Louis Claude de Saint Martin (1743-1803) discovered the Masonic and theurgic mysteries of the Order of élus coens among his comrades of the regiment of Foix-Infanterie, stationed at Bordeaux at the time, in 1765. His note book shows how advanced and persuaded he already was in 1768. In 1769, he was received in Martines’ entourage and in 1771 he left the military in order to devote himself entirely to the quest, and to Martines’ work by becoming his personal secretary.
As such, he helped writing the famous Treatise on the Reintegration of Beings, and was ordained reau-croix April 17th 1772, a few days before his master left France. In 1774 and 1775, Saint-Martin taught his brothers in Lyon[1] and in 1776 he went to visit those of Toulouse, where a family he was fond of lived, to continue his teachings. Whilst amongst the élus coens Louis-Claude de Saint Martin scrupulously followed the way of ceremonial theurgy. And just as his brothers, he tasted its effects.
The attraction of the inner path gradually drew Saint-Martin away from an order that was disintegrating. It has been said, and written, that Saint-Martin tried, and managed, to destroy the Order of élus coens to the advantage of his own teachings. One has also often tried to oppose Saint-Martin and Martines. However, until his very last day, the Unknown Philosopher preserved, and likely consulted, all the coen documents he had copied by hand, including the inestimable Treatise. He continued to consider Martines as his first master and to consider himself a coen and initiate.
Saint-Martin internalised ceremonial theurgy by choosing the inner path – that Papus referred to as the cardiac path – a path just as methodical but less dangerous according to him. Still, his rejection of the external path does not oppose him to Martines, as the latter himself knew the inner path, but considered it to be too narrow, or even closed, whereas Saint-Martin believed he could succeed through it. Considering he had to do with what he had at hand, Martines taught external, ceremonial theurgy. Saint-Martin raised that theurgy to an intra-cardiac practice. However, the Unknown Philosopher is not a mystic in the strict sense. Saint-Martin is an illuminist and a gnostic. His theosophy joins knowledge to love.
In 1788, the Unknown Philosopher discovered the works of Jacob Boehme (1575-1624), of whom he translated several books. He deepened his own sophiology, the doctrine of divine wisdom, that Martines, he believed, knew as well. From then onwards, Saint-Martin worked at uniting Boehme, his second master, and Martines, who remained his first.
Martines and Saint-Martin are Judaeo-Christian theurgists, but Saint-Martin is more Christian than Martines, and Martines more Jewish than Saint-Martin. In martinesist theurgy, the angels have a prime importance, and they serve Hely, God’s wisdom. In saint-martinist theurgy, the Christ becomes the only indispensable mediator. The desire of the Word-Wisdom, of which we are all widowers, attracts Sophia, who returns when purity, or adequate virginity is restored. After the annunciation of the holy guardian angel, and his marriage with Wisdom, the new man will be born: an inner Christ. The Scriptures and the holy gospels in particular, symbolise and draw out the stages of that spiritual regeneration of man.
The writings of Saint-Martin encourage the man of desire to generate within himself the new man. The Unknown Philosopher offers that work in complete charity, but warns us against books, which will always be superfluous. The only real book is man. We must, as Saint-Martin says, explain things through man, and not man through things. In other words, beware of books. But also beware of too much haste, as not to lose sight of books altogether. It would be to explore a world alone in which men too easily get lost. Before one can do away with books, one must understand them.
Whatever might be said, Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin did not transmit a personal ritual initiation, and founded no society, nor any order of any kind. For the Unknown Philosopher, ritual initiation is always expendable, never indispensable, because true initiation unfolds within the heart of the new man, organ of superior love and knowledge.
In 1882, a young medical student, Gérard Encausse (1865-1916), who would soon be known as Papus, received, he says, the martinist repository which he then transmitted as from 1884 as a very simple three-step ritual initiation (associate, initiate, unknown superior). In that form, that ritual filiation, called “martinist”, or “of Saint-Martin”, goes no further back than Papus.
Saint-Martin did not found the Martinist Order either, which was in fact created by Papus in 1887-1891, as an initiatory society. However, the ritual filiation that comes from Papus should not be neglected, no more than the Martinist Order that Papus placed under the patronage of the Unknown Philosopher.

[1]See Robert Amadou (with the collaboration of Catherine Amadou), Les Leçons de Lyon aux élus coens. Un cours de martinisme au XVIIIe siècle par Louis-Claude de Saint Martin, Jean-Jacques Du Roy D’Hauterive, Jean-Baptiste Willermoz, 1st complete edition published following the original manuscripts, Paris, Dervy, 1999.