Ordre des Chevaliers Maçons Élus Coëns de l'Univers

(Order of the Knight-Mason Elect Coëns of the Universe)

The 18th-century French Enlightenment is conventionally remembered as the "intellectual, historical, and political centre" of an age defined by reason, skepticism, and the encyclopedic ambition of figures like Voltaire and Diderot. Yet, this same period, "the centre also of occult activities and occult interests," was convulsed by a fervent and parallel search for revelation. This "emancipation from the fetters of thought" did not lead all seekers to rationalism; it led many to a renewed, if heterodox, mysticism.

This fertile, paradoxical ground gave rise to a proliferation of "fringe" Masonic rites, each grafting its own "new gospels and revelations" onto the "advent of Symbolical Free-Masonry". The lodges of Europe became a marketplace for "historical adventurers" like Saint-Germain and Count Cagliostro, who blended Kabbalism, Hermeticism, Rosicrucianism, and alchemy into new initiatory systems.

Into this milieu stepped an enigmatic figure who was decidedly not just another adventurer: Jacques de Livron Joachim de la Tour de la Casa Martinès de Pasqually. A man of uncertain origin, Pasqually was a thaumaturge who, unlike his contemporaries, "presents not as a disciple, but as a master, who has his supply of truths ready-made, and who holds it from above". Around 1754, he founded an order with one of the most imposing titles in esoteric history: the Ordre des Chevaliers Maçons Élus Coëns de l'Univers (Order of Knight-Masons Elect Priests of the Universe).

The Élus Coëns (Elect Priests) was not another philosophical or moral society. It was conceived as an "elite esoteric Christian Order" composed of "spiritual warriors" engaged in active "magical combat with both angelic and demonic entities". Its audacious, stated goal was to establish an "invisible church" and provide its initiates with a direct, operative path to "obtain the primordial unity" lost by Adam at the Fall.

The emergence of such an order at the precise height of the Enlightenment is no accident. It can be understood as a profound, Counter-Enlightenment phenomenon. While material science championed empirical rationalism, Pasqually offered a rival "spiritual science." His system was not based on faith alone; it was an operative practice. His Treatise on the Reintegration of Beings was a complete cosmogony—a science of the spiritual universe. His theurgy was a rigorous, repeatable (if "dangerous") methodology. The "passes", or spiritual manifestations, he taught his disciples to obtain were a form of empirical evidence of the divine. In an age of mounting skepticism, Pasqually's "blatantly magical" order was a radical attempt to prove the spiritual hierarchies and restore humanity's divine power through direct, ritual action.

The Doctrine of Reintegration — A Theosophy of the Fall and Return

The core doctrine of the Élus Coëns is contained entirely within Pasqually's seminal and only book, the Traité de la Réintégration des êtres dans leurs premières propriétés, vertus et puissance spirituelles et divines (Treatise on the Reintegration of Beings into Their Original Estate, Virtues and Powers both Spiritual and Divine). This text, intended as a complete esoteric commentary on the first books of Genesis, was left incomplete at his death. Its contents were considered so potent that the manuscript was "secretly passed between the Réaux-Croix," the highest grade of the Order, "to be copied by hand".

Cosmogony and the Pre-Adamic Fall

Pasqually's complex myth begins before the creation of the material universe, in what he termed the "immense divine circumference". God, for His own glory, first emanated spiritual beings. However, a contingent of these "perverse" spirits, in an act of profound spiritual pride, "chose to follow their own... path" and transgressed against the Creator. This was the first, celestial Fall.

A key tenet of Pasqually's theosophy is that evil does not originate from God, but from the "will of spirits opposed to God's laws". Evil is not an eternal, co-equal principle with God, but a perversion of will—a potential that became actualized by free, spiritual beings.

The Role and Fall of Adam

It was after this pre-Adamic Fall that God emanated humanity, referred to as the "quaternary divine spiritual minor or man". This first man, Adam, was a being of immense "virtue, force and power". His divine purpose was twofold: first, to glorify the Creator, and second, to act as the Creator's agent, to contain the transgressing spirits and, ultimately, to work for their reconciliation.

Like the spirits before him, Adam was "left... to his free will". And like them, he "fell from grace into the state in which we exist today". This second Fall, the "Fall of Humanity," is what Pasqually identifies as "disintegration"—a shattering of man's original divine unity and his imprisonment in a material world, now subject to the very demonic influences he was meant to command.

The Path to Reintegration

The entire purpose of the Élus Coëns system is to reverse this catastrophe. Its doctrine is one of "reconciliation, regeneration, and reintegration". This is the "Martinist doctrine" in its original, purest form. Humanity, trapped in matter, must now use its "free will to accept or reject" the "good and bad intellects" communicated by spirits and actively, operatively work to "regain this glorious former state".

This path cannot be walked alone. It requires a divine intermediary, whom Pasqually identifies as "Christ as 'The Repairer'" or "Reconciler". This Christ, "Hély," was sent by God to grant forgiveness to the repentant Adam and to serve as the "Teacher for Humanity".

The ultimate aim of the Coën initiate, therefore, is to follow this path to its absolute conclusion: to achieve "primordial unity" and attain the "Beatific Vision" while living.

This doctrine presents a unique fusion of Christian orthodoxy and Gnostic/Kabbalistic "heresies". The cosmology—a pre-cosmic fall, a fallen "minor" creator (Adam), and humanity's imprisonment in matter—is deeply Gnostic in its structure. However, unlike world-denying Gnostics who seek only escape from a corrupt creation, Pasqually's system demands the redemption of it. Adam's first, glorious task was to contain and manage evil. His Fall was a failure of will.

This theological tension necessitates the Order's magical practice. A passive, faith-based solution is insufficient to correct an active, willful failure. The solution must be an operative act of will, mirroring and correcting the original transgression. Pasqually's doctrine is not one of quiet contemplation; it is a "transformative science" and a call to magical action. Because the problem is a "perverse will", the solution must be a "blatantly magical", theurgical, and active will.

The Operative Practice — Angelic Magic in the Age of Reason

The Élus Coëns was "not merely a mystical but a magical order". Its entire structure was built to facilitate "human communication with the angelic hierarchies" and re-establish "contact between the operator and the Invisible World". This was achieved through a rigorous and "complex ceremonial Christian theurgy".

The Theurgical Operation

The "complex ceremonial practices" of the Coëns were demanding, requiring a "decidedly monastic lifestyle" that governed everything from diet to hairstyle. Adepts prepared for the operative rituals with a "full day of fasting".

The operations themselves were conducted at midnight. The adept, wearing specific "black clothing and red and white robes", would place himself within "circles inscribed with hieroglyphic symbols". The methods were a highly developed form of Solomonic magic, explicitly using "names of angels, planetary hours and symbols". Pasqually provided his high-degree initiates with a "general 'grimoire'" or "Répertoire général des noms et nombres" (General repertory of names and numbers) to conduct these evocations.

The "Passes" (La Chose)

The purpose of these "lofty and beautiful prayers" and evocations was to "beseech the spirits to make their presence known". This tangible, perceptible manifestation—which Pasqually called "passes" and later Coën texts refer to as "la Chose" (the Thing)—was the entire point of the work. These "passes" would manifest as "flashes of light, sounds or voices, or even direct apparitions".

These "passes" were the proof of the operation's success. They were the empirical sign that the initiate had "received divine favor" and was on the verifiable path to recovering the "spiritual powers lost by Adam after the Fall".

Spiritual Combat

The Order's work was not limited to benign angelic invocation. The initiate was a "spiritual warrior" whose duty was to engage in "magical combat". The work included "exorcisms intended to strangle demonic influence" and "ward off the malignant influence of demons who sought to preserve man's fallen state".

The Manuscrit d'Alger

The most explicit details of these practices are preserved in a key 18th-century grimoire known as the Manuscrit d'Alger (c. 1772), recently translated as The Green Book of the Élus Coëns. This text, a true "treasury of Coën texts," contains the specific invocations, diagrams of the magical circles, and a "Registry of 2,400 Angelic Names". It is a practical handbook on "how to enter into relations with angelic entities" sympathetic to humanity's fallen state.

A crucial detail from this manuscript reveals the profound psychological and moral nature of Pasqually's magic. The rituals include the invocation of demons, but not for the traditional goetic purposes of gaining "knowledge or material success". Instead, the Coën adept summoned them "as experienced temptations to be brought under control and vanished".

This reframes the "magical combat" entirely. The primary battle was internal. This practice aligns perfectly with the core doctrine that evil originates from "will". The adept, standing within the a-temporal, sacred space of the ritual circle, was mastering the "perverse wills" of the demonic hierarchy as a direct, operative method of mastering his own will. The theurgical circle was a psychodramatic arena. The "spiritual warrior" was not merely fighting external spirits; he was fighting Temptation itself, battling the very "Fall of Man" within his own soul. This was the "transformative science" in action, aimed not at the object (the spirits), but at the subject (the adept).

From Mason to Elect Priest

Pasqually's system was as organizationally brilliant as it was theologically complex. To find worthy initiates for his "dangerous" work, he "established l'Ordre... which functioned as a regular Masonic obedience" in France. He used the existing network of Masonic lodges as a vast recruiting ground, seeking "men... of goodwill, and a belief in a divinity" who were unsatisfied with the purely philosophical degrees of conventional Free-Masonry.

The Classes and Grades

The Order was structured as a "Masonic high-degree system" organized into several "Classes", which in turn contained multiple degrees. While the exact structure varied, it generally followed a three-tiered model:

The Supreme Grade: Réaux-Croix

The entire system culminated in the "Sovereign Sanctuary", the final and highest degree of Réaux-Croix. This was the true, operative inner circle of the Order. It was only within this grade that the "initiate was taught to use Theurgy to contact spiritual realms beyond the physical". The secrecy surrounding this degree was absolute; it was only to the Réaux-Croix that Pasqually entrusted his foundational text, the Treatise on the Reintegration of Beings.

(A notable, if grim, addendum is that the Order was not exclusively male. Pasqually "constructed a particular initiation rituals for ladies of the order" in 1774. However, surviving fragments of this ritual are described as "denigrating the candidate as the embodiment of Eve's temptation".)

This complex, multi-stage initiatory system was not mere ceremony; it was a functional necessity. Pasqually was not just teaching philosophy; he was teaching "operative" and "dangerous" magic. Handing these "Solomonic" techniques to an unprepared or morally compromised individual could be spiritually catastrophic.

The entire structure, therefore, acted as an elaborate "spiritual funnel." It took a wide base of "Masonic associates" and slowly filtered them. The Masonic lower degrees (Class 1) served as a probation. The Coën-proper grades (Class 2) served as a doctrinal indoctrination, steeping the candidate in the Order's pessimistic, Gnostic-inflected cosmology. This funnel tested the candidate's morality, their "free will", and their intellectual capacity to understand the profound "work" they were to undertake. Only the absolute "élite"—the Élus (Elect)—who had been philosophically prepared and morally purified were finally given the operative "keys" to the kingdom in the Réaux-Croix grade.

Saint-Martin, Willermoz, and the Roads from Lyon

The Élus Coëns, as a unified, operative system, was entirely dependent on its charismatic founder and "Grand Magus". When Martinès de Pasqually died suddenly in Saint-Domingue in 1774, his "Order of Elect Priesthood" was thrown into a crisis. The power vacuum fractured his singular, explosive legacy, splitting it into three distinct streams that define "Martinism" to this day.

The Three Branches of the 18th-Century Martinist Tradition

Immediately following Pasqually's death, his two chief disciples, Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin and Jean-Baptiste Willermoz, attempted to hold the center. Together with a third disciple, Jean-Jacques Du Roy d'Hauterive, they delivered the "Lessons of Lyon" (1774-1776). These lessons, "complete commentaries on the cosmology and philosophy of E.C. work", represent a critical "snapshot" of the disciples' attempt to synthesize, comprehend, and preserve their master's complex doctrine before their paths diverged.

Path 1: Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin — The "Way of the Heart"

Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, known to history as "The Unknown Philosopher", was Pasqually's personal secretary and one of his most accomplished initiates, having attained the Réaux-Croix degree. Yet, he became the architect of the first great schism.

Saint-Martin ultimately "renounced Free-Masonry and the theurgy used by Élus Coëns", ceasing "all involvement in 1790". His rationale was profound: he came to judge the complex external methods of angelic evocation "to be unreliable and even dangerous". He grew to disdain what he termed "churchism": the "deadly formalism of religious ritual devoid of religious feeling".

He "chose to take another path", a radically interior one he called the "Way of the Heart". This was a path of "inward contemplation". "The only initiation which I preach and seek," he wrote, "is that by which we may enter into the heart of God, and make God's heart enter into us". This new, mystical path was profoundly shaped by his discovery of the 17th-century "Teutonic philosopher" Jacob Böhme, whom he called his "second teacher".

Path 2: Jean-Baptiste Willermoz — The "Masonic Reconstitution"

Jean-Baptiste Willermoz, the other key disciple, took a completely different approach. He remained an "ardent adept of Free-Masonry". Concerned about "dissent in the Order" after Pasqually's death, Willermoz embarked on a great preservation project. He sought to save Pasqually's philosophy by embedding it in a more stable, structured, and less "dangerous" system.

His solution was a masterful Masonic synthesis. He joined the German Order of Strict Templar Observance and, at the 1778 Convent of Wilhelmsbad, reformed it. He created a new, "reformed" Masonic rite: the Chevaliers Beneficient de la Cité-Sainte (CBCS), known today as the Rectified Scottish Rite (RER).

The key change was this: Willermoz's new rite "exemplified the philosophy, though not the theurgic practices, of the Élus Coëns". He essentially defanged Pasqually's operative system. He kept the core doctrine of Reintegration but excised the "blatantly magical" operations and "angelic evocation", replacing them with a framework of chivalric ritual and Templar mysticism. The secret Coën philosophy was preserved, but hidden within the RER's highest, secret degrees.

This divergence between Saint-Martin and Willermoz is not a mere historical footnote; it is arguably the archetypal schism that defines a central conflict within all of Western Esotericism: Magic versus Mysticism. Pasqually's Élus Coëns was a rare and unstable fusion of both: a mystical goal (Reintegration) pursued via a magical, operative method (Theurgy). Pasqually, the "Grand Magus", was the singular personality who held this volatile fusion together. When he died, the unstable system "fractured". Saint-Martin took the mystical component, interiorizing the goal and rejecting the "unreliable" external methods. Willermoz took the ritualistic/philosophical component, externalizing the system into a safe, moral framework, rejecting the "dangerous" operative magic. Pasqually's singular, unified "Martinezism" was split, giving birth to the two great, divergent streams that are both today called "Martinism." The original, explosive operative system of the Élus Coëns had to die in order for its philosophy to be safely propagated through the more stable, and separate, vehicles of pure mysticism (Saint-Martin) and chivalric Free-Masonry (Willermoz).

The Coën Tradition in the Modern Era

Following Pasqually's death and the departure of its two most brilliant disciples, the original Ordre des Élus Coëns entered a period of decline. The remaining temples "continued to operate for some time," but "divisions started to occur between various temples". Without their founder's presence, the "Temples des Elus Coëns closed their doors" and became "dormant during the first half of the 19th century". The original incarnation of the order is considered to have ended with the death of its "last-known surviving Élus Coën... Destigny, in 1868".

The 20th-Century "Re-Awakening" with Robert Ambelain

The Order lay dormant for nearly a century before it was "more recently revived by Robert Ambelain in 1942". Ambelain, a prolific 20th-century French occultist, established the Ordre Martiniste des Élus Cohens.

This was a "re-awakening" or, more accurately, a reconstruction. Ambelain sought to "reconstitute" the "Operative degrees" of the original order using the "scarce material" available to him. His primary source was the Manuscrit d'Alger, which he had obtained.

Crucially, Ambelain "did not possess enough material to execute all the original degrees". To "fill the gaps" in his reconstruction, he "introduced elements that were not part of the original Coëns," creating a syncretic system that blended Pasqually's work with "Neo-Gnosticism, Qabalah, and Memphis-Misraim"—other esoteric orders he also led.

Closure and Disputed Lineage

Ambelain's revived, syncretic order was "officially closed" by Ambelain himself in 1964. He passed his authority to a successor, Ivan Mosca, who made the Order "dormant" in 1968, only to "reawaken" it again in 1995.

This has led to the complicated status of the Order today. Upon Mosca's death, he "did not designate successors". Consequently, "two groups claimed the legitimate succession, a Spanish and an Italian-French one". A third group has also "reconstructed its 'regularity'".

These modern "re-awakenings" and "reconstructions" are distinct historical phenomena from the 18th-century original. They are also distinct from the more widespread, non-operative "Martinist Orders" that descend from Gérard Encausse (Papus), who was inspired by Saint-Martin.

Revelation vs. Reconstruction

The history of the Ordre des Élus Coëns must be bifurcated. The 18th-century original was a "closed" system, a singular revelation delivered by a "Master" who claimed to receive it "from above".

The 20th-century and contemporary groups are a phenomenon of revivalism. Their founders, like Ambelain, were not revelators but reconstructors, engaging in "philological reconstruction" with "scarce material". When this material proved insufficient, they were forced to perform a kind of esoteric bricolage, patching the system with other traditions.

The profound irony of the Ordre des Chevaliers Maçons Élus Coëns de l'Univers is that its greatest and most enduring legacy was not its own survival, but its failure to survive. It was a "spiritual supernova." Its brilliant, unstable, and "dangerous" core—Pasqually's operative theurgy—proved unsustainable. Its explosion, catalyzed by Pasqually's death, scattered its "star stuff"—the profound doctrine of Reintegration—across the esoteric world. This doctrine then re-coalesced into new, more stable, and more enduring systems: the Christian Theosophy of Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin and the Chivalric Free-Masonry of Jean-Baptiste Willermoz. These two streams, born from the death of the "Elect Priests," continue to flow, shaping the landscape of Western spirituality to this day.

Article By Antony R.B. Augay P∴M∴