A Chronology of the Tradition
From Hermes to Harrowmere: compiled by the Keeper of the Library.
This chronology accompanies the six Studies in the Tradition. It sets out, in one sequence, the dates of the Hermetic, Rosicrucian and Martinist streams and of the literature of spiritual chivalry, so that the reader may see how they ran beside one another and where they met. Where a date is uncertain it is marked as approximate. Where the evidence for an event is disputed, the entry says so. The history of the Order itself, from the signing of the Charter to the present day, has its own timeline on the page on History and Lineage.
From Hermes to Harrowmere
- 1st - 3rd Centuries
The Hermetic Treatises
Philosophical writings in Greek, attributed to Hermes the Thrice-Greatest, are composed in Roman Egypt by unknown authors. The dialogue called the Asclepius survives in Latin and is read through the Middle Ages.
- 8th - 10th Centuries
The Emerald Tablet
The Tablet appears in Arabic writings on alchemy and the secrets of creation, attributed to Balinas, as the Arabs called Apollonius of Tyana.
- 12th Century
The Tablet in Latin
The Emerald Tablet is translated into Latin and becomes the charter of the European alchemists, as it remains until the age of Newton.
- 1180s
The Story of the Grail
Chrétien de Troyes writes Perceval, the first romance of the Grail, in which the young knight fails to ask whom the Grail serves. He leaves it unfinished.
- c. 1200 - 1210
Parzival
Wolfram von Eschenbach completes the story in German. Parzival returns to the castle and asks the wounded king what ails him, and the king is healed.
- c. 1225
The Quest of the Holy Grail
A French romance in the spirit of the monasteries tells how the Grail is achieved by Galahad, and how Lancelot, the best knight in the world, is turned back.
- c. 1275
The Book of the Order of Chivalry
Ramon Llull of Majorca writes his handbook of knighthood, in which a hermit knight instructs a squire in the office of the knight, the meaning of his arms and the vigil before his dubbing.
- 1463
Hermes in Florence
A manuscript of the Greek Hermetic treatises having reached Florence, Cosimo de' Medici orders Marsilio Ficino to translate it before the works of Plato. Cosimo dies the following year.
- 1471
The Pimander Printed
Ficino's Latin translation is printed and goes through many editions. Hermes is believed to have been a contemporary of Moses.
- c. 1484 - 1485
Chivalry in English
William Caxton prints his translation of Llull's Book of the Order of Chivalry, and in 1485 Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, with its books of the Holy Grail.
- 1486
The Dignity of Man
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola prepares his oration on the dignity of man, opening with the words of the Asclepius, and joins the Hebrew Kabbalah to the Hermetic writings.
- 1488
Hermes at Siena
Hermes the Thrice-Greatest is set in marble on the pavement of the cathedral of Siena, described as the contemporary of Moses.
- 1533
The Three Books of Occult Philosophy
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa's summa of Renaissance magic, written some twenty years earlier, is printed in full.
- 1541
Death of Paracelsus
The physician who sought healing rather than gold from alchemy, and taught the three principles of salt, sulphur and mercury, dies at Salzburg.
- 1564
The Hieroglyphic Monad
John Dee publishes his single figure uniting the signs of the seven planets and metals.
- 1612
Jacob Boehme's First Book
The shoemaker of Görlitz writes the Aurora, which circulates in manuscript and is condemned by the local clergy. He is forbidden to write, and for some years obeys.
- 1614
The Fame of the Fraternity
The first Rosicrucian manifesto is printed at Kassel, announcing the fraternity of Brother C.R. and the opening of his vault. In the same year Isaac Casaubon shows that the Hermetic treatises belong to the Christian era.
- 1615
The Confession of the Fraternity
The second manifesto appears in Latin, giving the founder's birth as 1378 and his life as one hundred and six years.
- 1616
The Chemical Wedding
The allegorical romance of Christian Rosenkreuz is printed at Strasbourg; at its end he is made a Knight of the Golden Stone. The English physician Robert Fludd publishes a defence of the fraternity.
- 1618
The Golden Themis
Michael Maier, physician to the Emperor, publishes his treatise on the laws of the fraternity, one of several hundred works for and against it.
- 1620
The White Mountain
The defeat of the Elector Palatine at Prague ends the hopes that some had attached to the manifestos, and the Thirty Years War sweeps their world away.
- 1623
The Placards of Paris
Notices appear on the walls of Paris announcing that the brethren of the Rose Cross are among the citizens, visibly and invisibly.
- 1624
Death of Jacob Boehme
Boehme dies at Görlitz. His writings, most of them printed after his death, are read across Europe by a small and devoted company.
- 1743
Birth of Saint-Martin
Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin is born at Amboise, in Touraine, on the eighteenth of January.
- 1767
The Elect Priests
Martinez de Pasqually's Order of Knight-Masons Elect Priests of the Universe, gathered over the preceding years, has a Sovereign Tribunal at Paris. Jean-Baptiste Willermoz of Lyon is received into it.
- 1768
Saint-Martin Received
At Bordeaux, the young officer Saint-Martin is received among the Élus Coëns. About 1771 he becomes Martinez's secretary.
- 1774
Death of Martinez de Pasqually
Martinez dies at Port-au-Prince on the twentieth of September, leaving his Treatise on the Reintegration of Beings unfinished.
- 1775
Of Errors and Truth
Saint-Martin's first book is published, signed only by "an Unknown Philosopher."
- 1778
The Beneficent Knights
At a convention at Lyon, Willermoz rectifies the Strict Observance. Its knights become the Beneficent Knights of the Holy City, preceded by a degree of Squire Novice.
- 1782
Wilhelmsbad
A general convention adopts Willermoz's rectified system and sets aside the claim of descent from the Templars. Saint-Martin publishes his Natural Table of the Correspondences between God, Man and the Universe.
- 1788
Strasbourg
At Strasbourg, Charlotte de Boecklin introduces Saint-Martin to the works of Jacob Boehme. He learns German in order to read them.
- 1790
The Man of Desire
Saint-Martin publishes his book of meditations and prayers on the soul's longing for its source.
- 1791
The Spiritual Knight
In Moscow, Ivan Lopukhin's book of inner knighthood, The Spiritual Knight, or the Seeker of Wisdom, is privately printed.
- 1792
Moscow and Bern
The Empress Catherine imprisons Nikolai Novikov and scatters the Moscow circle. Saint-Martin begins his correspondence with Niklaus Anton Kirchberger, Baron de Liebistorf, of Bern, which continues until 1797.
- 1803
Death of the Unknown Philosopher
Saint-Martin dies at Aulnay, near Paris, on the thirteenth of October, having founded no order and leaving many friends.
- 1824
Death of Willermoz
Willermoz dies at Lyon in his nineties. The rectified rite is preserved in Switzerland.
- 1868
The Last of the Elect Priests
The last member known to have been received in Martinez's original order is said to have died.
- 1888
Papus and Chaboseau
Gérard Encausse, known as Papus, and Augustin Chaboseau exchange the initiations each claims to have received in a line from Saint-Martin. Papus founds the review L'Initiation, and is among the founders, with Stanislas de Guaita and Joséphin Péladan, of the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Cross.
- 1891
The Supreme Council
The Martinist Order is placed under a Supreme Council of twelve at Paris, with Papus at its head, working three degrees and describing itself as a school of moral knighthood.
- 1899
The Treatise Printed
Martinez de Pasqually's Treatise on the Reintegration of Beings is printed for the first time, more than a century after it was written.
- 1912
Lopukhin in English
Ivan Lopukhin's Some Characteristics of the Interior Church is translated into English, with an introduction by Arthur Edward Waite.
- 1916
Death of Papus
Papus dies in Paris on the twenty-fifth of October of an illness contracted while serving as a medical officer at the front. His Order divides among rival successors.
- 1931
An Attempted Restoration
Three surviving members of the Supreme Council of 1891 attempt to restore the Martinist Order as they first knew it.
- 1939 - 1945
Persecution
The esoteric societies of occupied Europe are suppressed. Martinists and others die in the camps, and at Lyon the head of one Martinist body is murdered in 1944.
- 1987
The Charter of Harrowmere
On Michaelmas, three Wardens who have each received one of the three streams within the older bodies of the Tradition sign, with nine companions, the Charter constituting the Order of the Grail, and pour the three streams into one Cup.