Jean-Baptiste Willermoz, a Mystical Freemason

Jean-Baptiste Willermoz. A name well known to all Freemasons, and especially to the members of the Rectified Scottish Rite, of which he is the main author. Jean-Baptiste Willermoz was undoubtedly one of the most illustrious Freemasons of the late 18th century and one of the main representatives of the illuminist and mystical currents of Freemasonry. In his thirst for Masonic secrecy, Jean-Baptiste Willermoz was probably one of the best connoisseurs of the Masonic systems of his time, and he collected a large number of handwritten rituals. He himself claimed to have received more than sixty Masonic degrees and se can consider he played a major role in the development of the higher degrees. It is the destiny and the personality of Jean-Baptiste Willermoz, whose name is often better known than his history, that we will try to discover.

A Freemason in perpetual search

The eldest son of 13 siblings, Jean-Baptiste Willermoz was born in 1730 in Saint-Claude, in Franche-Comté, in what is now the department of Jura. His father, Claude Catherin Willermoz, was a haberdasher and the whole family was very religious. One of Jean-Baptiste's brothers even became a priest. At the age of 15, Jean-Baptiste was apprenticed to a haberdasher in Lyon. Enterprising, hardworking and ambitious, he was running his own silk shop by the age of 24, without abandoning his religious fervour.

A fervent and zealous Catholic, Willermoz was not content with mere faith. He was an inquiring spirit, eager to unravel the mysteries of the relationship between Man and God, and like many of his contemporaries, he believed that Freemasonry concealed the sublime secrets that would fulfil the deepest aspirations of his soul. For this reason, at the age of 20, he was initiated into Freemasonry, probably in the oldest lodge in Lyon, Les Amis Choisis. At the age of 22, he became Worshipful Master of this lodge, and the following year, 1753, he was one of the founders of a new lodge, the Parfaite Amitié, of which he also became Worshipful Master.

 

Willermoz's Masonic career was off to a flying start, and he was not to stop there. The practice of the three craft degrees did not reveal the deep mysteries he sought, but in the 1750s there were still no higher degrees in Lyon. These degrees, which were springing up all over France, were regarded with suspicion by the Grand Lodge of France, which was reluctant to recognise them. Willermoz was convinced that the true secrets of Freemasonry lay in the higher degrees, and that the craft degrees were merely the gateway to them. He set out to obtain as many Higher degrees as possible and as many hand-written rituals as possible. He undoubtedly became one of the foremost authorities on all the higher degrees in use at the time, and claimed to have received more than sixty degrees from different systems.

In 1760, Willermoz was one of the founders of the Grande Loge des Maîtres Réguliers de Lyon, a kind of provincial grand lodge within the Grande Loge de France. Willermoz even obtained a dispensation from the Grande Loge de France and its Grand Master, the Count of Clermont (1709-1771), authorising the Lyon lodges to practise the Scottish higher degrees. The Grande Loge des Maîtres Réguliers de Lyon thus developed a system of seven degrees, including the craft degrees. However, Willermoz's growing knowledge led the Grand Lodge of Lyon to adopt a system of seven degrees, including the symbolic degrees. However, the knowledge that Willermoz continued to acquire led the Grand Lodge of Lyon to adopt a system of 25 degrees from the second year of its existence. This system was crowned by the degree of Knight of the Eagle and Pelican, Knight of St Andrew or Mason of Heredity, which is none other than the Knight Rose-Cross, which is used today in various forms in the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite, the Traditional French Rite and other rites. It is the first appearance of this degree in this form and it is likely that Willermoz was the author. It should also be noted that the Kadosh did not appear in the scale of degrees practised in the Grand Lodge of Regular Masters of Lyon : Willermoz had discovered this degree thanks to the Brethren of Metz, but as he considered it odious and contrary to Masonic values, he always opposed it.

Always in search of the true Masonic secret, Willermoz remained dissatisfied with the usual higher degrees. In 1763, together with his brother Pierre-François Willermoz (1735-1799), a doctor, chemist and contributor to Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie, he founded a chapter of the Knights of the Black Eagle, which was highly secretive and unknown to ordinary Freemasons. Hermeticism and alchemy were cultivated there. Preoccupied with the administrative tasks of the Grand Lodge of Lyon, of which he was Grand Master for a short time and then Keeper of the Seals and Archivist for a long time, Willermoz was prevented from taking an active part. He was disappointed and even disgusted to discover that this chapter was essentially devoted to a materialistic quest, the search for chrysopoeia, i.e. the production of gold by transmutation. Although he had been interested in alchemy a few years earlier, he had quickly turned away from it because, for him, the true Masonic secret could only be purely spiritual and could not be tainted by any material considerations.

A decisive encounter for Willermoz

In 1767, during a visit to Paris, Willermoz met the man who would change his life forever and give a new direction to his Masonic and spiritual life: Joachim Martinès de Pasqually (1727(?)-1774). This enigmatic figure, believed to be of Portuguese or Spanish origin and descended from Marranos (Jews who were forcibly converted to Catholicism on the Iberian Peninsula in the 15th century), had developed a spiritual doctrine influenced by Gnosis, Pythagorean mysticism and the Kabbalah, culminating in an occult practice. In a nutshell, Martinès believed that the original Man was emanated by God to guard the rebellious angels captive since the fall of Satan. But corrupted by these evil spirits, Man would fall in turn. The aim of Martinès' doctrine was to return Man to his original source. But according to Martinès, the Bible described two lines of human beings, the descendants of Cain, the reprobates, and those of Seth, the line of the elect, who alone could hope to be restored to their original purity. And to prove that one was a descendant of Seth, it was necessary to engage in extremely complex theurgical practices in order to make contact with spiritual entities, something that the descendants of Cain were supposedly incapable of doing.

Martinès had created a para-Masonic order to house his teachings and practices, the Order of the Elect Coens of the Universe, which culminated in the degree of Réau-Croix. This order was a kind of occult priesthood that recruited those Freemasons who seemed worthy of discovering these mysteries. The Order's headquarters were in Bordeaux, where Martinès lived, but he had also set up a Sovereign Tribunal of his Order in Paris, under the presidency of an eminent Freemason of the Grande Loge de France, Jean-Jacques Bacon de la Chevalerie (1731-1821), a native of Lyon and a friend of Willermoz. During Willermoz's visit to Paris in 1767, Bacon revealed the existence of a very secret order that met the expectations of the most demanding Freemasons and invited him to join. Willermoz accepted without hesitation and was initiated by Martinès himself. Thinking that he had finally found what he had been looking for for so many years, he enthusiastically accepted Martinès' teachings and was allowed to open a Coen Grand Temple in Lyon. He also became friends with Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, known as the 'Unknown Philosopher' (1743-1803), Martinès' private secretary and a distant inspiration for modern Martinism.

 

Although he thought he had found the knowledge he had been seeking for so long, Willermoz did not manage to obtain the slightest supernatural manifestation during the theurgical operations to which he devoted himself with great dedication and meticulousness. This is one of the most touching aspects of Willermoz's character, as we see him persevere in his practice with the greatest tenacity, on the advice of a Martinès who always finds good excuses to explain his failures. Many would have become discouraged, but not Willermoz!

From 1767, Willermoz devoted himself mainly to the cause of the Elect Coens, to the detriment of the Grand Lodge of the Regular Masters of Lyon. In his defence, it should be noted that in 1768, following a memorable brawl at the entrance to a Parisian temple in December 1772, a decree issued by the Lieutenant-General of Police, Sartine, officially suspended Masonic activities throughout the Kingdom of France. Although this measure was never fully implemented, French Masonic life was slowed down until 1774.

In 1772, Martinès sailed to Saint-Domingue to claim an inheritance. He promised to return after a year and continued to correspond with his disciples in France, though obviously at a slower pace than before. But he fell ill and died in Saint-Domingue in 1774. From then on, his disciples began to disperse and most of the Temples took the form of simple lodges within the Grande Loge de France, which had become the Grand Orient de France in 1773. Only the Temple of Lyon remained, presided over by Willermoz. But deprived of its founder, the Order of the Élections Coens could not survive for long, especially as its new de facto leader, Willermoz, had never received any demonstrations during his operations. Willermoz needed a new structure to house the Martinezian doctrine, but which one ?

The Strict Templar Observance, a new opportunity for Willermoz

Left to his own devices since the departure of Martinès, Willermoz had once again taken an interest in the Grand Lodge of Regular Masters of Lyon, hoping to make it the nucleus of a new rite with Martinezian connotations, of which he would be the founder. The task proved difficult, as the Grand Lodge had been lethargic since 1768 and, what's more, to create a new rite, a legend had to be found to legitimise it. Willermoz was wary of the Rosicrucian legend, which he felt was too likely to lead to alchemy, which he rejected. He also excluded the legend of the Templars, which he knew only in the form of the Kadosh, which he abhorred.

It was then that an unexpected opportunity presented itself to Willermoz in the form of a Freemasonry that claimed to be Templar but did not adopt the vengeful perspective of the Kadosh degree : the German Strict Templar Observance, founded in 1751 by Baron von Hund (1722-1776).

As early as 1766, the St-Jean des Voyageurs lodge of Dresden, a member of the Strict Templar Observance, had tried to correspond with the Grande Loge des Maîtres Réguliers de Lyon, but the letter had arrived during the absence of Willermoz, the keeper of the seals and archivist of the Grande Loge, who had never heard of it. But it is likely that in 1766 Willermoz would not have seen any particular advantage in being in contact with a Templar lodge in Germany.

 
Baron von Hund

It was a different matter when, in 1772, La Candeur Lodge in Strasbourg praised to Willermoz the Strict Templar Observance (known to ordinary freemasons as Dresden Reformed Freemasonry), which it had just joined. The Strasbourg Brethren's comments suggested that they had discovered a masonic order that, unlike the others, knew the true aims of Freemasonry. This was enough to attract the attention of Willermoz, who concluded, somewhat prematurely, that this Order certainly had a very high spiritual doctrine, comparable to that of Martinès. He therefore established close relations with the Brethren in Strasbourg, began to learn more about the German system and wrote to Baron von Hund about a possible application for membership from the Brethren in Lyon.

When Willermoz learned that the Strict Templar Observance had set itself the goal of re-establishing the Order of the Temple, he became cautious and asked for guarantees that the German Templar system did not cover anything reprehensible in the eyes of the laws of the kingdom and the Church, and that it had nothing to do with the Kadosh. He also asked that the symbolic lodges of Lyon remain under the jurisdiction of the Grand Orient de France and that only the higher degrees be placed under the direction of the Order. Baron Weiler, who had already established the Fifth Province of the Order (Burgundy) in Strasbourg in 1772, was instructed to send the documents necessary for membership to the brothers of Lyon and travelled to Lyon in May 1773. The negotiations were successful and on 21 July 1773 some twenty brothers from Lyon, who were to form the new chapter, were received as knights and on 25 July the Second Province of the Order (Auvergne) was established. On 11 and 13 August 1773, all the new knights made their solemn profession, thus attaining the highest degree of the Order, that of Professed Knight.

After completing his mission in Lyon, Weiler continued his work by travelling to Montpellier and Bordeaux, where he founded the Third Province of the Order (Occitania). France now had three Templar provinces, and soon four, as the Brothers of Montpellier, believing the zeal of the Knights of Bordeaux to be too lukewarm, broke away from the Third Province to create a new one, that of Septimanie. The provinces of the Order extended beyond the borders of the Kingdom of France, as the Second (Burgundy) included German-speaking Switzerland and the Fifth (Auvergne) extended its jurisdiction to French-speaking Switzerland, Geneva and the Duchy of Savoy.

It seemed a complete success, but had Willermoz found the structure that would allow him to keep alive and spread the teachings of  Martinès ? We shall find out in a later article.