Gerard Anaclet Vincent Encausse 1865 - 1916

Gerard Anaclet Vincent Encausse 1865 - 1916 MD whose esoteric pseudonym was Papus, was the Spanish born French physician, hypnotist, and popularizer of occultism, who founded the modern Martinist Order.

Gerard Encausse was a homeopath, as was his father Louise Encasse, a chemist, who invented the Encausse Generator (Mark Sedgwick Lecturer in History and Arabic Studies American University in Cairo, *Against the Modern World : Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century: *(Oxford University Press, 6 May 2004). Page 40).

Encausse edited the Journal The Integral Therapeutics, devoted to homeopathy and Hermetic medicine, and he taught for 16 years at Hector Durville’s School of Practical Magnetism (R. Swinburne Clymer, Book of the Rosicrucae 1947, Part 2, (Kessinger Publishing, 1 Jan 2003). Page 87). Encausse was also a student of the French spiritualist healer, Anthelme Nizier Philippe.

Encausse was the homeopathic physician of Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra.

In 1901, Encausse was the Parisian Delegate at the Paris International Congress of Homeopathy, and a member of the Societe Gallicane de Medecine Homœopathique,

Gerard Encausse was a colleague of Timothy Field Allen, Victor Arnaud, Francois Cartier, Paul Francois Curie, Simon Felix Camille Croserio, Peter Davidson, Paul Ferdinand Gachet, Giraud, Hureau, Gottlieb Heinrich Georg Jahr, Pierre Jousset, Libert, Adrien Peladan and his brother Josephin Peladan, Perry, Frederick Hervey Foster Quin, Leon Francois Adolphe Simon, Jean Paul Tessier, George Adolph Weber and many others.

Gerard Encausse was an initiate of Peter Davidson.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papus Gerard Encausse was born at La Coruña in Spain on July 13, 1865, of a Spanish mother and a French father, Louis Encausse, a chemist. His family moved to Paris when he was four years old, and he received his education there.

As a young man, Encausse spent a great deal of time at the Bibliothèque Nationale studying the Kabbalah, occult tarot, the sciences of magic and alchemy, and the writings of Eliphas Levi. He joined the French Theosophical Society shortly after it was founded by Madame Blavatsky in 1884 - 1885, but he resigned soon after joining because he disliked the Society’s emphasis on Eastern occultism.

In 1888, he co-founded his own group, the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose Croix. That same year, he and his friend Lucien Chamuel founded the Librarie du Merveilleux and its monthly revue L’Initiation, which remained in publication until 1914.

Encausse was also a member of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn temple in Paris, as well as Memphis Misraim and probably other esoteric or paramasonic organizations, as well as being an author of several occult books. Outside of his paramasonic and martinist activities he was also a spiritual student of the French spiritualist healer, Anthelme Nizier Philippe.

Despite his heavy involvement in occultism and occultist groups, Encausse managed to find time to pursue more conventional academic studies at the University of Paris. He received his Doctor of Medicine degree in 1894 upon submitting a dissertation on Philosophical Anatomy. He opened a clinic in the rue Rodin which was quite successful.

Encausse visited Russia three times, in 1901, 1905, and 1906, serving Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra both as physician and occult consultant. In October 1905, he allegedly conjured up the spirit of Tsar Alexander III, the Tsar Nicholas II’s father, who prophesied that Tsar Nicholas II would meet his downfall at the hands of revolutionaries. Encausse’s followers allege that he informed Tsar Nicholas II that he would be able to magically avert Alexander’s prophesy so long as Encausse was alive: Tsar Nicholas II kept his hold on the throne of Russia until 141 days after Papus’s death.

Although Encausse seems to have served Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra in what was essentially a shamanic capacity, he was later curiously concerned about their heavy reliance on occultism to assist them in deciding questions of government. During their later correspondence, he warned them a number of times against the influence of Rasputin.

When World War I broke out, Encausse joined the French army medical corps. While working in a military hospital, he contracted tuberculosis and died on October 25, 1916, at the age of 51.

Encausse’s early readings in tarot and the lore of the Kabbalah in translation was inspired by the occult writings of Eliphas Levi, whose translation of the Nuctemeron of Apollonius of Tyana printed as a supplement to Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (1855), provided Encausse with his nom de plume: “Papus” means “physician.”

In 1891, Encausse claimed to have come into the possession of the original papers of Martinez Paschalis, or de Pasqually (c. 1700-1774), and therewith founded an Order of Martinists called l’Ordre des Supérieurs Inconnus. He claimed to have been given authority in the Rite of Saint-Martin by his friend Henri Vicomte de Laage, who claimed that his maternal grandfather had been initiated into the order by Louis Claude de Saint Martin himself, and who had attempted to revive the order in 1887. The Martinists Order was to become a primary focus for Encausse, and continues today as one of his most enduring legacies.

In 1893, Encausse was consecrated a bishop of l’Église Gnostique de France by Jules Doinel, who had founded this Church as an attempt to revive the Cathar religion in 1890. In 1895, Jules Doinel abdicated as Primate of the French Gnostic Church, leaving control of the Church to a synod of three of his former bishops, one of whom was Encausse.

It was also during this period, circa 1894 - 1895, that Encausse briefly joined and quickly resigned from the Theosophical Society.

In March 1895, Encausse joined the Ahathoor Temple of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in Paris.

Although Encausse claimed as his “spiritual master” the mysterious magician and healer known as Anthelme Nizier Philippe, his first actual teacher in the intellectual aspects of occultism was Joseph Alexandre Saint Yves d’Alveydre. Joseph Alexandre Saint Yves d’Alveydre had inherited the papers of one of the great founders of French occultism, Antoine Fabre d’Olivet, and it was probably Joseph Alexandre Saint Yves d’Alveydre who introduced Papus to Stanislas de Guaita.

In 1888, Encausse, Joseph Alexandre Saint Yves d’Alveydre and Stanislas de Guaita joined with Josephin Peladan and Oswald Wirth to found the Rosicrucian Kabbalistic Order of the Rose Croix.

In October 1901 Encausse collaborated with Jean Carrere in producing a series of articles in the Echo de Paris under the pseudonym Niet (“no” in Russian). In the articles Sergei Witte and Pyotr Rachkovsky were attacked, and it was suggested that there was a sinister financial syndicate trying to disrupt the Franco Russian alliance.

Encausse and Jean Carrere alleged that this syndicate was a Jewish conspiracy, and the antisemitic nature of these articles, compounded by Encausse’s known connection to Tsar Nicholas II, may have contributed to the false allegation that Papus was the author who forged The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a notorious anti Semitic hoax alleging that a worldwide Jewish conspiracy controls the media and financial institutions.

In his occult writings Encausse drew heavily upon the scriptures and Kabbalistic mystical writings of the Jews. He also attended Golden Dawn ritual meetings alongside Moina Mathers (Mina Bergson), the Jewish wife of Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers.

However, in his pseudonymous political writings he excoriated Jews as evil financial conspirators. This contradiction between occultistic Judophilia and political Jew hatred was neither explained nor acknowledged in his writings. (Jean Carrere’s actual attack was on the dark cult of individualism, which has been possibly deliberately confused with antisemistism, no doubt for occult purposes, and little understood by the unitiated).

Encausse never became a regular (Grand Orient) Freemason. Despite this, he organized what was announced as an “International Masonic Conference” in Paris on June 24, 1908, and at this conference he first met Theodor Reuss, and the two men apparently exchanged patents.

Theodor Reuss elevated Encausse as X° of the Ordo Templi Orientis as well as giving him license to establish a “Supreme Grand Council General of the Unified Rites of Ancient and Primitive Masonry for the Grand Orient of France and its Dependencies at Paris.”

For his part, Encausse assisted Theodor Reuss in the formation of the OTO. Gnostic Catholic Church as a child of l’Église Gnostique de France, thus forming the EGC within the tradition of French neo gnosticism.

When John Yarker died in 1913, Encausse was elected as his successor to the office of Grand Hierophant (international head) of the Antient and Primitive Rites of Memphis and Mizraim.

(It was John Yarker who allowed Frantz Hartmann to join the OTO, opening to door to all sorts of unpleasant developments in Nazi Germany).

Gerard Encausse wrote A Year Book of Homeopathy, Les Homeopathes et l’Homeopathie, and he also submitted articles and cases to various homeopathic publications, including La Therapeutique de la Tuberculose to the American Homeopathist in 1899, Annuaire de 1’homoeopathie a Paris reviewed in The British Homeopathic Review in 1899, and he is mentioned in The British, Colonial, and Continental Homeopathic Medical Directory in 1899, The Homoeopathisch maandblad in 1901, and in the International Homeopathic Medical Directory in 1904.