When the student makes their first enquiry for information about the British Martinist Order they are informed that it has ceremonies based on Kaballah. This means the mystical philosophy that emerged from the south of France during the 12th century of the CE.Further enquiry then requires the reason for the name, "Martinism".
There are two possibilities.
That the Order is named after a Gnostic saint, Saint Martin, and the legend that as he was entering Amien, France, on a bitterly cold winter’s day, with ice and deep snow everywhere, he saw a beggar on the side of the road. St Martin dismounted from his horse, took off his cloak, ripped it in half and gave one half to the beggar.
That the Order is named after the 18th Century mystic, Louis Claude de St Martin. St Martin was born in 1743 and was trained for the legal profession but he bought himself a commission in the French Army and was stationed in Bordeaux. It was in Bordeaux he encountered Scottish Rite Freemasonry, was Initiated but eventually he became disappointed with their system and he subsequently resigned and broke all contacts with it. Shortly afterwards he became fully involved with a mystic stream or Tradition that had included such names as Court de Gebelin, Benjamin Franklin the American statesman and the English Nobleman, Sir Francis Dashwood. He travelled widely and following an invitation from the Golitzin family in Russia he went there and was Initiated into the Lineage that now runs through the British Martinist Order.
Louis Claude de St Martin died in 1803 but his lineage lived on in those who had been his close associates in Russia, France and Italy. In the closing years of the 19th century Gerard Encause with some friends created the first Martinist Order - The Ordre Martiniste. However, Encause (Papus), failed to give full credit to the Russian lineage of St Martin and this was rectified in 1991 with the formation of the British Martinist Order.
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