The real father of the Rectified Scottish Rite, Jean-Baptiste Willermoz is a man of caliber which quest and aspiration to truth are without limits. Born in Lyon, initiated to masonry in 1753, in spite of the acquisition of many degrees, his thirst of Knowledge remains, for years, unappeased. A meeting is missing in his life, a meeting which would fill in his huge expectations. This meeting will occur in Paris, in 1767, with Martines de Pasqually, master of the Order of the Eleus Cohens.
It's the beginning of an intense relation, sometimes tense, between both men, fed with an unflagging correspondence. Seduced by Pasqually's teachings, Willermoz begins to doubt his capricious personality and above all his capacity to organize the Order of the Eleus Cohens. Things worsen with Martines de Pasqually leaving in 1772 to Hispaniola. Two years later, on September 20th 1774, the master dies leaving the order in chaos. Freemasonry's general health isn't better, Willermoz contacts the German baron Karl vont Hund from the Rite of Strict Observance. The second period of Jean-Baptiste Willermoz's spiritual life opens and the Cohen seed would soon constitute the roots of the Rectified Scottish Rite.
In this presentation, Jean-Marc Vivenza wants to re establish the obvious filiation of the Order of the Eleus Cohens within the Rectified Scottish Rite and shows the substantial inaccuracy of two attitudes: "one which consists in considering the Rectified Scottish Rite as a simple reproduction, while it was deprived from its theurgical part, of the Order of the Eleus Cohens, the other aiming at not recognizing any link not relation between Willermoz's system and the teachings taught by Martines de Pasqually. "
Do you wish to understand the complex links but rich which united these two great figures of the initiatory sphere who were Martines de Pasqually and Jean-Baptiste Willermoz?
Jean-Marc Vivenza's answer in this 38-minutes presentation filmed during the conference of the tercentenary of Martines de Pasqually, organized by the Institut Eléazar and the revue Renaissance Traditionnelle, in Marseille, in September 2010.
