Is the Scottish Rectified Rite “Martinezist”?

OK. Today’s blog is a little heavy if you don’t know much about the Scottish Rectified Rite!!! However, this important nugget was recently published on a French website, and given it discusses comments by one of the world experts on this topic, Jean-Marc Vivenza, I felt it my duty to translate it. The original may be found at: http://lalecondelyon.hautefort.com.

IS THE SCOTTISH RECTIFIED RITE “MARTINEZISM”?

“Willermoz’ goal was therefore to preserve the doctrine of which Martinez de Pasqually had been, according to what he had taught him, but a relay; and when the Order of Elus Cohen was in decline, to maintain true Masonry according to the model which Martinez de Pasqually had revealed to him as the archetype, and which ensured doctrinal conformity with the doctrine of the Reintegration.” R. Amadou, Martinisme, CIREM, 1997, p. 36.

During a Conference given in Nice on 18^th November 2017[i], discussing the distinction that should be made between the so-called “initiatory” paths of Cainanist and Babelian nature, called “Apocryphal” – that is to say, those which ignore the “Doctrine of the Reintegration of Beings” – and the tradition incorporated in the reforms of Willermoz, Jean-Marc Vivenza, replying to this legitimate question, again specified what it seems necessary to recall once more.

The reforming momentum having be founded on the baptismal foundation of the “Rite” born out of the Convent of Gaul (1778) and Wilhelmsbad (1782), resulted from a “rectification” of the German Rite of Strict Observance, only maintaining the essence of its structural shape, by giving it the theoretical background of Martinezist thought, an expression – deepened during the time of the “Lessons of Lyon” (1774-1776) – in the Masonic mode and in the Illuminist climate of the 18^th Century, the major theses of “Transcendent Christianity” discussed by Joseph de Maistre, in the 11^th meeting of the Soirées in St. Petersburg[ii].

“Their fundamental dogma is that Christianity, such as we know it today, is only a true Blue Lodge created for the vulgar; and that it depends on the Man of Desire to raise himself up from grade to grade to the sublime knowledge which was possessed by the first Christians who were the true initiates.” Joseph de Maistre (1763-1821)

These topics have been the subject, on the part of Jean-Marc Vivenza, key studies concerning Martinezist sources of Rectified Masonry[iii], To which, we clearly affirm, it is now appropriate to refer imperative manner, if one wishes to address seriously its doctrinal foundations the more essential.

In the recent History of the Scottish Rectified Rite, from its Origin to the Present Time (The Philosopher’s Stone, October 2017), on several occasions Vivenza discusses the methodical inventory that Jean-Baptiste Willermoz called “the form of this Instruction [having] sometimes varied according to time and circumstance, but [whose] substance, which is invariable, has always remained the same”[iv], insisting even on the absolute necessity of a reference intangible to these elements:

“Let things be clear, the Rectified Profès, implicit in the Instructions for all grades, but explicit in the Secret Instructions in its class, known as “Not Open”, theses which are absolutely condemned by the Church and its Councils, concerning the intangible nature of Adam before the Fall, the Creation of the world carried out not by God but by “Intermediate Spirits”, the imprisonment in a “material body” of the angels and man as a consequence of their sin, the calling to the “dissolution” of the Elements of Creation at the End of Time, the incorporeal Resurrection of Christ, the incorporeal destination of creatures in Eternity, etc.”[v]; “The entire doctrine of Martinez can be summed up in one word: “Reintegration.” The Reintegration of Beings responding to their prior Fall, which had plunged them into the heart of darkness of the world and condemned them to an exile which cut them off, separated them from their true origin. The work required to man is therefore, according to Martinez, to follow the Path once more, to rediscover the direction of his escalation (…).”[vi]; “It is this doctrine and this ambitious program of “Reintegration” that Jean-Baptiste Willermoz discovered at the very time his expectation had been honed to its maximum, with respect to the journey of initiation that he had already explored for several years.[vii]”

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[i] Jean-Marc Vivenza, Nice, 18 November 2017 (excerpt)”Tradition non-apocryphal and apocryphal track, according to the doctrine of the Scottish regime Corrected”, “Philosophical Association County of Nice,” 18 November 2017.

[ii] “I’m not saying that all the Illuminated ones are Freemasons: I’m only saying that all those I’ve known, in their Works especially, were. Their fundamental dogma is that Christianity, such as we know it today, is only a true Blue Lodge created for the vulgar; and that it depends on the Man of Desire to raise himself up from grade to grade to the sublime knowledge which was possessed by the first Christians who were the true initiates. This is what certain Germans have called Transcendental Christianity. This doctrine is a mixture of Platonism, Origenism and Hermetic Philosophy with a Christian basis. Supernatural knowledge is the great purpose of their work and their hopes. They don’t doubt at all that it’s possible for man to be put in communication with the spiritual world, to talk to spirits and thus discover the rarest of mysteries. Their invariable custom is to give extraordinary names to things best known by common names: thus a man for them is a Minor, and his birth, Emancipation. Original sin is called the Primitive Crime; the acts of the Divine Power or of His agents in the Universe are called Blessings, and the penalties imposed on the guilty, Punishments. I have myself often been in punishment, when I realized that everything they said about truth was only the catechism hidden in strange words (…) I’ve had the opportunity to convince myself, more than thirty years ago in a large city, that a certain class of these Illuminated ones were of superior grades unknown to the initiates admitted to their regular meetings; that they even had a cult, and priests which they named by the Hebrew name Cohen…” (J. de Maistre, Soirées in St. Petersburg : 11^th Meeting, 1821).

[iii] Jean-Marc Vivenza, History of the Elus Cohens and the Scottish Rectified Rite, Mercury Dauphinois, 2010; and The Doctrine of the Reintegration of Beings: Martinez de Pasqually, Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin and Jean-Baptiste Willermoz in Light of the Thoughts of Origen, The Philosopher’s Stone, 2012, and Second Editions revised and expanded, 2013.

[iv] The Statutes and Regulations of the Order of Grand Profès, Ms. 5475, BM Lyon.

[v] Jean-Marc Vivenza, History of Scottish Rectified Rite from its Origin to the Present Time, The Philosopher’s Stone, 2017, p. 454.

[vi] Jean-Marc Vivenza, op. cit., pp. 71-72.

[vii] Ibid. p. 80.