La Iniciación · Año V, Nº 45 · January 1946

1When the commission that had drafted the rituals declared the result of its labours, Chefdebien and Bode still made some observations; and the commission had to devote itself anew to trying to set forth the text in clearer form.

2Twelve days later Willermoz had drafted and presented the three symbolic degrees at the 27th session, to be ratified.

3No new objections were made to him, save on one single point: the symbolic meaning of the number 3 — a number Willermoz presented as a "sacred mystery" whose study led "to a development of the greatest lights", and which was the true and supreme aim of Masonry.

4In vain did Willermoz attempt to make understood what that meaning was; the mason brothers were too far from the doctrine Martines de Pasqually had taught his disciples to be able to understand it; the adversaries stood firm and then, so that the set of rituals should be accepted, Willermoz resolved to sacrifice the point under discussion.

5Whether through his moderation, or because the representatives were tired after so many sessions, the first three degrees and the sketch of the fourth were approved; and it was established that a commission composed of brothers of the Provinces of Auvergne and Bourgogne should later be named, to finish the uncompleted rituals.

6As for the administrative reforms entrusted to the second commission, they remained unconcluded; and — the important and fundamental points on which the regulations were to be drafted having been established, points which were set forth by Henry de Virieu — it was resolved that four members of the commission should continue their labours after the close of the congress and, everything once finished, submit the four projects for ratification before they entered into force.

7The one charged with synthesising it all into a general code was Von Rosskampf.

8On 17 August, during the 18th session, the duke of Brunswick was again elected Grand Master General of the Order.

9The congress had reached its end.

10Before the congress members separated to return to their countries, their silhouettes were ordered made, and medals struck on whose obverse was stamped the effigy of Ferdinand of Brunswick with the title "Magnus magister totius ordinis", and on the reverse the device "tandem aurora lucessit".

11Willermoz and the martinists obtained, then, what they had proposed.

12Almost all the resolutions taken in 1778 at the congress of the Gauls had now been ratified; the statutes, rituals, etc., approved at the congress and in force in the Order of the Beneficent Knights, had been taken as the model to serve for the drafting of those of the whole Order; the rituals of the first three degrees, and the sketch of the fourth, drafted by Willermoz, had been approved; the spirit of the reform, finally — in the sense of infusing, at least in its moral principles, the doctrine of Pasqually and the spiritualist conception of the world according to Saint Martin into the lodges of the Strict Observance, as also of giving these a mystical-religious tendency — had triumphed.

13Ferdinand of Brunswick himself, and Charles of Hesse, during the time the congress lasted, were initiated by Willermoz into martinism. [Sic: the Spanish prints Femando.]

Our translation, period-faithful. Citable as our translation, never as the source.