A NEW BOOK ON THE ORDER OF THE ELECT COHENS
R. Le Forestier, who specializes in historical studies of the secret organizations of the second half of the eighteenth century, Masonic or otherwise, recently published an important volume entitled La Franc-Maçonnerie occultiste au XVIII siècle et l'Ordre des Elect Cohens. [1] This title calls for some reservations, however, for the word 'occultist', which seems never to have been used before Eliphas Lévi, is somewhat anachronistic here; it would perhaps have been more appropriate to choose another term, and this is no mere question of words, for what is properly called 'occultism' is really a product of the nineteenth century.
The work is divided into three parts: the first deals with the 'doctrines and practices of the Elect Cohens'; the second with 'the Elect Cohens and the occultist tradition' (here the word 'esoteric' would certainly have been more appropriate); and the third, with the 'organization and history of the Order.' The historical material, which is well presented, is based upon a very serious study of the documents the author had at his disposal, and we strongly recommend it. We regret only that there are some gaps as regards Martines de Pasqually's biography, concerning which certain points remain obscure. However, Voile d'Isis will soon publish new documents that may perhaps offer some clarification.
The first part is an excellent overview of the contents of the Traité de la Réintegration des Êtres, an unfinished and rather confused work, written in a faulty and at times hardly intelligible style. It was not easy to summarize it coherently, and Le Forestier is to be congratulated for having done so. There remains however a certain ambiguity as to the nature of the 'operations' of the Elect Cohens: were they really 'theurgic' or only 'magical'? The author seems not to have realized that these are two essentially different things not of the same order, and it is possible that this confusion existed among the Elect Cohens themselves, for their initiation seems always to have remained rather incomplete in many respects-but it would have been well to at least draw attention to this. What seems to be at issue is a ritual of 'ceremonial magic' with theurgic claims, which thus leaves the door open to many illusions; and the importance attributed to 'phenomenal' manifestations (for what Martines called 'passes' were nothing other than this) proves in fact that the domain of illusion had not been left behind. What is more regrettable is that the founder of the Elect Cohens may have believed himself in possession of transcendent knowledge, whereas the only knowledge involved, though real, was yet of a rather secondary order. And for the same reasons it must be said that he confused the 'initiatic' and the 'mystical' points of view, for the doctrines he expressed always take a religious form, whereas his 'operations' by no means have this characteristic. It is regrettable that Le Forestier seems to accept this confusion and does not himself have a clear notion of the distinction between the two points of view. Furthermore, it is to be noted that what Martines calls 'reintegration' does not exceed the possibilities of the individual human being. The author clearly establishes this point, but there would have been reason to draw very important consequences from this regarding to the limits of the teaching that the head of the Elect Cohens could offer his disciples, and consequently of the 'realization' to which he was capable of leading them.
The second part of the book is the least satisfying, for perhaps in spite of himself le Forestier is not always able to shake himself free from a certain 'rationalist' tendency that he probably owes to his university education. From certain resemblances between different
traditional doctrines, one need not necessarily infer borrowings or direct influences, for wherever the same truths are expressed it is normal that such resemblances should exist; and this applies in particular to the science of numbers, of which the significance is in no way a human invention or a more or less arbitrary conception. We can say the same for astrology with its cosmic laws, which in no way depend on us; and we do not see why everything related to astrology need be borrowed from the Chaldeans, as if the latter had a monopoly on such knowledge. The same holds for angelology, which moreover is rather closely connected to astrology and cannot-without accepting all the prejudices of modern 'criti-cism'-be regarded as having been unknown to the Hebrews until the time of the Babylon captivity. And let us add that Le Forestier does not quite seem to have a true notion of the Kabbalah, which name simply means 'tradition' in the most general sense, but which he attributes to a particular written compilation of teachings, eventually maintaining that 'the Kabbalah was born in the south of France and northern Spain,' dating its origin from the thirteenth century. Here again the 'critical' spirit, which because of its bias is ignorant of the purpose of all oral transmission, has truly gone too far. And finally a last point: the word Pardes (which, as we have explained elsewhere, is the Sanskrit Paradesha, 'supreme land', and not a Persian word meaning 'animal park', which does not make sense in spite of the connection with Ezekiel's Cherubim) does not indicate merely 'mystical speculation' but the real achievement of a certain state, that of the restoration of the 'primordial' or 'edenic' state, which has a close similarity to the 'reintegration' Martines envisaged. [2]
Given these reservations, it is quite certain that the form in which Martines presents his teaching is properly Jewish in inspiration, which moreover does not imply that he himself was of Jewish origin (this being one of those points still insufficiently clarified), nor that he was not sincerely Christian. Le Forestier is right to speak in this connection of 'esoteric Christianity', but we do not see that conceptions of this order have no right to be called authentically Christian. To confine oneself to modern ideas of an exclusively and narrowly exoteric religion is to deny to Christianity all truly profound meaning, and also to underestimate all that existed beyond this during the Middles Ages, of which we find perhaps the last, already very much weakened, reflections precisely in organizations such as that of the Elect Cohens. [3] We are well aware that this bothers our contemporaries because of their preoccupation with reducing everything to a question of 'historicism', a preoccupation shared now, it seems, by both advocates and adversaries of Christianity, although the adversaries were certainly the first to carry the argument into this territory. Let us state clearly that if Christ were considered solely as an historical personage, this would be a matter of little interest, but consideration of the Christ-principle has quite another importance; and furthermore, the one in no way excludes the other, because as we have often said historical facts themselves have a symbolic value and express principles in their own way and in their own order. We cannot dwell further on this point here, but it seems obvious enough.
The third part of the book is devoted to the history of the Elect Cohens, whose effective existence was rather brief, and to the exposition of what can be known of its rituals and grades, which seem never to have been fully established and clarified, any more than were those of its famous 'operations'. It is perhaps not quite correct to refer, as does Le Forestier, to all systems of high Masonic grades without exception as 'Scottish', or to see the Masonic character given
by Martines to the Elect Cohens as a simple mask; but a thorough discussion of these questions would lead us too far afield. [4] We wish only to call particular attention to the name 'Réau-Croix' given by Martines to the highest grade of his 'regime' (as was then said), and which Le Forestier wants to see only as the imitation or even counterfeit of the 'Rose-Cross', although for us something else is involved. In the spirit of Martines, the 'Réau-Croix' must on the contrary be the true 'Rose-Cross', whereas the grade in ordinary Masonry that formerly bore the latter name was only 'apocryphal', according to the expression often used. But whence comes this bizarre name 'Réau-Croix', and what can it really mean? According to Martines, the real name of Adam was 'Roux in the popular language and Réau in Hebrew,' signifying 'Man-God very strong in wisdom, virtue, and power', an interpretation which, at least at first glance, seems rather fanciful. The truth is that Adam means quite literally 'red'; adamah is red clay, and adamah is blood, which is also red. Edom, a name given to Esau, has the sense of 'red' also, and red is most often taken as a symbol of force or of power, which in part justifies Martines' explanation. As for the form Réau, there is certainly nothing Hebraic about it, and we think it should be seen as a phonetic assimilation with the word roèh, 'to see', which was the first designation of the prophets, and the proper meaning of which is quite comparable to that of the Sanskrit rishi. This sort of phonetic symbolism is nothing exceptional, as we have pointed out on various occasions, [5] and there would be nothing astonishing in Martines' using it here to allude to one of the chief characteristics of the 'edenic state', and in so doing to denote the possession of this state itself. If such is the case, the expression 'Réau-Croix', by the addition
of the Cross of the 'Restorer' to the first term 'Réau', indicates 'the minor restored in its prerogatives' in the terminology of the Traité de la Réintégration des Êtres, that is to say the 'regenerated man' who is effectively the 'second Adam' of Saint Paul, and who is also the true 'Rose-Cross. [6] It is a matter then not of an imitation of the term 'Rose-Cross'-which after all it would have been so much easier to appropriate, as has been done by many others-but one of the numerous interpretations or adaptations to which it can legitimately give rise, which of course is not to say that Martines' claims concerning the real effects of his 'ordination of 'Réau-Croix' were fully justified.
In bringing this all too brief examination to a close, let us call attention to one last point. Le Forestier is quite right to see in Martines' frequently used expression 'glorious form', in which 'glorious' is as it were synonymous with 'luminous', an allusion to the Shekinah (which some old Masonic rituals, by a rather bizarre deformation, call the Stekenna); [7] but this is exactly the same thing as the 'glorious body' found in Christianity, even exoteric Christianity, ever since Saint Paul's 'Sown in corruption, it will revive in glory,' and is the same also as the designation 'light of glory', in which, according to the most orthodox theology, the 'beatific vision' takes place. This shows clearly that there is no opposition between exoterism and esoterism but only a superposition of the latter on the former, esoterism giving to the truths expressed in a more or less veiled way by exoterism, the plenitude of their higher meaning and depth.