La Iniciación · Año V, Nº 45 · January 1946

1"Martinism — as Daruty writes — which had silently provoked this congress, exercised in it a great influence; its doctrines dominated in the new rituals, and even the name of its Mother Lodge figured in the title of the new Order".

2Nevertheless, in spite of all these triumphs — which might finally have oriented Masonry toward the realisation of its true purpose, and given it a body of doctrines and a discipline that would have made disappear all the

3litigations, disorders and discussions — the Strict Observance, owing to the errors and ill will of men, who concerned themselves more with forms than with essence, more with useless and transitory things (when not with real personal profit) than with good and eternal things, went on decaying more and more, orienting its activities toward realisations on the political and social planes. [Sic: the Spanish prints fié, for fue.]

4In effect, in spite of the great stir the congress of Wilhelmsbad provoked in the masonic world of the epoch, and the great importance attributed to it then and still attributed to it, it was not, in reality — as Le Forestier very well wrote — anything but a "prime work of incoherence".

5In effect, the congress had rejected the legend of the templar filiation of Masonry, but kept degrees, names, rituals, customs, etc., of templar character; it named Ferdinand of Brunswick Grand Master General of the Order and — granting at the same time a great autonomy to the lodges — thus rendered ineffective the authority of the Grand Master and an effective central direction.

6The new spirit Willermoz had infused into it — having rituals, degrees, instructions accepted, drafted on the model of those already ratified at the congress of the Gauls — had not, then, the possibility of actualising itself in that defective organism, save sporadically and only in some lodges. [Sic: the Spanish prints E1, with a numeral.]

7But if the goodwill and effort of the martinists, and Willermoz's skill, had transitory results, their efforts served at least to give the Profession and the martinists that popularity and that aureole of mystery which permitted them to increase their prestige and influence in all the other spiritualist circles of the epoch.

8Willermoz could return to Lyon satisfied with his work and, after a short stay in Strasbourg — where he had arrived on the 22nd in the company of Gaspard de Savaron — he returned to Lyon on the 30th of the same month.

9(To be continued).

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