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1En Oriente se da un significado muy diferente a la expresión “prolongar la vida”, del que se le da en Occidente.
2En efecto, en Occidente se entiende con esta expresión “devolver al individuo sus facultades sexuales a expensas de las animales”; sistema Varonofí, Steinach, Brown, Fequard, etc., sistemas muy interesantes sin duda desde el punto de vista de la analítica ciencia moderna, pero que no prolongan la juventud sino simplemente, devuelven, por un tiempo determinado, la fuerza sexual que no es lo mismo que la juventud del organismo.
3(Continuará) Un Gran Iniciado Martinista: Honorato de Balzac (Continuación y fin) Por PITÁGORAS, S:: I:: Pero una de las más evidentes pruebas de la iniciación martinista de Balzac, es una página de “Seraphita” (que, como se sabe, es un reverente homenaje a Manuel Swedenborg y una maravillosa explicación de la doctrina del sabio iluminado sueco) en la cual reproduce casi textualmente otra página de “L’Homme de Désir” de Saint Martin.
4Ahora bien, como “Seraphita” fue publicado por primera vez en 1835 y la primera edición de “L’Homme de Désir” remonta a 1790, es evidente que ha sido Balzac el que, en su obra, se ha referido a la de Saint Martin.
5¿Habría por acaso alguien que pudiera acusar a Balzac de plagio?
6Evidentemente no.
7Sin embargo, los del texto son demasiados semejantes para que se pueda pensar en un simple recuerdo por parte de Balzac de la lectura de la obra de Saint Martin.
8No nos queda, pues, sino pensar que Balzac no ha querido mostrar abiertamente lo que debía a Saint Martin en consecuencia de su iniciación martinista, - que debía tener sus razones para mantener oculta – y que, si lo cita sin nombrarlo, debe haber sido exclusivamente por razones de simple discreción.
9Para que los lectores puedan darse cuenta de las correspondencias existentes entre los pasajes de las referidas obras, los transcribiremos, escribiendo en negritas las palabras y las frases comunes.
10“Pastores de almas, que habéis descarriado vuestras ovejas en vez de conducirlas al pasto; pastores de las almas que las habéis hecho devorar por el león feroz; o que las habéis transformado vosotros mismos en lobos carniceros.
11“Sabios de la tierra que habéis sido demasiado sensibles a los alicientes de la falsa luz, para serlo a los encantos atrayentes de los verdaderos tesoros que Dios depositó en el alma humana.
1214
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.
1In the East a very different meaning is given to the expression “to prolong life” from the one given it in the West.
2In effect, in the West this expression is understood as “restoring to the individual his sexual faculties at the expense of animals” — the systems of Voronoff, Steinach, Brown-Séquard, etc. — systems no doubt very interesting from the standpoint of analytic modern science, but which do not prolong youth: they simply restore, for a determined time, the sexual force, which is not the same thing as the youth of the organism.
3(To be continued) — A Great Martinist Initiate: Honoré de Balzac (Continuation and end). By PYTHAGORAS, S∴I∴ — But one of the most evident proofs of Balzac's Martinist initiation is a page of “Séraphîta” (which, as is known, is a reverent homage to Emanuel Swedenborg and a marvellous explanation of the doctrine of the illumined Swedish sage) in which he reproduces, almost textually, a page of Saint-Martin's “L'Homme de Désir”.
4Now, since “Séraphîta” was first published in 1835 and the first edition of “L'Homme de Désir” goes back to 1790, it is evident that it was Balzac who, in his work, drew upon Saint-Martin's.
5Could anyone, perchance, accuse Balzac of plagiarism?
6Evidently not.
7Nevertheless, the passages of the two texts are too much alike for one to suppose a mere recollection, on Balzac's part, of having read Saint-Martin's work.
8Nothing remains, then, but to conclude that Balzac did not wish to show openly what he owed to Saint-Martin in consequence of his Martinist initiation — which he must have had his reasons for keeping hidden — and that, if he cites him without naming him, it must have been solely for reasons of simple discretion.
9So that readers may see for themselves the correspondences existing between the passages of the works in question, we shall transcribe them, setting in bold type the words and phrases they share.
10“Shepherds of souls, who have led your sheep astray instead of guiding them to pasture; shepherds of souls, who have let them be devoured by the ferocious lion — or have yourselves been transformed into ravening wolves.
11“Sages of the earth, who have been too sensible to the lures of the false light to be sensible to the attractive charms of the true treasures God deposited in the human soul.
12· 14
Our translation, period-faithful. Citable as our translation, never as the source.
The Master AMO is identified in parentheses as "Phillippe" — Nizier Anthelme Philippe of Lyon (1849–1905), the healer whom Papus openly called his spiritual master. The initials AMO recur in the transmission diagram of Nº 5 ("spiritual power of the West, Christic Realisation"), which places this childhood healing episode inside the run's own map of the current. The spelling with two l's is the retype's.
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A private circle at 18, synthesising "Egyptian mysteries" for voluntary trance, is the standard fin-de-siècle occult apprenticeship — compare Guaita's private study circle before the O.K.R.C. The dagger with undulating blade recalls the flaming sword of Masonic and Martinist furniture rather than any Egyptian instrument.
The GROUPE INDEPENDANT D'ETUDES ESOTERIQUES is Papus's Paris circle — the body whose name the Montevideo GIDEE takes for its own. We hold the first number of its organ: L'Initiation, October 1888, is on this shelf, and the reader can walk from this sentence to the journal the young Cedaior would have read. Montagne, Raymond and Moutin are named only here; Raymond and Moutin reappear below as his companions in Martinism (reported, not independently verified).
Initiated by Sédir in 1892, esoteric name SDR2H — read by the author as "eighth disciple initiated by Sédir". Sédir (Yvon Le Loup, 1871–1926) was himself barely 21 in 1892, which makes the date early but not impossible; Chacornac places Sédir's own entry into the Martinist circle around 1890–91. Reported on the family's authority; no lodge register is held to check it against.
The lodge HERMANUBIS is attested in Martinist records of the 1890s as a Paris lodge under the Supreme Council; the description "devoted to the mystical way, preferentially oriental" matches its reputation. That its Master of Ceremonies in 1893 was the future Cedaior is the family's report.
The Adept's prophecy — "you will go to countries overseas and there you will have your most effective and fruitful mission" — is the run's own origin story told in advance: the South American mission is this Review. The thorn-and-rose image returns in the memorial number, Nº 10, whose commemorative article closes on the same figure.
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Of this roster of the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Cross — Guaita, Saint-Yves d'Alveydre, Péladan, Barlet, Oswald Wirth, Papus, Sédir, Lermina — two are on this shelf in the original: *Guaita's Le Serpent de la Genèse* and Péladan's Istar**. Saint-Yves was the Order's honorary president rather than a working member; Péladan seceded in 1890 to found his own Rose-Croix — the list remembers the Order at its widest.
The raising of Hiram by the "five points of fellowship" — foot to foot, knee to knee, breast to breast, hand to back, the Word given in the embrace — is described accurately against printed Masonic ritual of the period. The author's numbering ("57th") continues the clause-by-clause commentary begun in earlier numbers, treating the Craft ritual as a text to be exegeted like scripture.
The founding of the Grand Lodge in London on 24 June 1717 by four lodges is standard Masonic history. The argument drawn from it — that "regularity" is administratively illusory because the four lodges left older initiatic obediences — is the Martinist polemic for spiritual over documentary legitimacy, and it reappears wherever the run touches Masonry.
Read in full against the excision standard: this passage and 6:004 are the run's most explicit statement of universalism — union "of all nations, of all continents, of all races, WITHOUT EXCEPTIONS". The keyword screen flagged both; the reading shows them to be the doctrine's centre, not its failure. White and Black Magic are here defined purely by union versus separation.
The folio device "A A et MEN U M" interleaves AMEN and AUM — the same closing device set as "AMEN et AUM" in Nº 11. The compositor breaks the two words across each other so the West's seal and the East's seal are typographically one word: the whole doctrine of the run in a printer's line.
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The author claims the complete table of peregrine signs — Neptune and Uranus included — had never been published in the modern epoch. The traditional dignities behind it are Ptolemaic (Tetrabiblos is on this shelf); the extension to the outer planets is necessarily post-classical, and Surya's stated method — least affinity, at most of "face" — is his own reconstruction of why the ancients chose the signs they did.
An erratum published against the run's own Nº 8: Mars is missing from the debilitated planets in the horoscope diagram there. That diagram is the worked-example horoscope plate we hold and mirror — the reader can open Nº 8 at page 11 and see the very figure being corrected. The run corrects itself in print; the correction is part of the record.
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Saturn as ruler from a Capricorn ascendant follows the classical domicile scheme exactly; the "secondary ruler" by decanate announced for the next number follows the Chaldean order. The pedagogy — rule, table, worked example, correction — is a correspondence course in the strict sense.
Reproduced as printed, not endorsed. The claim that asanas can cure leprosy, syphilis, tuberculosis and the rest is period naturopathic doctrine, stated here with the author's own limit — asanas contraindicated in acute febrile illness — but far beyond anything supportable. The passage is preserved because it is what the Review taught in 1943; it is not health guidance.
The "Spiritual Diary" — thirty daily questions of conduct, diet, chastity, anger, charity, silence — is the examen of conscience crossed with the yogic niyama of self-study. Compare Franklin's virtue ledger for the form and the Philokalia's nightly review for the lineage; the instrument is old, the questionnaire's bluntness ("how many lies did you tell or were obliged to tell") is the Review's own.
"True Unknown Philosophers" — le Philosophe Inconnu was Saint-Martin's pen-name, and the phrase is a deliberate wink: his Des erreurs et de la vérité and Tableau naturel stand on this shelf in the French. The sentence quietly places the alchemists of the inner laboratory in Saint-Martin's line two pages before the Balzac article makes the debt explicit.
The first quotation is the opening of Rubén Darío's "Canción de otoño en primavera" (1905), exactly rendered. The second stanza ("Forever I leave exultation behind…") is attributed by the author to Darío but has not been located in his canonical collections; it may be a memory-quotation or a translation of another poet — recorded as the author's attribution, unverified.
"Varonofí, Steinach, Brown, Fequard" — the retype's rendering of Serge Voronoff, Eugen Steinach and Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard, the three names of 1920s–30s rejuvenation science (gland grafting, vasoligature, organotherapy). The English normalises the names; the Spanish preserves the retype's garble as the witness prints it.
The article's central claim — that a page of Séraphîta reproduces a page of Saint-Martin's L'Homme de Désir almost textually — can now be walked in this reader: Séraphîta stands on this shelf in Balzac's French and Wormeley's English, acquired because Nº 11 and this number argue for it. The parallel passage is quoted across the next two pages.
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The author announces the shared phrases will be set in bold type — and the retype we hold sets no bold anywhere: the comparative device this paragraph promises is invisible in our witness. The label disagrees with the thing it labels; only a photographic copy of the 1943 printing could recover which words were emphasised.
Verified against the held text. The Wilfrid speech quoted as Séraphîta "pages 337-338, Centenary Edition" stands in our own copy: "Ye have defiled the earth, perverted the Word, prostituted justice… I shall warn those of my brethren who still can hear the Voice, that they may slake their thirst at the springs that you have hidden." The Spanish translation tracked Wormeley's English sense for sense; the scene sits late in the book, in the vision before the Assumption.
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The La Bienfaisance archive story is real in outline: Willermoz's Lyon papers survived him, and Papus's access to Willermoz material in the 1890s is the documentary spine of his Martinès de Pasqually (Paris 1895) — the work footnoted here at [1], likewise not yet on this shelf. "Elie Steel" and "Cavarnier" are the retype's spellings; the chain of custody is reported on Papus's authority.
The letter of Martines de Pasqually to Willermoz, 13 August 1768, mentioning "a Balzac of La Rochelle", is in the published Pasqually correspondence — and Papus's honest failure to connect that Balzac to the novelist, quoted here, is what gives the later categorical claim its weight: the author shows the negative result before the positive tradition.
Gérard van Rijnberk (the retype prints "Van Rijnbeck"), Un thaumaturge au XVIIIe siècle: Martines de Pasqually, 2 vols, 1935–1938 — footnote [2] cites vol. II p. 29 ff. The chain that follows is Chaboseau's oral testimony at Sceaux in 1938, explicitly undocumented; van Rijnberk records it as testimony, and this article inherits exactly that status: reported, important, unproven.
Two printed dates fail against standard biography: André Chénier was born in 1762, not 1752; and Hennequin is given the same dates as Latouche (1785-1851) in the next sentence — a compositor's eye-skip; the advocate Antoine-Louis-Marie Hennequin lived 1786–1840. The chain's shape (Saint-Martin → Lanoue → Chénier and Hennequin → Latouche → Balzac and Desbarolles → Noüel de Latouche → Chaboseau) is as van Rijnberk reports it; the dates are the retype's errors, preserved in the Spanish as printed.
Henri de Latouche (1785–1851), who edited Chénier's poems in 1819 and knew Balzac well in the 1820s, is the one link in the chain with an independently documented close tie to Balzac — which is precisely why the oral tradition naming him as Balzac's initiator has held such appeal. Desbarolles (1801–1886 by most references; the retype prints 1804–1880) is the chiromancer whose Mystères de la main was a nineteenth-century standard.
The occasion is datable: the transfer of the presidency in Uruguay on 1 March 1943 — Juan José de Amézaga's inauguration, which ended the Baldomir transition. The "illustrious brother", a diplomat and man of science left unnamed at his own wish, was in Montevideo for that ceremony; the Review's discretion has so far defeated identification, and the anonymity is respected as printed.
The roster of the 5 March meeting is the estate's own map: Ramana Ashrama represented by Asuri Kapila, Suddha Dharma within Martinism by Jehel — the Suddha Dharma Mandalam whose seal is reproduced at Nº 29 p. 16 — the O.K.R.C., the South American Martinist Order, and the GIDEE itself. One paragraph holds the whole ecology of the Montevideo work in 1943.
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"Children of one same Father, we are Brothers even when we are ignorant of it" — the meeting's closing formula restates the White-Magic-as-union doctrine of p. 6 in devotional key, and the "oriental greeting" that ends the number, "My soul is with yours", is the run's recurring seal for East–West unity of practice.
Asuri Kapila's asana course resumes with counsel rather than a new posture; the nine plates published so far (Figs. 1–9, Padmasana through Savasana) are all held and shown in this reader at their pages in Nº 3–8. The advice to practise selectively by ailment reads against the table on the next page.
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This page carries the two texts side by side as the article promised: Saint-Martin's subterranean vision (the shepherds, the rich, the assembly in gold showing their worm-eaten bodies) and then Balzac's reworking of it — Wilfrid before the seated ministers, kings, warriors and sages. The Balzac half is verifiable in our held Séraphîta; the row of dots at 15:010 is the article's own ellipsis between its two exhibits, preserved as printed.
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The Saint-Martin quotation is cited to L'Homme de Désir, paragraph 83 — and the citation now verifies: the 1790 Lyon printing (Gallica, 432 pp, acquired and gated into the shelf on this citation) carries the passage at image 150: «L'horreur de ce spectacle effraie le vieillard ; l'odeur infecte de ces plaies le suffoque ; l'esprit le laisse baigné de pleurs, & lui ordonne d'avertir ceux de ses frères qui sont encore dans la maison de leur père». The review's Spanish is a faithful rendering with one shift: «la casa de su padre» (his father) where the French reads leur père (their father). Third work acquired because the run cited it.
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