Robert Ambelain - Tau Jean III
(September 2, 1907 – May 27, 1997)
Patriarch, 1960-1969
Robert Ambelain, the seventh Patriarch of the Gnostic Church, authored and translated over forty books on esotericism and occultism. He is praised and honored for maintaining Martinist and Martinist Rites during the Nazi occupation, and for fostering the Gnostic Church and the Initiatic Orders in the Americas.
Ambelain was received as an Apprentice Mason in the rite of Memphis Misraim in 1939 by its Grand Master, Constant Chevillon (Tau Harmonius), the fourth Patriarch of Our Holy Church from 1936-1944. Paris was occupied in June 1940, and the Nazis prohibited Masonry and other Initiatic Orders, societies and brotherhoods, their gatherings, and their publications. The archives of the Orders were often confiscated and destroyed. The Nazis executed the Gnostic Patriarch, His Holiness Tau Harmonius, in 1944. Ambelain maintained the Masonic rites in hiding, transmitted Martinist Initiations, and worked with others to reconstitute the Rite des Elus Coens in 1943, which he led from 1946-1967. He also became the Grand Master of the Rite of Memphis Misraim, and from 1960-1969 he was Patriarch of the Gnostic Church.
From Le Martinisme by Ambelain (translated by Elias Ibrahim):
December 1940. Snow covers Paris. And this evening, at the hour when the pale Sun sets on the reddened horizon, some men are assembled in a room on the top floor of an apartment block in the Latin Quarter. An old building from the 18thcentury with a large monumental wooden staircase. Outside in the streets, in rooms, in the cafes, everywhere, the victorious German Army. Also everywhere, the agents of the Vichy Government. The dreaded police reign, on the Secret Societies and the Illuminists, searches, closures, arrests rain down on the outlaws. But here, it is another world….
Outside, where the night has finally fallen, Paris is enrobed in a silent white cloak. It is always snowing. And the cold again becomes more intense. In the streets, in rooms, everywhere the German Army, victorious. And everywhere also, suspicions and surveillances, questionings and searches, searches and closures, closures and arrests. By the hundreds, in anonymous attempted retaliations the hostages fall, shot. In a few painful months, the first convoys leave the concentration camps for the forced work on the Eastern front, the East from where none return….
And like the bloody red times of the Middle Ages terror reigns over the Illuminists.
It firstly attacks the Masonic obediences, whether free thinkers or atheists, who are uniquely occupied with pure politics. Then the spiritual obediences. Finally it arrives at the paramasonic organisations. This is how public opinion has been used. Then it takes the path of secular struggle, constrained by sixty nine years of ideological liberalism. Because behind Freemasonry and its allied organizations there is something else to seek. It is something that one wants to definitely knock down and forever beat to death, Heresy, the eternal enemy. And behind Heresy, its secular animator Occultism! Finally! There’s the great fatal word.
It isn’t shouted from the rooftops, not at all! But before all there are its archives, manuscripts, historic or doctrinal studies, which will star in the course of research.
In a book appearing in the spring of heavy year of 1939, regarding the symbolism of the Gothic cathedrals we have written these unconsciously prophetic lines:
“If the hurricane, materialist and negator succeed in blowing up the world; if the new barbarians ravage libraries and museums, realize the terrible prophecies of Henri Heine, if the hammer of Thor totally destroys our old cathedrals and their marvelous message we would still want to believe in the safe guard of the essential Knowledge. The tempest passed, in a world returned to barbarity, some men will be found, sufficiently intuitive, who feel the mystery of infinity, and will go patiently and piously to revive the ancient lamp near the famous purple shroud where the old gods sleep… And newly through the great Night of spirit, the green flame of occult knowledge will guide Humanity to its marvelous Realm, brilliant and radiant, the “City of the Sun” of the philosophers and sages.”
Ambelain was received as an Apprentice Mason in the rite of Memphis Misraim in 1939 by its Grand Master, Constant Chevillon (Tau Harmonius), the fourth Patriarch of Our Holy Church from 1936-1944. Paris was occupied in June 1940, and the Nazis prohibited Masonry and other Initiatic Orders, societies and brotherhoods, their gatherings, and their publications. The archives of the Orders were often confiscated and destroyed. The Nazis executed the Gnostic Patriarch, His Holiness Tau Harmonius, in 1944. Ambelain maintained the Masonic rites in hiding, transmitted Martinist Initiations, and worked with others to reconstitute the Rite des Elus Coens in 1943, which he led from 1946-1967. He also became the Grand Master of the Rite of Memphis Misraim, and from 1960-1969 he was Patriarch of the Gnostic Church.
From Le Martinisme by Ambelain (translated by Elias Ibrahim):
December 1940. Snow covers Paris. And this evening, at the hour when the pale Sun sets on the reddened horizon, some men are assembled in a room on the top floor of an apartment block in the Latin Quarter. An old building from the 18thcentury with a large monumental wooden staircase. Outside in the streets, in rooms, in the cafes, everywhere, the victorious German Army. Also everywhere, the agents of the Vichy Government. The dreaded police reign, on the Secret Societies and the Illuminists, searches, closures, arrests rain down on the outlaws. But here, it is another world….
Outside, where the night has finally fallen, Paris is enrobed in a silent white cloak. It is always snowing. And the cold again becomes more intense. In the streets, in rooms, everywhere the German Army, victorious. And everywhere also, suspicions and surveillances, questionings and searches, searches and closures, closures and arrests. By the hundreds, in anonymous attempted retaliations the hostages fall, shot. In a few painful months, the first convoys leave the concentration camps for the forced work on the Eastern front, the East from where none return….
And like the bloody red times of the Middle Ages terror reigns over the Illuminists.
It firstly attacks the Masonic obediences, whether free thinkers or atheists, who are uniquely occupied with pure politics. Then the spiritual obediences. Finally it arrives at the paramasonic organisations. This is how public opinion has been used. Then it takes the path of secular struggle, constrained by sixty nine years of ideological liberalism. Because behind Freemasonry and its allied organizations there is something else to seek. It is something that one wants to definitely knock down and forever beat to death, Heresy, the eternal enemy. And behind Heresy, its secular animator Occultism! Finally! There’s the great fatal word.
It isn’t shouted from the rooftops, not at all! But before all there are its archives, manuscripts, historic or doctrinal studies, which will star in the course of research.
In a book appearing in the spring of heavy year of 1939, regarding the symbolism of the Gothic cathedrals we have written these unconsciously prophetic lines:
“If the hurricane, materialist and negator succeed in blowing up the world; if the new barbarians ravage libraries and museums, realize the terrible prophecies of Henri Heine, if the hammer of Thor totally destroys our old cathedrals and their marvelous message we would still want to believe in the safe guard of the essential Knowledge. The tempest passed, in a world returned to barbarity, some men will be found, sufficiently intuitive, who feel the mystery of infinity, and will go patiently and piously to revive the ancient lamp near the famous purple shroud where the old gods sleep… And newly through the great Night of spirit, the green flame of occult knowledge will guide Humanity to its marvelous Realm, brilliant and radiant, the “City of the Sun” of the philosophers and sages.”