like the Church Fathers, who were neither parish priests or necessarily monks, they devoted their time, in the great libraries attached to monasteries or in universities, to a better understanding. Here too, for our scholarly priests, we expect great things. No church can stand static forever without shriveling and becoming increasingly irrelevant to a society which changes by the minute. Their study and the fruits of their studies as evident in their literary contributions to the corpus will help to develop the wisdom and relevance of our Church, which the other priests will carry into the outside world. This is not evangelism, for we can only influence other Men of the Stream without compelling them to become Martinists or to join our Church; it is for us to be but centers of goodness ourselves, which by radiating the effects of our following the Way of the Heart will necessarily raise the universal level of consciousness to one where all beings will become aware of the amazing interplay of worlds which surround us, and develop that innate curiosity to seek their source.

© ACGRC 2020 All rights reserved. One printed copy may be made of this document for the personal study of the querent or student only. This copy should not be shared with any other person, organization, institution or company, or published on any website, social network or blog. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, contact the Apostolic Church of the Golden & Rosy Cross, at acgrc.org. For further information about the ACGRC and its Seminary, go to acgrc.org.

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