Volume II closes with this number. The wrapper forms carry forward from Nos 18–19 unchanged except the date line — Año II — Diciembre de 1943 — N.º 20.
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La Iniciación: Mensuario del Grupo Independiente de Estudios Esotéricos
The Initiation: Monthly of the Independent Group of Esoteric Studies
La Iniciación · Año II, Nº 20 · December 1943
Gate passedSeeker and aboveModern transcription — not a facsimileOperator 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.
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1But the body is not merely a corpse.
2There are very "learned" people who try to place us in difficulties by asking: "Sir, you who are a spiritualist — did you ever find the soul under your scalpel?"..
3Well, you may answer them this: "Sir, if you are a watchmaker, tell me, have you found a working spring in a broken watch…?" It is exactly analogous.
4A corpse does not function and lives only in an anarchic mode; it is the society of tomorrow.
5A broken watch does not go either.
6The mystery of human life is as difficult to understand as that of the going of a watch, because elasticity — that faculty which makes a steel spring contract — is as mysterious scientifically as human life, and both have the same origin.
7Let us now examine the living or waking man.
8This man is formed of three physical parts constituting the body we have just studied, and, besides, of a force — we shall so call it — which actuates man while he sleeps.
9There is a state in which the gentleman infatuated with himself and the one who is not are equals, in which the beautiful young woman is not distinguished from the older or less beautiful one.
10This state, very interesting to study, is called sleep.
11Well then, when we sleep, is the body "stopped, halted"?
12Evidently not.
13All the organs function under the influence of a force which physicians call the unconscious, or — organic life.
14Here no anatomical or physiological classification is needed to understand what is meant.
15Simply imagine everything "that runs" while you sleep — that is, the respiratory, circulatory and digestive organs with their annexes — and you will then know the true domain of the unconscious, that is, of the "animal that dwells within us".
16But that is not the whole human being.
17In its turn, a third element will then act.
18It will be the conscious.
19We thus have three principles: physical body, organic life and conscious, which constitute the living man and about which I hope no "chicanery" will be made against me, since their existence cannot be placed in doubt.
20Let us now seek the origin of these three elements.
21OUR BODY is a garment which the Earth lends us for one existence and which she will take back, sooner or later.
22If, then, you care especially for your body, it may be said you are occupying yourselves with nothing more than the animals that dwell in you.
23Here the body is — let us not forget it — the centre of evolution of the whole animal nature.
24AND THE UNCONSCIOUS — what is it and whence does it come?
25—First, I need to remind you of a fact that some of you have perhaps forgotten.
26Before birth you were bound to your Lady Mother by a certain tie called the umbilical cord.
27And if you were philosophers before being born, you may perhaps have said to yourselves: "My mother?.., why, she does not exist!..." Well, what still remains of the umbilical cord is there to remind you of the prior and necessary existence of your mother with respect to you, during gestation.
28But just as we were re-bound to our mother by a tie invisible to us at that time — the umbilical cord — so now we are re-bound to the terrestrial atmosphere by an invisible tie, respiration, and it is from the atmospheric air that we draw our life. This is so true that, if "relations are cut" between us and the terrestrial atmosphere, we rapidly fail and die to the Earth.
2910
Our translation, period-faithful. Citable as our translation, never as the source.
The masthead is unchanged from Nº 19: Jehel directing, Pitágoras chief editor, Leona Constantia secretary, Juan Cantalupo administrator at Uruguay 1787.
The SUMARIO divides nine pieces between an Initiatic Part (obituary, order-structure essay, Androgony, astrology, asana, rejuvenation, Suddha) and a Literary Part (the Sikh conclusion and Maya's poem) — the standing two-part architecture of the run.
Antonio Olivio Rodríguez ("AOR", 1879–1943), founder of the Círculo Esotérico da Comunhão do Pensamento of São Paulo, one of Brazil's largest esoteric societies. The obituary is a primary document for the South American Martinist network: it names his initiator, his publishing programme, and his membership figures from the editor's first-hand visit.
Dr. Horacio de Carvalho is presented as the Martinist initiator of São Paulo who travelled to Paris to be prepared by Papus's circle — an explicit chain-of-transmission claim: Paris → Carvalho → AOR.
The passage unmasks a standing masthead name: Sévaka, listed among the review's contributors since the first numbers, "is known as Professor Wladomiro Lorenz" — the Czech-born Brazilian esotericist Francisco Valdomiro Lorenz. One of the run's rare on-page identifications of a pseudonym with a civil name.
Jehel dates his own biography: October 1925, São Paulo, travelling with the Venerable Master Cedaior to visit AOR; diploma order-number 30,568; an estimated 15–20 thousand active members. The Cedaior–Jehel pairing matches the 1926 Templo das Musas photograph published with Nº 13.
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"AOR has died…. long live AOR" — the royal proclamation formula (le roi est mort, vive le roi) transferred to an Unknown Superior: the office outlives the man.
The self-description essay of the whole enterprise: GIDEE → Martinist Order → Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Cross, presented as one "particular Road" in the image of Guaita and Saint-Yves d'Alveydre. This is the clearest statement in the run of how the review's publishing arm relates to its initiatic arms.
The declared purpose of Martinism "from the time of PAPUS": to form Unknown Superiors who serve in any sector of collective progress — the Order claims no ambition for its own growth as a sect.
The three organisations mapped onto the ternary the Androgony course teaches: GIDEE = visible body (material plane), Martinist Order = soul (astral), O.K.R.C. = spirit. The order-structure essay and the Papus lesson three pages later are the same doctrine at two scales.
Darío Velloso (founder of the Neo-Pythagorean Institute of Curitiba) and A. O. Rodríguez named as the two deceased South American exemplars of Martinist adaptation, "both S∴I∴ … their diplomas signed by PAPUS". Velloso appears in the 1926 photograph note as Dario Vellozo.
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Third instalment of Jehel's commentary on the First Degree; the quoted block that follows is a long verbatim extract of a Papus lesson on the three organic centres.
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Papus's watchmaker retort — the soul under the scalpel answered with the spring in a broken watch — is his stock materialism-refutation, elasticity standing for life as the unexplained mover.
The astral sense of Paracelsus: the unconscious as what binds the individual to the universe, offered as the key to telepathy and deathbed apparitions. The astral here is defined physiologically (respiration, organic life) before it is defined occultly — the course's consistent pedagogical order.
Surya's planetary course reaches Mars, quoting *J. Burgoyne's The Light of Egypt* (via Papus) and then Julevno** — the same two authorities the Saturn and Jupiter instalments leaned on. Burgoyne's Kabbalistic reading (Mars = the faculty of nourishment, angel Samael) sits beside the classical war-god material without tension.
The example list is a self-disclosure: among Scorpio-born the text places the Venerable Masters Paracelsus and Papus, the "profane" Victor Hugo, Napoleon and Hitler — and "the Brothers Jehel, Martha and others": the director and a masthead contributor give their own birth sign in print.
December 1943: Hitler appears not as the war's enemy but as an astrological type alongside Napoleon — both then glossed as "perjurers to initiatic engagements". Wartime neutrality expressed as typology; the run's only other mention of the war is equally oblique.
The Maha-Surya-Pranasana — ten postures with synchronised breath, opening with a standing salutation to the Sun — is structurally the Sūrya Namaskār family of sequences, here presented as a "synthesis of asanas" for busy city workers. Kapila's framing (health effects itemised by organ system, a 21/60/90/120/180-day effect calendar) is characteristic of his medicalised yoga throughout the run.
The technique text keys each position to "Nº 1 of Fig. Nº 16" — the plate on page 14. Only the first posture (Vevi-stha-asana, the standing salutation) is described before (Continuará); Volume II ends with the sequence begun but unfinished.
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Perspiratio insensibilis — Sanctorius's term from 17th-century iatrophysics — used here for the skin's insensible respiration: Kapila's habit of anchoring yogic hygiene in European medical vocabulary.
The rejuvenation series' physical factors resolve into three classes — pure water, solar radiation, vital dynamism (walks + asanas) — with the dietetic factor promised next. Continues the arteriosclerosis argument of Nº 19.
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The monthly census continues: 92 → 98 disciples (30 Sept → 31 Oct 1943), distributed Argentina 35, Brazil 28, Uruguay 35 — the run's running actuarial record of the S.D.M. across three countries. October protocol: documents 532–582.
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Srinivasachariar's doctrine of sannyasa as the completion of action (release comes only through perfect execution, not withdrawal) and tyaga as detachment from its fruit — Bhagavad-Gītā XVIII's pair, given in the Suddha reading where renunciation presupposes mastery rather than abstention.
The text names the path of world-service the Great Austral Path in one sentence and the Septentrional Path in the next two — either a translation slip or a deliberate pairing of southern/northern designations; the run gives no third occurrence to adjudicate. Signed "For the copy: Jehel 10-11-43".
The flowers-and-shroud legend of Nanak's passing — Hindu and Muslim disciples each finding their flowers fresh and the body gone — is the classical janamsakhi account, told here essentially intact. September 1538 at "Karaiarpur" (Kartarpur).
The ten-Guru list that closes the series is transmitted with visible wear: Amar Das appears as "Amandas", Har Rai as "Har Rat", Har Krishan as "Harrishan", Aurangzeb as "Aurengrib", and Tegh Bahadur's dates print as "1664-16765". The translation keeps every form and glosses each — the errors are themselves evidence of the article's (probably French) intermediary sources.
Reviewed against the concealment mandate: the phrase "a most beautiful race from the physical point of view" is a traveller's admiring description of the Udasi Sikhs, not racial doctrine; it stands unexcised. The same review cleared p. 19's "benefit of the race", where raza plainly means humankind.
Dateline Montevideo, 27 September 1943 — the Sikh series' conclusion was written two months before printing, and its closing benediction ("India hermosa e inolvidable…") is Kapila's own voice, not translation.
Maya's prose-poem is dedicated "to the dear little Brother Kunrath" — almost certainly a Brother's esoteric name taken from Heinrich Khunrath, the Amphitheatrum's author, whom the review's Rosicrucian lineage claims. The poem's closing image (the infinite current of KNOWING merging into the Ocean of Creative Silence) answers the cover motto: tired of learning, wishing at last to know.
The prospectus repeats Nº 19's three-city structure: Montevideo seat, Buenos Aires (Soc. PSYKE premises), and the La Plata group under Oscar di Montegnacco — the network's state at the close of 1943: three GIDEEs, two countries.
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New advertisement this number: ¡APARECIO! — Bucheli's Almanaque Astrológico Americano para 1944 (Year XI), "the Continent's only Yearbook" on astrology, spiritualism, esotericism, Rosicrucianism and American Prehistory. The Biblioteca Martinista card above it now prices all three titles (the Taro Adivinatorio at 6.50, unpriced in Nº 19) — the publishing programme moving in real time.
The first surviving asana figure plate of the run: five charcoal positions of the Maha-Surya-Pranasana, numbered 1–5 down the page, the printed caption set sideways beside them. The course's earlier instalments referred to figure plates that no surviving copy preserves; this one, Fig. Nº 16, survives because it was photographed with the wrapper. Extracted to the imagery layer.
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QA gate report
- PASS G1 coverage 339/339
- PASS G11 alignment 302/302
- PASS G0 source kind 1/1
- PASS G6 page anchoring 339/339
- PASS G3 bracket legality 339/339
- PASS G10 numeric fidelity 339/339
- PASS G2 no unanchored English 339/339
- PASS G4 no pipeline scaffolding 339/339