La Iniciación: Mensuario del Grupo Independiente de Estudios Esotéricos
The Initiation: Monthly of the Independent Group of Esoteric Studies
La Iniciación · Año II, Nº 12 · April 1943
Gate passedSeeker and aboveModern transcription — not a facsimileGIDEE / Orden Martinista de América del SurOperator ruling: no copyright implications asserted for this work. Uruguay life+50 (Leo d. 1970 → PD 2020); US URAA restoration assessed at ~2041 in the collection plan and overridden by the operator.283 of 283 segments translated · 19 ppsha 089b419232a9…
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1Tierra, no lo está porque es regente de ciertas “faces” (medio decanato) de Virgo y Capricornio.
2Neptuno y Urano, cuyos lugares de “peregrinación” jamás fueron publicados, tienen ambos, y especialmente el primero, su menor afinidad en la triplicidad de Fuego, y su mayor afinidad en la de Aire y Agua.
3Cuando lleguemos al estudio de la Astrología Esotérica, veremos las razones místicas y físicas de todo ello.
4Sigamos, ahora, con la clasificación de los planetas de nuestro ejemplo.
5De acuerdo con las reglas citadas en este artículo, y refiriéndonos al diagrama publicado en el número “8” de “LA INICIACIÓN”, hallaremos como “accidentalmente debilitados” a los siguientes planetas: Por hallarse en la 6ª, 8ª y 12ª Casa;: Júpiter, Sol, MERCURIO, Marte.
6Por hallarse retrogradando: ningún planeta.
7Por “peregrinación”: MARTE, Venus, Luna.
8Por estar “féral”, es decir, “sin aspectos”: ningún planeta.
9Pero como, por otra parte, hemos visto antes que Júpiter, el Sol, Venus y la Luna poseían “dignidades” fuertes, quiere decir que hallamos realmente DEBILITADOS solamente a MERCURIO y MARTE en lo que se refiere a debilidades accidentales.
10A Neptuno ya lo teníamos como esencialmente debilitado.
11Antes de terminar este asunto, pedimos a los lectores, anoten que, en el diagrama del horóscopo publicado en el Nº 8 de la Revista, falta incluir a MARTE en los debilitados, pues su calidad de “regente secundario” no lo exime de tal estado.
12GRADOS CRÍTICOS Tomando por base los puntos del Zodíaco que la Luna “toca” al iniciar cada día de su marcha, contando a partir del primer grado de Aries y con la velocidad media de la Luna, de 13 grados diarios, se obtiene “puntos sensibles” del Zodíaco llamados “GRADOS CRÍTICOS”, en los cuales los planetas reciben un AUMENTO de la fuerza que poseen por naturaleza propia y por la cualidades que allí reciben por la dignidad, exaltación, debilidad, etc. Tales grados críticos se sitúan en la forma que damos a continuación, y tiene una “órbita” de casi tres grados, es decir: uno antes, el crítico propiamente dicho y uno después.
13El cuadro de grados críticos quedará, pues, construido así: SIGNOS GRADOS CRÍTICOS Cardinales: Aries, Cáncer, Libra y Capricornio: 1.º - 13.º - 26.º Fijos: Tauro, Leo, Escorpión y Acuario: 9.º - 21.º Comunes: Géminis, Virgo, Sagitario y Piscis: 4.º - 17.º De acuerdo con dicho cuadro y refiriéndonos al diagrama del ya citado horóscopo, tendremos como “Planetas en Grados Críticos”: JÚPITER (a 13 grados de Cáncer) MARTE (a 5 grados de Virgo) URANO (a 4 grados de Géminis) 9
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.
derivedpage 9
1Earth, is not so because it is ruler of certain “faces” (half-decanates) of Virgo and Capricorn.
2Neptune and Uranus, whose places of “peregrination” were never published, both have — and the first especially — their least affinity in the triplicity of Fire, and their greatest in those of Air and Water.
3When we come to the study of Esoteric Astrology, we shall see the mystical and physical reasons for all this.
4Let us continue now with the classification of the planets of our example.
5According to the rules cited in this article, and referring to the diagram published in number “8” of “LA INICIACIÓN”, we shall find the following planets “accidentally debilitated”: For standing in the 6th, 8th and 12th Houses: Jupiter, Sun, MERCURY, Mars.
6For being retrograde: no planet.
7For “peregrination”: MARS, Venus, Moon.
8For being “feral”, that is, “without aspects”: no planet.
9But since, on the other hand, we have already seen that Jupiter, the Sun, Venus and the Moon possessed strong “dignities”, it follows that we find really DEBILITATED only MERCURY and MARS as regards accidental debilities.
10Neptune we already had as essentially debilitated.
11Before closing this subject, we ask our readers to note that in the diagram of the horoscope published in Nº 8 of the Review, MARS is missing from the debilitated planets, for its quality of “secondary ruler” does not exempt it from that state.
12CRITICAL DEGREES — Taking as a basis the points of the Zodiac which the Moon “touches” at the start of each day of her march, counting from the first degree of Aries and with the Moon's mean velocity of 13 degrees a day, one obtains “sensitive points” of the Zodiac called “CRITICAL DEGREES”, in which the planets receive an INCREASE of the force they possess by their own nature and by the qualities they receive there through dignity, exaltation, debility, etc. These critical degrees are situated as we give below, and have an “orb” of almost three degrees — that is: one before, the critical degree properly so called, and one after.
13The table of critical degrees will thus be constructed as follows: SIGNS — CRITICAL DEGREES: Cardinal — Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn: 1st · 13th · 26th. Fixed — Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius: 9th · 21st. Common — Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces: 4th · 17th. According to this table, and referring to the diagram of the horoscope already cited, we shall have as “Planets in Critical Degrees”: JUPITER (at 13 degrees of Cancer), MARS (at 5 degrees of Virgo), URANUS (at 4 degrees of Gemini) · 9
Our translation, period-faithful. Citable as our translation, never as the source.
Commentarywhole issue ·
Historical[S-V]citesini:2.12:1:004
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.
→ ini:1.5
Comparative[C]ini:2.12:1:014
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.
Historical[P-V†]ini:2.12:2:003
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).
Historical[R]ini:2.12:2:004
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.
Historical[S-V]ini:2.12:2:005
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.
Cross-estate[P-V]echoesini:2.12:3:003
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.
→ ini:2.10
Cross-estate[P-V]ini:2.12:3:009
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.
Comparative[S-V]ini:2.12:4:002
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.
Historical[S-V]ini:2.12:5:004
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.
Historical[P-V]ini:2.12:6:007
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.
Cross-estate[P-V]echoesini:2.12:7:011
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.
→ ini:2.11
Comparative[C]ini:2.12:8:007
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.
Cross-estate[P-V]correctsini:2.12:9:011
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.
→ ini:1.8
Comparative[S-V]ini:2.12:10:002
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.
Historical[I]ini:2.12:11:007
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.
Comparative[C]ini:2.12:11:014
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.
Cross-estate[P-V†]ini:2.12:12:012
"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.
Historical[S-V]ini:2.12:13:004
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.
Historical[S-V]ini:2.12:14:002
"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.
Cross-estate[P-V]citesini:2.12:14:003
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.
→ balzac:1
Historical[P-V†]ini:2.12:14:009
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.
Cross-estate[P-V]verifiesini:2.12:16:007
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.
→ balzac:1:79:002
Historical[S-V]ini:2.12:16:010
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.
Historical[S-V]ini:2.12:16:012
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.
Historical[R]ini:2.12:17:002
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.
Historical[S-V]ini:2.12:17:004
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.
Historical[S-V]ini:2.12:17:005
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.
Historical[S-V]ini:2.12:17:009
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.
Cross-estate[P-V]citesini:2.12:18:003
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.
→ ini:3.29
Comparative[C]ini:2.12:19:002
"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.
Cross-estate[P-V]citesini:2.12:10:009
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.
→ ini:1.3
Cross-estate[P-V]citesini:2.12:15:013
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.
→ balzac:1
Historical[P-V]citation_verifiedini:2.12:16:001
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.