A Mystic of Lyon: Jean-Baptiste Willermoz and the Secrets of Freemasonry

First published in France in 1938 and never previously translated into English, Alice Joly's Un mystique lyonnais et les secrets de la Franc-Maçonnerie (1730-1824) is the foundational scholarly biography of Jean-Baptiste Willermoz - the Lyon merchant, mystic, and Masonic reformer whose influence on the initiatic Freemasonry of the eighteenth century was as profound as it was far-reaching. Willermoz (1730-1824) was the principal architect of the Rectified Scottish Rite and the Order of the Chevaliers Bienfaisants de la Cité Sainte, a close associate of Martines de Pasqually and a longtime host of Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, and one of the central figures in the transmission of the Coën theurgical tradition. His archives, preserved in the Bibliothèque de Lyon, constitute one of the richest primary sources for the history of mystical Freemasonry in the Western world. Alice Joly (née Bouvier) was a graduate of the École Nationale des Chartes and served as City Archivist of Lyon from 1934 to 1963. Working directly from the Lyon manuscript collections - correspondence, ritual documents, lodge and chapter minutes, and personal papers - she applied the full rigor of the Chartist tradition of archival criticism to a subject that had previously been treated with more enthusiasm than scholarly care. The result is a study of extraordinary depth and precision, tracing Willermoz's life across fourteen chapters from his earliest Masonic initiations to his death at the age of ninety-three. Among the major subjects treated are: the founding and development of the Order of the Élus Coëns under Martines de Pasqually; the composition and reception of Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin's Des Erreurs et de la Vérité; the Convent des Gaules and the creation of the Rectified Scottish Rite; the Convent of Wilhelmsbad and the complex politics of high-grade Masonry in France and Germany; the encounter between Willermoz's circle and the movement of animal magnetism; the mystical somnambulism of the Société de la Concorde and its Unknown Agent; and the gradual dissolution of the Lyon Masonic world in the shadow of the French Revolution. This first complete English translation has been prepared by Tau Phosphoros, translator of René Le Forestier's Occultist Freemasonry in the 18th Century and the Order of Élus Coëns (2023). The translation is complete and unabridged, including all footnotes, the table of contents, and the table of illustrations. A translator's introduction situates Joly's work within its scholarly context and discusses the methodology of the translation. Essential reading for initiates and scholars of the Rectified Scottish Rite, the Chevaliers Bienfaisants de la Cité Sainte, the Martinist and Coën traditions, and the history of Western esotericism. Read more