Saint Jacques, Albert de

An Encyclopaedia of Occultism (1920)

A monk of the seventeenth century, who published a book entitled Light to the Living by the Experiences of the Dead, or divers apparitions of souls from purgatory in our century. The work was published at Lyons in 1675. St. John's Crystal Gold : "In regard of the Ashes of Vegetables," says Vaughan, "although their weaker exterior Elements expire by violence of the fire, yet their Earth cannot be destroyed, but is Vitrified. The Fusion and Transparency of this substance is occasioned by the Radicall moysture or Seminal water of the Compound. St. Martin This water resists the fury of the fire, and cannot possibly be vanquished. 'In hac Aquâ' (saith the learned Severine), 'Rosa latet in Hieme.' These two principles are never separated; for Nature proceeds not so far in her Dissolutions. When death hath done her worst, there is a Union between these two, and out of them shall God raise us to the last day, and restore us to a spiritual constitution. I do not conceive there shall be a Resurrection of every Species, but rather their Terrestrial parts, together with the element of water (for 'there shall be no more sea': Revelations), shall be united in one mixture with the Earth, and fixed to a pure Diaphanous substance. This is St. John's Crystal Gold, a fundamental of the New Jerusalem-so called, not in respect of Colour, but constitution. Their Spirits, I suppose, shall be reduced to their first Limbus, a sphere of pure, ethereal fire, like rich Eternal Tapestry spread under the throne of God." St. John's Wort. In classical mythology the summer solstice was a day dedicated to the sun, and was believed to be a day on which witches held their festivities. St. John's Wort was their symbolical plant, and people were wont to judge from it whether their future would be lucky or unlucky; as it grew they read in its progressive character their future lot. The Christians dedicated this festive period to St. John's Wort or root, and it became a talisman against evil. In one of the old romantic ballads a young lady falls in love with a demon, who tells her- 66 Gin you wish to be leman mine Lay aside the St. John's Wort and the vervain." When hung up on St. John's day together with a cross over the doors of houses it kept out the devil and other evil spirits. To gather the root on St. John's day morning at sunrise, and retain it in the house, gave luck to the family in their undertakings, especially in those begun on that day. St. Martin, Louis Claude de: French Mystic and Author, commonly known as "le philosophe inconnu." (1743- 1803). The name of Louis de St. Martin is a familiar one, more familiar, perhaps, than that of almost any other French mystic; and this is partly due to his having been a voluminous author, and partly to his being virtually the founder of a sect, "the Martinistes"; while again, St. Beuve wrote about him in his Causeries du Lundi, and this has naturally brought him under wide notice. 66 66 Born in 1734 at Amboise, St. Martin came of a family of some wealth and of gentle birth. His mother died while he was a child, but this proved anything but unfortunate for him; for his step-mother besides lavishing a wealth of affection on him, early discerned his rare intellectual gifts, and made every effort to nurture them. C'est à elle," he wrote afterwards in manhood, que je dois peut-être tout mon bonheur, puisque c'est elle que m'a donné les premiers éléments de cette education douce, attentive et pieuse, qui m'a fait aimer de Dieu et des hommes." The boy was educated at the Collège de Pontlevoy, where he read with interest numerous books of a mystical order, one which impressed him particularly being Abbadie's Art de se connaître soi-même ; and at first he intended to make law his profession, but he soon decided on a military career instead, and accordingly entered the army. A little before taking this step he had affiliated himself with the freemasons and, on his regiment being sent to garrison Bordeaux, he became intimate with certain new rites which the Portuguese Jew, Martinez Pasqually (q.v.), had lately introduced into the masonic lodge there. For a while St. Martin was deeply interested, not just in the aforesaid but in the philosophy of Pasqually; yet anon he declared that the latter's disciples were inclined to be too materialistic, and St. Martin soon he was deep in the writings of Swedenborg, in whom he found a counsellor more to his taste. The inevitable result of studies of this nature was that he began to feel a great distaste for regimental life, and so, in 1771, he resigned his commission, determining to devote the rest of his life to philosophical speculations. He now began writing a book, Des Erreurs et de la Vérité, ou les Hommes rappelés au Principe de la Science, which was published in 1775, at Edinburgh, at this time on the eve of becoming a centre of literary activity of all sorts; and it is worth recalling that this pristine effort by St. Martin was brought under the notice of Voltaire, the old cynic observing shrewdly that half a dozen folio volumes might well be devoted to the topic of erreurs, but that a page would suffice for the treatment of vérité ! The young author's next important step was to pay a visit to England, and thence in 1787 he went to Italy along with Prince Galitzin, with whom he had lately become friendly. They stayed together for some time at Rome, and then St. Martin left for Strassburg, his intention being to study German there, for he had recently grown interested in the teaching of Jacob Behme, and he was anxious to study the subject thoroughly. Very soon he had achieved this end, and at a later date, indeed, he translated a number of the German mystic's writings into French; but meanwhile returning to France, he found his outlook suddenly changed, the revolution breaking out in 1789, and a reign of terror setting in. No one was safe, and St. Martin was arrested at Paris, simply on account of his being a gentleman by birth; but his affiliation with the freemasons stood him in good stead in this hour of need, and he was liberated by a decree of the ninth Thermidor. Accordingly he resumed activity with his pen, and in 1792 he issued a new book, Nouvel Homme; while two years later he was commissioned to go to his native Amboise, inspect the archives and libraries of the monasteries in that region, and draw up occasional reports on the subject. Shortly afterwards he was appointed an élève professeur at the Ecole Normale in Paris, in consequence of which he now made his home in that town; and among others with whom he became acquainted there was Chateaubriand, of whose writing, he was an enthusiastic devotee, but who, on his parts appears to have received the mystic with his usual haughty coldness. St. Martin did not lack a large circle of admirers, however, and he continued to work hard, publishing in 1795 one of his most important books, Lettres à un Ami, ou Considérations politiques, philosophiques et réligieuses sur la Révolution, which was succeeded in 1800 by two speculative treatises, Ecce Homo and L'Esprit des Choses. Then, in 1802, he issued yet another volume, Ministère de 'Homme Esprit; but in the following year his labours were brought to an abrupt close, for while staying at Annay, not far from Paris, with a friend called Lenoir-Laroche, he succumbed to an apopleptic seizure. After his death it was found that he had left a considerable mass of manuscripts behind him, and some of these were issued by his executors in 1807, while in 1862 a collection of his letters appeared. Sanyojanas so limited a space as that at disposal here, but turning to the author's l'Homme du Désir (1790), and again to his Tableau natural des Rapports qui existent entre Die, et l'Homme et l'Univers (1782), we find this pair tolerably representative of all his writing, and their key-note may certainly be defined as consisting in aspiration. Man is divine despite the fall recounted in the Scriptures, dormant within him lies a lofty quality of which he is too often scarcely conscious, and it is incumbent on him to develop this quality, striving thereafter without ceasing, and waiving the while everything pertaining to the category of materialism-such is the salient principle in St. Martin's teaching, a principle which seems literally trite nowadays, for it has been propounded by a host of modern mystics, notably A.E. in The Hero in Man. In writing in this wise, the French mystic undoubtedly owed a good deal to Swendenborg, while obligations to Behme are of course manifest throughout his later works; and, while his debt to Martinez Pasqually has probably been exaggerated somewhat, there is no doubt that the Portuguese Jew influenced him greatly for a while, the latter's teaching coming to him at a time when he was still very young and susceptible, and fresh from readings of Abbadie.