Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin and Jacob Boehme: From Theurgy to the Way of the Heart

Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin and Jacob Boehme: 

From Theurgy to the Way of the Heart

Besides, a German author, of whom I have translated and published the first two works, namely Aurora: Dawning of the Day and Three Principles can fully address that which is lacking in mine. This German author, named Jacob Boehme, who died nearly two hundred years ago and was looked at in his time as the prince of the divine philosophers, has left in his numerous writings (which contain nearly thirty different treatises) extraordinary and surprising developments regarding our primitive nature; the source of evil; the essence and laws of the universe; on the origin of gravity; on that which he calls the seven wheels or the seven powers of nature; on the origin of water (confirmed by chemistry, which teaches that water is a burned body); the nature of the prevarication of the angels of darkness; human nature; the method of rehabilitation through which eternal love was used to reestablish humanity’s rights. [...] I believe I will be doing a favor for the reader by encouraging him or her to get acquainted with this author by inviting them especially to arm themselves with patience and courage, not to be turned away by the somewhat less than standard form of his writings, by the extreme abstraction of the issues addressed, and the difficulty he himself had expressing his ideas, since most of the issues in question have no analogous words in our known languages.

Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin writing about Jacob Boehme

As we know, Saint-Martin was an ardent disciple of Martinès de Pasqually, whom he called his “first instructor” and for whom he maintained the utmost respect all his life. Less is known about his bond with Jacob Boehme. However, he showed an equally great interest in him. Stanislas de Guaita was one of the first to see this interest in the last books of the Unknown Philosopher (SaintMartin), about which, he said, “Boehme’s influence prevailed over that less pure of a first master.” Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin was born in Amboise, France on January 13, 1743, in Touraine, to a family of minor nobility. After studying at the College of Pontlevoy, then at the Law School of Paris, he obtained a license. In 1764, he held the office of king’s attorney at the Tours presidial court. He was not passionate about this position, and six months later he left it to become a soldier. The Duke of Choiseul, out of consideration for his family, issued him an officer’s commission. Thus Saint-Martin went directly from the judiciary to the military.

Saint-Martin’s choice for the military may, a priori, seem strange. In fact, he probably chose this career because it left a lot of free time during a period of peace. He was thus able to follow his studious inclinations away from the gaze of his family. The choice was very beneficial for him, so much so that he said of his appointment by the Duke of Choiseul in Bordeaux: “He put me in a regiment where I could find the treasure that was intended for me.” In 1765, he arrived in Bordeaux, the city where the Foix regiment was stationed. There, he befriended an officer, Monsieur de Grainville. The latter told him about the doctrine of Martinès de Pasqually, his master. Saint-Martin was enthralled. In 1768, he was initiated into the Ordre des Élus-Cohen (Order of the Elect-Priests), where he reached the highest degree of initiation. Through the teachings of this Order, he managed to enter the world of intermediary agents and through theurgy, to feel the presence of that which the Elus-Cohen called “the thing.” He quickly became intimately close with the master and would be his special secretary for some time. 

In 1772, personal matters required Martinès de Pasqually to leave France for Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where he died in 1774. The legacy left by the master in France was difficult to manage and Saint-Martin did not feel that he had the spirit of a spiritual leader: “I think that I could learn, not teach; I think that I am in a state of discipleship and not mastership. But except for my first instructor, Martinès de Pasqually, and my second teacher, Jacob Boehme, who died 150 years ago, I have seen on Earth only people who want to become teachers and who were not even ready to be disciples.” Furthermore, Saint-Martin was beginning to step back from theurgy, which he considered dangerous to mental balance. 

In 1790, St. Martin resigned from the Ordre des Élus-Cohen, which he had rarely attended since the departure of Pasqually. In the same vein he abandoned Masonry, which “becomes everyday more incompatible with my way of being and simplicity of my operation.” To those trying to retain him, he said: “The only initiation which I preach and that I seek with all the ardor of my soul is that by which one can enter into the heart of the Divine and make the heart of the Divine enter into ours for an indissoluble marriage that makes us the friend, the brother, and the wife of Our Divine Repairer.” 

It was in Strasbourg in 1788 that Saint-Martin heard about the works of Boehme, thanks to Charlotte de Boeklin. With Martinès de Pasqually he had learned a technique for communicating with higher powers. But the perilous method did not suit him. With Jacob Boehme, his second instructor (whom he knew only through his books), he understood that true initiation did not need to use celestial hierarchies. In evocation, the external way, he preferred invocation, the internal Way, that of the Heart. According to him, this path does not need but one intermediary: Christ.

Charlotte de Boeklin and Rodolphe Salzmann encouraged Saint-Martin to read the texts of Jacob Boehme in their original language for a better grasp of their depth. He thus decided to learn German. From then on he devoted much of his time and resources towards translating into French the work of his second master. His admiration for the German philosopher never ceased and grew with the years. He made this work of translation a daily task, until the end of his life. He said: “Framicourt encouraged me to translate Boehme for the good of humanity; he thus did me a great service. This work puts in order within me the many things that were not. I started with the translation of Aurora, and I hope that this book will be like a thunderbolt for humankind.” Later, he translated The Three Principles of the Divine Essence, published in 1802, then The Forty Questions of the Soul and The Triple Life, which would be published only in 1807 and 1809, after Saint-Martin’s transition. The current French editions of Boehme’s works consist mostly of the translations by Saint-Martin or Paul Sédir, a renowned Martinist. 

In 1791, Saint-Martin had to leave Strasbourg, “his paradise,” because his father’s illness forced him to return to Amboise. This return to the city, which he called “his hell,” would be a painful ordeal. Without the study of the works of his “dearest Boehme” and the letters of his “dearest B” (Madame de Boeklin) he had great difficulty enduring this exile. Thus began a long period during which he maintained important correspondence with his friends and his “disciples.” Much of this correspondence concerned the writings of Boehme. For example, in a letter he addressed to the Baron Liebistorf de Kirchberg, Saint-Martin emphasized the respect he has for his second master, saying that he (Saint-Martin) is not worthy to untie the shoestrings of this amazing man whom he regards as the greatest light that has appeared on Earth after He who is Light itself (Christ.)

Another letter reads: 

A disadvantage in which I often fell, and that greatly affected me was to happily indulge in the reading of my friend B. (Boehme), or rather the desire to fill myself with his treasures more than the need to dig into my own repository, and work to awaken that which is sleeping within me and resurrect that which is dead [...] This work is so necessary that it would suffice that one undertook it with the perseverance and tenacity it demands; our being would restore to us all that we expect from others.

In each of his works, Jacob Boehme warns his readers against the trap of intellectualization: “The devil always keeps its nets set before reason. One who falls into it thinks that they are caught in the nets of Christ, but they are caught by the devil’s hook. Reason does not understand the kingdom of the Divine, but instead, the surface. Power remains hidden from reason, unless it is born of the Divine.” Saint-Martin’s natural reserve against books saved him from falling into that trap: 

Since the inexpressible Divine Mercy has allowed the dawn of true regions to be uncovered for me, I could not look at books but as objects of lamentation, because they only represent the evidence of our ignorance and a sort of offense against truth, as it rises above them. These dead books also prevent us from knowing the book of life [...] Boehme, dear Boehme, you are the only one that I accept, for you are the only one who leads us to this book of life. Still it is necessary that we go there without you.

His experience even led him to think that reading Boehme “... is only suited to fully regenerated men or women, or at least those yearning earnestly for it.”

It would be useless to study here Boehme’s philosophical points reflected in Saint-Martin’s writings, because such an effort would require a whole book. We can nevertheless identify the most important points. One of them concerns Sophia or Divine Wisdom. It is both the soul that humankind has lost during our fall, and that of nature as a feminine archetype of the Divine. This idea is related to a second: the primitive androgynous state of humankind, in the sense that the fall deprived humanity of Sophia, its Celestial Bride.

Saint-Martin had this to say: “We all are widowers; our duty is to remarry.” From this marriage must be born the New Humanity, the regenerated Adam, who will find again the ministry that the Divine had given him at the beginning of humankind’s emanation. In this, Saint-Martin went from the state of being a theurgist to that of theosophist, from the Greek Theos (God) and Sophia (Wisdom). In other words, he believed that the purpose of life is to unite with Divine Wisdom.

Saint-Martin chose the path advocated by Boehme, that of the imitation of Christ. However, it is not a matter of external worship, but an inner asceticism. In his book The Ministry of the Man [Person]-Spirit, he explains that:

This work is far beyond theurgical operations, by which it happens that the Spirit attaches to us, watches over us, even prays for us, and exercises wisdom and virtuousness for us, without our being either wise or virtuous, because this Spirit is just united to us externally, and often operates these things even without our knowledge, which nurtures pride and a false comfort, more dangerous, perhaps, than our weaknesses and deviations that indulge us back in humility. 

One should note that this book by Saint-Martin is the one that refers the most to Boehme. Whole passages from Aurora are found there. 

As one can see, studying the teachings of Boehme was not a parenthesis in the life of Saint-Martin, but a special formative element. He said moreover: “I owed Martinès de Pasqually my introduction into the higher truths, and to Jacob Boehme the most important steps I took in those truths.” Some advocates of theurgy claim that, based on a letter written by Saint-Martin in 1796, he returned to the theurgy of the Elus-Cohen near the end of his life: “I am tempted to believe that Martinès de Pasqually whom you speak of, and who was, since I must tell you, our master, had the active key to that which our dear Boehme exposes in his theories, but he did not believe we were able to bear these high truths.”

But to this letter, one may contrast others that express the opposite, such as the one Saint-Martin wrote a year later, in 1797, to Champlâtreux, his follower who is not exactly discreet, who often assailed him with questions about that issue: I will answer you on the various issues you invite me to clarify in my new endeavors. Most of these issues relate to the initiations I underwent in my first school and which I left a long time ago to indulge in the only initiation which is really in accordance with my heart.” And he adds, concerning this first school: “I am unable now more than ever before to push someone further on this article, since I myself more and more turn away from it.” 

In his letters, Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin often recommended that his friends be wary of theurgy and encouraged them to rise higher, toward the pure region of the Word. However, he never rejected the teachings he had received from Martinès de Pasqually. In fact, he liked to mix the teachings of his two masters: “It is a great marriage to make between our first school and our friend Boehme. This is what I work at and I confess frankly that I find both spouses so much equally balanced that I know of nothing that is more accomplished.” However, this “marriage” always stopped at the level of ideas, because in terms of spiritual practice, the Unknown Philosopher always preferred the internal path, “the Way of the Heart.” 

From Pantacle 2018 (The Martinist Journal)

https://www.martinists.org