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One moment.
1JEAN-BAPTISTE WILLERMOZ Siento no poder presentaros un verdadero retrato de este Venerable Maestro.
2No existe sino esta “silueta” que publicamos hoy y por la que podéis, al menos, al menos fisonomía hermosa, alerta, enérgica y noble del Hno.
3Willermoz.
4Willermoz fue contemporáneo de Martines de Pasqually.
5Nació en Lyon, en 1 de Julio de 1730; era hijo de Claude Catherin Willermoz, comerciante en mercería, que al iniciarse el siglo XVIII había dejado la ciudad de Saint Claude, en Franche-Comté, para buscar fortuna en Lyon.
6Nuestro futuro hermano Willermoz fue aprendiz en comercio de sedas en la casa de Antoine Bagnion desde febrero de 1745 (a los 15 años de edad, pues); pero se quedó poco tiempo, ya que dos años más tarde se empleó en la firma Maréchalle y Cía.
7En 1754, ya se le instalado por su cuenta como fabricante de sedas.
8Willermoz era el segundo hijo de los trece que tuvo su madre.
9Antes que él nació su hermana Claudine Thérèse (futura Mme.
10Provensal) y después venían sus hermanos Pierre Jacques y Antoine, de los cuales nos ocuparemos.
11Como era fácil de deducir por su fisonomía y por su letra menudita y apretada, Willermoz era un hombre muy metódico, muy minucioso y bastante activo.
12Él y toda su familia paterna eran profundamente católicos.
13Willermoz fue iniciado en la masonería en 1750, a los 20 años de edad.
14Dos años después ya era Venerable (Presidente) de la Logia en la cual fuera iniciado.
15El Venerable Maestro Papus dice que Willermoz era Oficial de casi todos los ritos masónicos de su época y que era especialmente un organizador y un divulgador.
16En 1753, Willermoz se cansa de ser jefe, en Lyon, de una Logia inactiva y funda con 9 amigos la logia “La Pariate Amitié”.
17En 1756, sufre la perdida de su madre.
18En 1760, con los Hnos.
19Paganuci y Grandon, funda la Grande Loge Mère des Maîtres Reguliers, de la cual fue Venerable desde 1762 hasta 1763.
20En 1763, funda los “Chevaliers de l’Aigle Noir Rose Croix” y deja como Presidente de esa Corporación masónica a su hermano Pierre Jacques.
21Como la actividad comercial de Willermoz lo llevaba a París en cada primavera por razones de “moda” (recordemos que fabricaba sedas) se encuentra en París al comienzo de 1767 con el Maestro Martines de Pasqually y se hace iniciar en el Rito de los Ellus Cohens (base del futuro Martinismo).
22En junio de 1767 vuelve a Lyon, con el grado de Comendador de Oriente y Occidente (parece que ya veía Martines la necesidad de la síntesis como verdadero iniciado que era, y pese a lo que han dicho algunos de sus sucesores) y también con sus funciones de Inspector General de la Orden de los Ellus Cohens.
23En los primeros meses de 1768, el Hno.
24Cohen Bacon de la Chevalerie eleva a Willermoz al grado de Rosa Cruz y el maestro Martines de Pasqually protesta por esa elevación prematura efectuada por un ceremonial mal ejecutado, afirmando que eso tendría larga repercusión sobre la vida iniciática de Willermoz, lo que así fue, porque veremos que Willermoz jamás consiguió mucho en la vía mágica ni en la vía mística.
25Desde 1762, año de la partida de Martines de Pasqually para la isla de St.
26Domingo, Willermoz vuelve a una intensa actividad masónica, pero sin descuidar por eso su actividad de la Orden de los Ellus Cohens.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
1JEAN-BAPTISTE WILLERMOZ — I regret that I cannot present you with a true portrait of this Venerable Master.
2There exists only this “silhouette”, which we publish today, and by which you may at least [see the] handsome, alert, energetic and noble physiognomy of Brother
3Willermoz.
4Willermoz was a contemporary of Martines de Pasqually.
5He was born at Lyon on 1 July 1730; he was the son of Claude Catherin Willermoz, a haberdashery merchant who, at the opening of the eighteenth century, had left the town of Saint-Claude in Franche-Comté to seek his fortune in Lyon.
6Our future brother Willermoz was apprenticed in the silk trade in the house of Antoine Bagnion from February 1745 (at 15 years of age, therefore); but he remained a short time, for two years later he took employment with the firm of Maréchalle & Co.
7By 1754 he had already set up on his own account as a silk manufacturer.
8Willermoz was the second of the thirteen children his mother bore.
9Before him was born his sister Claudine Thérèse (the future Mme.
10Provensal), and after him came his brothers Pierre Jacques and Antoine, with whom we shall be concerned.
11As was easy to deduce from his physiognomy and from his small, cramped hand, Willermoz was a very methodical man, very meticulous and tolerably active.
12He and all his father's family were deeply Catholic.
13Willermoz was initiated into masonry in 1750, at 20 years of age.
14Two years later he was already Venerable (President) of the Lodge in which he had been initiated.
15The Venerable Master Papus says that Willermoz was an Officer of almost all the masonic rites of his time, and that he was especially an organiser and a populariser.
16In 1753 Willermoz grows weary of being head, in Lyon, of an inactive Lodge, and founds with 9 friends the lodge “La Parfaite Amitié” [Sic: “Pariate” printed].
17In 1756 he suffers the loss of his mother.
18In 1760, with Brothers
19Paganuci and Grandon, he founds the Grande Loge Mère des Maîtres Réguliers, of which he was Venerable from 1762 to 1763.
20In 1763 he founds the “Chevaliers de l'Aigle Noir Rose-Croix” and leaves his brother Pierre Jacques as President of that masonic Corporation.
21As Willermoz's business took him to Paris every spring on account of “fashion” (let us recall that he manufactured silks), he meets in Paris at the beginning of 1767 with Master Martines de Pasqually and has himself initiated into the Rite of the Élus Coëns (the basis of the future Martinism).
22In June 1767 he returns to Lyon with the degree of Commander of East and West (it seems that Martines already saw the necessity of synthesis, as the true initiate he was, whatever some of his successors have said), and also with his functions as Inspector General of the Order of the Élus Coëns.
23In the first months of 1768 Brother
24Coën Bacon de la Chevalerie raises Willermoz to the degree of Rose-Croix, and Master Martines de Pasqually protests at that premature elevation, performed by a badly executed ceremonial, declaring that it would have a long repercussion upon Willermoz's initiatic life — as indeed it did, for we shall see that Willermoz never achieved much either in the magical or in the mystical way.
25From 1762, the year of Martines de Pasqually's departure for the island of Saint-
26Domingue, Willermoz returns to an intense masonic activity, without on that account neglecting his activity in the Order of the Élus Coëns.
Our translation, period-faithful. Citable as our translation, never as the source.
Here the article states the real difference between the two branches, and does not pretend it is small: Bricaud's Martinism excluded mixed initiation and admitted only masons, and therefore grew more slowly than Papus's "by virtue of the necessity of gathering only masons and of excluding women". Montevideo follows Papus, and says so.
And then the generosity: although Bricaud's branch went another way, "all who work for the same ideal… ought to feel themselves brothers", and he is commemorated every 21 February regardless. The magazine states a disagreement and then refuses to make it a quarrel.
The correct date, in the body of the article: Bricaud died 21 February 1934, aged 53, having named Chevillon his successor. Chevillon was alive when this was printed and was murdered in March 1944, fourteen months later.
"1872 – CEDAIOR – 1943." The founder of the South American Martinist Order died on 22 January 1943, three weeks before this number went out, and the magazine announces it in five lines with the biography promised for the next issue. Nº 9 p. 2, printed the month before, had described him installing the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Cross at Curitiba in 1927 and continuing as its President "in Active Silence". This is the last issue in which he is written of as living.
The 21st of February carries three commemorations at once — Willermoz, the Unknown Martinists, and Bricaud — and the issue gives one article to each. It is the only number in the run built entirely around a single date.
Willermoz was indeed a contemporary of Martines de Pasqually and the pivotal figure of Lyon masonry. The dates here are close but not exact against the standard references, which give his birth as 10 July 1730 rather than the 1st, and his death as 29 May 1824 rather than the 20th. The internal arithmetic holds either way: 1730 to 1824 is the 94 years the article states.
The meeting that matters: Willermoz, in Paris on silk business in early 1767, is initiated by Martines de Pasqually into the Rite of the Élus Coëns — "the basis of the future Martinism". The article is careful to date it and to explain why he was in Paris at all, which is the kind of detail that makes a chronology checkable.
A striking piece of internal criticism: Martines protests that Willermoz was raised to Rose-Croix prematurely by a badly executed ceremonial, and predicts it will mark his whole initiatic life. The article then endorses the prediction — "Willermoz never achieved much either in the magical or in the mystical way". A commemorative piece that declines to flatter its subject.
The Convent des Gaules of 1778 and the Convent of Wilhelmsbad of 1782 are both historical, as is Willermoz's achievement in carrying the grades of Profès and Grand Profès — Élus Coën teaching in masonic dress — into the Strict Observance. The article's account of the backlash is also fair: the reform did not take in the lodges.
Willermoz's turn to magnetism in 1784 and his entry into "La Concorde" belong to the real Lyon story, and Mesmer was in France in exactly those years. The diagnosis of diseases in horses "afterwards verified by autopsy" is reported by the article, not evidenced.
The Cahier de l'Agent Inconnu is genuine and is the best-known document of the Lyon circle — revelations received from 1785 through a young woman described as a magnetic subject. The article calls this the summit of Willermoz's personal mystical career, and on the evidence of the archive that is a defensible judgement.
The verdict is the most honest sentence in the article: revere in him "not a great initiate but, especially, the man of heart", who attempted the hardest thing — "to try to re-spiritualise masonic rites" — and then, drily, "whoever has tried it knows what it means."
The closing point is made deliberately and is the magazine's own position: women have always had the right to be initiated in truly initiatic rites, and Willermoz initiated his own sister and Mlle. de Chevrier. It sets up the criticism of Bricaud two pages later for excluding them.
The heading is wrong. It prints "Jean Bricaud (1881–1943)"; the article itself gives his death correctly at p. 6 as 21 February 1934, at the age of 53 — which is right, and which is why the 21st of February is a commemoration at all. 1881 to 1934 is 53 years; 1881 to 1943 would be 62. The compositor appears to have set the current year. Marked [Sic] in the translation.
Two threads open here. Bricaud studied magnetism with Maître Philippe of Lyon — "Philippe Nizier (Amo)" — who reappears on p. 17 as one of the Masters most often seen or felt by members of the Order. And he studied Kabbalah with Jacques Charrot, "one of the disciples of Eliphas Lévi", which puts the magazine two steps from Lévi by its own account.
The chain of office is accurately given: Téder (Charles Détré) succeeded Papus and died on 25 September 1918, leaving the Memphis-Misraïm hierophancy vacant until Bricaud assumed it on 10 December 1919. The dates are the ones the Order's own records give.
The commemoration of the Unknown Martinists is analysed on three planes — moral, astral, spiritual — and the middle one is the most revealing: performing the ceremony is said to set the accumulated work of the dead vibrating in the terrestrial atmosphere and so to "re-vitalise the Invisible Current of the Order". Memory is treated as a mechanism, not a sentiment.
Paschimottanasana is correctly named and described — seated, legs extended, forehead to the knees, the great toes grasped — and the instruction to hold the breath throughout and to increase by one minute a day to a maximum of ten is specific enough to follow. The half posture offered to those who cannot fold is sound teaching.
The claims made for this posture are the most extensive in the run: cure of liver inflammation, gastritis, lumbago, rheumatic pain, haemorrhoids, constipation, and the disappearance of neck wrinkles. These are reproduced as printed and are not endorsed. The account of the spleen absorbing solar energy and individualising it as "pale rose" particles is period occult physiology, not anatomy.
The glossary on Ida, Pingala and Sushumna is accurate to the tradition: the left current negative and lunar, the right positive and solar, the central channel between them, with Sushumna also identified with the spinal cord. Naming Pingala "the Vehicle of the Gods" and locating the doctrine in a Taraka Raja Yoga school is a Theosophical framing rather than a Sanskrit one.
The annual report is the most administratively candid document in the run. The Grand Council grew from 13 members to 17; it aims at 21 "as it was in the time of Papus and as it ought to be, in accordance with our internal Law Nº 1". An occult order publishing its own constitutional arithmetic is unusual.
1,122 documents passed through the register, and the writer stops to note "the influence of the numbers 11 and 22". The count is real and the numerology is imposed on it — the same move as the fifteen conspirators becoming Tarot XV in Nº 9. Worth marking because the arithmetic elsewhere in this report is scrupulous.
The cash account reconciles, but only on the second of two figures given for receipts. A balance of $411.00 brought forward and a closing balance of $3,147.85 require receipts of $2,736.85 — which is the figure the article itself uses two lines later. The $2,736.65 printed here is a slip of two digits.
The most human passage in the volume. Outsiders ask, "fraternally", what these men live on — and the President answers in public, by name: Asuri Kapila, Surya and Pitágoras have small private incomes and live very modestly on them; Jehel gives language lessons. And then the detail that settles it: the Order owes Surya $550, more than a third of its annual dues income. Nobody is drawing from it; one of them is lending to it.
"In our Order the Degrees are not given away out of friendship nor sold for gain." The claim is then supported with numbers — 17 members raised across all grades in a year, out of hundreds — which is a low enough proportion to be credible.
Third statement of parentage in three issues: the review is "made in the image and likeness of the one Papus created". Nº 2.9 p. 1 said it of the body, Nº 1.6 p. 4 named him founder of both; here it is listed as one of the year's achievements.
And here the Ramana thread closes a circle. Among the currents the Order reports serving in 1942 is "The Ramana Ashrama (the Venerable Master Maharshi)" — the same ashram a Uruguayan contributor had described visiting in Nº 1, pp. 22–25. What read as one traveller's account turns out to have been an institutional relationship.
The stated directive is explicit and worth recording given what the run is screened for: a fraternal welcome to every teaching, eastern or western, "without preferences of race, of continent or of sect, and without the predominance of one sex over the other". Printed in February 1943.
The exhibition included portraits of "the Masters Maharshi and Saint-Martin" by Sister Fátima, and 106 works by Brother Sadananda including portraits of Peter Deunov and Krishnamurti. Deunov and Krishnamurti were living men in 1942. The Press has not located the catalogue; the works are recorded as described.
A three-month radio programme — "The Hour of the Mysterious Sciences", on La Voz del Aire — and a "Chain of Thought" of hundreds petitioning nightly at 21h30 for the sick. It was discontinued for want of money. This is the magazine at its most concretely institutional: a broadcast schedule, a station name, and an hour.
The cures reported here — a cardiac case given up by doctors, pulmonary lesions cicatrised in under three months, a "miraculous" operation, an obstetric intervention — are reproduced as printed and are not endorsed. No records are cited beyond the Order's own minutes, and no physician is named. Note that the writer himself sets "miraculous" in quotation marks and follows it with "(??)".
The five Masters said to be most often seen or felt are named: Amo (Maître Philippe of Lyon), Maharshi, Papus, Subrahmaniayananda and Aurobindo. Four of the five appear elsewhere in the run as historical figures with documented lives; the list reads as a map of the Order's actual affiliations rather than a pantheon.
Stanislas de Guaita and Helena Petrovna Blavatsky are named among beings seen on special occasions. The Press holds Guaita's Le Serpent de la Genèse, acquired for Nº 9 — so a figure the Order reports encountering in vision is one whose actual book now sits in the library beside this issue.
The balance sheet checks out almost everywhere and fails in two places. Correct: furniture 1,022.78 less 120 gives 902.78; publications 309.30 less 26.40 gives 282.90; cash 3,147.85 less 3,054.55 gives 93.30; the GIDEE contribution 410.16 less 44 gives 366.16; and both grand totals balance exactly at 9,699.84 and 4,309.88. Wrong: rents 1,775 less 600 is 1,175, not the 1,165 printed. And Objects of Worship at 230.60 less a deduction printed as 2.36 gives 228.24, not the 218.24 shown — the true deduction must be 12.36, a digit lost at the column edge. For a hand-set table of twenty accounts, two slips is a good showing.