Commentary on Tau Jean II and The Gnostic Mass
by Tau Charles Harmonius II
Église Gnostique Apostolique
Primatie des États Unis d’Amérique du Nord Fondée en 1970
par Sa Beatitude Dr. Pedro Friere en Ordine Tau Petrus Johannes
Patriarche de l'Église Gnostique Apostolique (Catholique)
In the course of studies in the Gnostic Church of France, whether as a member of clergy, as is obligatory, or as a student of arcane science, it is always important to set aside and delineate vague or conflictual information as presents itself. This is never done without some difficult work and sometimes VERY difficult work, but it will always be shown to the sincere and dedicated seeker that much knowledge will be gained in that process, even if the question concerned does not, to our complete satisfaction, become resolved.
It becomes noted in historical briefs that during the reign of Our Patriarche Tau Jean II (Johanny Bricaud), third in historic succession and Primier in Apostolic succession of the modern Gnostic Church, that he advocated the use of the Gnostic Mass of Aleister Crowley as the religion for Scottish Rite Masons of the 18° (A.A.S.R.). This was alleged to have been communicated to then legate of Our Church to the ‘Kingdom’ of Germany. While there is certainly NO confirmation of this statement, at least as it presents itself to us, there are a few background facts that should be kept in fore mind when this is in consideration. Let’s delimit a few here and now:
1. Tau Jean revolutionized the early Gnostic Church by inclusion of the Antiochene Petrine apostolic succession and revised most sacramental offices, including the Divine Missa (Mass), according to very strict traditional lines. In fact, his ecclesiastical career, for that matter his initiatique career, did seem to beckon a strict observance to Sacred Canons in the Church, and the same as regarded the Ancient Landmarks with regard to Fraternities under his jurisdiction. Women were not ordained in the E.G.U.(1). or conferred degrees in Martinist or Masonic Orders over which he had jurisdiction.(2).
2. The statement concerned indicates that Tau Jean II was advocating this Mass as “a religion for the 18th degree of the Scottish Rite (A.A.S.R.)”. A Mass properly understood does not represent a religion anywhere; it is a ceremony common to the sacramental Churches of Apostolic Christian practice, i.e., Catholic (all rites) and Orthodox (all rites). Freemasonry, being foremost a fraternity, has no religion, although Tau Jean II, as the Bishops before and after him, have always regarded the Church of Gnosis (The Gnostic Church) as the ‘Church of the Initiate’, in particular the Mason the philosophic or theological depths of ancient Gnosic doctrine or science.(3).
The argument set forth cannot be resolved by this paper, and is obviously not intended to be, as this Bishop was not present, nor has any other documentation from archive relating to this or other comments of His Sacred Beatitude Tau Jean II. I am, however, of his successorship in the Apostolical Ordinal chain of the Church, which was and is the vey same Institution, irrespective of variations of Our Church’s official title (Name), which I plan to correct herein.
Returning, however, to the main matters here in analysis, the Mass developed by Aleister Crowley is not a valid intrument for an apostolic sacrament, and was not in Our opinion created within such intent in any case. It does not include any requisites of the institution of transubstantiation, i.e., the words of institution being the mandate of Our Lord in His last supper, which is the initiating event of this mystical sacramental rite. In this singular regard our Patriarche would not nor could not endorse it as sacrementally effacious in any way. For this reason it can not be used as a Mass. I have never seen this Mass celebrated, but have read authorized versions and even studied Mr. Crowley's own explanation of its origin, which claims it to be founded upon the Liturgy of the Russian Orthodox Church. As a student of Russian liturgy I do not see much in parallel there either. However, there is nothing lewd or obscene to be found in Mr. Crowley’s liturgy, which has also been alleged. It appears rather as an almost operatic performance of a Parcivalian aria with sacred and medieval odes and trappings.
It seems most likely to have derived from a ceremony that Mr. Crowley had witnessed in Scotland, which appeared to be attended by men and women using a combined Rose Croix and bacchanal ritual. The ceremony is rather aesthetic, and when first performed in public was so publicly greeted and held. I also felt so when having first studied it, side by side with accepted liturgies of our Church, when in the seminary of our Church. I also observed that Mr. Crowley evidenced no particular Christian gnostic theological references for any of his ceremonial, and seemed in my opinion to view official Church canons as encumbrances. He was not, in my opinion, a gnostic clergyman by any stretch of imagination, and it is difficult to assess any prominent gnosis of western provenance in the O.T.O. organization of his innovation. To my best investigative resources, I have found no documentation of Mr. Crowley having been at all an ordinand of the French Gnostic Church, even under Theodore Reuss, whom I do admit as a Bishop of this Church. For me, this matter lays squarely here.
Unrelated to the issue of Tau Jean's misinterpreted endorsement of the Liber XV Mass as ‘a Gnostic Mass’, yet often found incorrectly portrayed in historical briefs of the Gnostic Church of France, I am compelled to use the present opportunity to address OUR CHURCH NAME. Since the very inception of Our Holy Church in 1889 by Jules Doinel as Tau Valentin I Patriarche Premier, the Church has been re-titled approximately five different times, each time by the Holy Synod (College of Metropolitans) and the reigning Patriarche for a specific reason not connected to schism in the vast majority of cases, as appears to be the fodder, intentional or unintentional, of many an author on the history of the Church. Let me comment upon those occasions for interested students herewith.
The original name of this Church at inception was the ‘Church of the Paraclet’, which was not chosen by vote or referendum, but by the consensus of the vision and revelation shared by the Taus and Sophias who, with Jules Doinel in Ecclesia Tau Valentin I, the Holy Spirit had descended from the Pleroma to assist in the establishment and guidance of the restoration of the Gnosis. In addition, the Church held to the identity of the Albi Church of ancient Cathars, who were known for usage of the Paraclet in the typology of the dove as its standard before the churches. This seemed consistent enough, at least for the time until tumult and controversy rocked the fledgling infant Church when the Patriarche vacated and renounced the Church of Gnosis for the Church of Rome, a rather striking reversal of his historic namesake Valentinus of Rome!
By consensus of Holy Synod, a pious and socially progressive symbolist poet Fabrè des Essarts ascended the gnostic patriarchal throne as Tau Synesius. It was then that the consensus to rename the Church "Eglise Gnostique" and to offer the image of a Church that catered to the needs of esoteric initiates, while at the same time fulfilling its primary ideological mission as the ‘restoration of the gnosis’. It is interesting to note from the annals of the Liberal Catholic Church forming at about this time, that their body was strongly inclined toward adopting for themselves that same title, only to abandon the idea after realizing that the name had [already] become registered in France. His Beatitude moved further, however, toward the Church’s former inclination as a principally neo-Cathar revival. In the meantime, the young Bishop Johanny Bricaud began to move the College back to an initiatique direction and toward international ecclesiastical status, having been received into the Antiochene Petrine succession of Archbishop Renè Villatte, Mar Timotheus, by the Patriarche of the Gallican National Catholic Church, Archbishop Francois Giraud. The Holy Synod embraced a change of leadership as necessary for the Church’s strength in the future, and in 1908 Tau Jean II became the Church’s third Patriarche. Tau Synesius and a small cadre of clergy continued as the Eglise Gnostique d’ France until his death. His disciples eventually reunited themselves with PAPUS, Bricaud, and a number of the original College. It truly deserves mention that through the years of the Church’s founding until 1916, the year of PAPUS’ death, the Church was very much under his direction, even though the celebrated french Hierophant held no ‘High’ title, other than member of the Sacred College of Gnostic Bishops, the Holy Synod.
Under Tau Jean II, the Church assumed the name Eglise Gnostique Universelle (Catholique), also oft' known as the Gnostic Catholic Church, based on the obvious new apostolical status. While the choice of the new name EGU was logical and appropriate, it brought our Church at the same time international ecclesiastical recognition as well as new peril. The Roman Catholic Church, unwilling to cede any such status to a new Catholic body not in its control, began to complain in almost every country where the EGU had transplanted. The Patriarche and Holy Synod largely ignored these complaints, but continued to build relationships with other small sacramental bodies where possible. The matter eventually came to confrontation with Vatican Treatises with first Mussolini and later the Third Reich, which already viewed the Martinist Order (under Tau Jean II an official Order of the Church as of 1911) as a Jewish secret society. According to Our Consecrateur Monseigneur Roger Herard, a letter was reputed to have been circulated, supposed to have originated from the Roman Curia of Pius XII to the Archbishop of Paris, requesting that the representatives of the French government assist in guarding the Roman Church's faithful from the apostacy which EGU represented to the Vatican in Europe. Some short time afterwards, the Vichy government closed the Church, and Tau Harmonius met a martyr's end on March 25th, 1944 C.E.
The Gnostique Universelle Church continued in South America under Dr. Arnoldo Krumm-Heller, facing similar but by no means as dangerous threats, but the mother Church was completely underground, with priests keeping guns close by in sanctuary, and Bishops moving from place to place like criminals on the lamb. Some accounts of the hidden anguish of these leaders read almost like Les Miserables, ironically as the author of that famed story, Victor Hugo, was an early initiate of Martinism. However, as WWII began to subside, reconstruction had slowly begun, and the Church, having been sent underground, started to re-emerge. In Paris and in Lyons in the south, the two branches attempted to convene a Holy Synod for the election of a successor to the martyred Constant Martin Chevillon, in Ecclesia Tau Harmonius.
In 1945, with Europe struggling to recover itself with bombed out cities, still unfound dead from the carnage of bombings, a wondrous thing was taking place in Egypt, especially from the gnostic perspective. There in Nag Hamadi, close to Christmas Day, an ancient cachè of lost documents was recovered from a cave. This was, of course, the famed discovery of the lost gnostic gospels, believed to have been completely obliterated since the destruction of wisdom perpetrated by Christian Churches against the hidden knowledge in about 400 A.D. This remarkable event, which is still infuencing the theological and literary world today, must have been viewed by our brethren all over the world as nothing less than a God send! It is an event that continues to change the present Church altogether.
In Paris, new representatives of this now historic yet relatively young Church was forming. The principals were Rene Chambellant (Tau Renatus) and Robert Ambelain (Tau Jean III, also referred as Tau Robert) under the guidance of Henri DuPont (Tau Charles- Henri), Antoin Fayolle, and Victor Blanchard (Tau Targelius). There has been considerable banter as to whom was the intended and best suited candidate to lead the EGA, which is so much diversion from the issue at hand, now as well as then. Both young candidates carried unique and laudable credentials and shared common visions for the EGA. It was, according to Mgr. Roger Herard, the vision to spread the authority of Primats to key international stations, which both Ambelain and Chambellant felt resolved to accomplish. R. Ambelain concentrated on the Americas as R. Chambellant [did] in Africa, where he apparently lived out a great part of his life (French Congo and Ivory Coast). Inevitably, as perhaps was all along the will of the Supreme Archetype, the Patriarchate was transferred to South America in 1970, where its Primate (since 1956) Dr. Pedro Friere was elected as Tau Petrus Johannes XIII, who hyphenated the name of the Church to EGA (Catholique/Katholica), an attempt to reassert the Church's identity to the Bricaud era. He also created a new Seal replacing that of Tau Jean III’s Black Madonna, who had by many gnostiques in France been regarded [as] the true Patroness of Initiates, an icon of the Pneuma Hagion, and to some a Catholicized Isian figure. For more on the Sacred Labarum of the Church, consult Mgr. Herard's article, originally written for the Athenea Theologica official clergy publication.
In summation, the changes in the Name and Official labarum or seal of the Church were always a consensual matter of the Holy Synod in concert with the reigning Patriarche. It is a gross error for anyone to detract from thus. After my consecrateur and predecessor Roger St. Victor Herard's passage, I, as instructed by him, struck up a series of correspondences with Renè Chambellant, Tau Renatus, Primatie des Gaules, Patriarche d’ Afrique and constitutional Patriarchate of the Church, “Eveque d’ Saint Montsegure”, according to the ‘Protocol of the Seine 1906’, also known as the ‘Synesius Constitution’. Five correspondances were exchanged between 1991 and 1993, and were of tremendous assistance and support at a critical time in my Episcopate. I regret not having initiated these contacts earlier. We never discussed any controversial issues of Church history as pertaining to Tau Jean III (R. Ambelain) and himself. I never received even the slightest impression of a separation in the Church, and His Grace and Beatitude spoke to me and treated me with the dignity of a Bishop in an united EGA. He did so as one who was most truly a First among equals.
Tau Charles Harmonius II
Robert M. Cokinis Ep.Gn.
A.M.D.G
Notes:
1. I don’t believe any conscious misogyny existed on Tau Jean II’s part, while controversial at the time, given the institution of the Church under Doinel was known to be co-founded by ‘Sophias’. The issue of the feminine ordinand has always loomed threateningly over the Church’s head. It is known that Mrs. Bricaud was very active in the background of her husbands reign. In one letter from Chambellant, he addressed the feminine episcopate by saying that the Sophias by tradition were to be autocephalous and independent of the Church structure proper. I later became aware that Chambellant had ordained his own wife who reportedly assisted him liturgically on a personal basis.
2. It is consistent with Bricaud's traditionalism relating to Fraternal regulations, as he followed the ecclesiastical norms as noted above. With respect to this, it is inconceivable that he would break with these standards or even suggest so in the matters related to the 18° degree of A.A.S.R. masonry.
3. The Gnostic Church acknowledged a special mission to accommodate the victims of conscience such as initiatic fraternities who are denied the sacraments on such a basis.
Église Gnostique Apostolique
Primatie des États Unis d’Amérique du Nord Fondée en 1970
par Sa Beatitude Dr. Pedro Friere en Ordine Tau Petrus Johannes
Patriarche de l'Église Gnostique Apostolique (Catholique)
In the course of studies in the Gnostic Church of France, whether as a member of clergy, as is obligatory, or as a student of arcane science, it is always important to set aside and delineate vague or conflictual information as presents itself. This is never done without some difficult work and sometimes VERY difficult work, but it will always be shown to the sincere and dedicated seeker that much knowledge will be gained in that process, even if the question concerned does not, to our complete satisfaction, become resolved.
It becomes noted in historical briefs that during the reign of Our Patriarche Tau Jean II (Johanny Bricaud), third in historic succession and Primier in Apostolic succession of the modern Gnostic Church, that he advocated the use of the Gnostic Mass of Aleister Crowley as the religion for Scottish Rite Masons of the 18° (A.A.S.R.). This was alleged to have been communicated to then legate of Our Church to the ‘Kingdom’ of Germany. While there is certainly NO confirmation of this statement, at least as it presents itself to us, there are a few background facts that should be kept in fore mind when this is in consideration. Let’s delimit a few here and now:
1. Tau Jean revolutionized the early Gnostic Church by inclusion of the Antiochene Petrine apostolic succession and revised most sacramental offices, including the Divine Missa (Mass), according to very strict traditional lines. In fact, his ecclesiastical career, for that matter his initiatique career, did seem to beckon a strict observance to Sacred Canons in the Church, and the same as regarded the Ancient Landmarks with regard to Fraternities under his jurisdiction. Women were not ordained in the E.G.U.(1). or conferred degrees in Martinist or Masonic Orders over which he had jurisdiction.(2).
2. The statement concerned indicates that Tau Jean II was advocating this Mass as “a religion for the 18th degree of the Scottish Rite (A.A.S.R.)”. A Mass properly understood does not represent a religion anywhere; it is a ceremony common to the sacramental Churches of Apostolic Christian practice, i.e., Catholic (all rites) and Orthodox (all rites). Freemasonry, being foremost a fraternity, has no religion, although Tau Jean II, as the Bishops before and after him, have always regarded the Church of Gnosis (The Gnostic Church) as the ‘Church of the Initiate’, in particular the Mason the philosophic or theological depths of ancient Gnosic doctrine or science.(3).
The argument set forth cannot be resolved by this paper, and is obviously not intended to be, as this Bishop was not present, nor has any other documentation from archive relating to this or other comments of His Sacred Beatitude Tau Jean II. I am, however, of his successorship in the Apostolical Ordinal chain of the Church, which was and is the vey same Institution, irrespective of variations of Our Church’s official title (Name), which I plan to correct herein.
Returning, however, to the main matters here in analysis, the Mass developed by Aleister Crowley is not a valid intrument for an apostolic sacrament, and was not in Our opinion created within such intent in any case. It does not include any requisites of the institution of transubstantiation, i.e., the words of institution being the mandate of Our Lord in His last supper, which is the initiating event of this mystical sacramental rite. In this singular regard our Patriarche would not nor could not endorse it as sacrementally effacious in any way. For this reason it can not be used as a Mass. I have never seen this Mass celebrated, but have read authorized versions and even studied Mr. Crowley's own explanation of its origin, which claims it to be founded upon the Liturgy of the Russian Orthodox Church. As a student of Russian liturgy I do not see much in parallel there either. However, there is nothing lewd or obscene to be found in Mr. Crowley’s liturgy, which has also been alleged. It appears rather as an almost operatic performance of a Parcivalian aria with sacred and medieval odes and trappings.
It seems most likely to have derived from a ceremony that Mr. Crowley had witnessed in Scotland, which appeared to be attended by men and women using a combined Rose Croix and bacchanal ritual. The ceremony is rather aesthetic, and when first performed in public was so publicly greeted and held. I also felt so when having first studied it, side by side with accepted liturgies of our Church, when in the seminary of our Church. I also observed that Mr. Crowley evidenced no particular Christian gnostic theological references for any of his ceremonial, and seemed in my opinion to view official Church canons as encumbrances. He was not, in my opinion, a gnostic clergyman by any stretch of imagination, and it is difficult to assess any prominent gnosis of western provenance in the O.T.O. organization of his innovation. To my best investigative resources, I have found no documentation of Mr. Crowley having been at all an ordinand of the French Gnostic Church, even under Theodore Reuss, whom I do admit as a Bishop of this Church. For me, this matter lays squarely here.
Unrelated to the issue of Tau Jean's misinterpreted endorsement of the Liber XV Mass as ‘a Gnostic Mass’, yet often found incorrectly portrayed in historical briefs of the Gnostic Church of France, I am compelled to use the present opportunity to address OUR CHURCH NAME. Since the very inception of Our Holy Church in 1889 by Jules Doinel as Tau Valentin I Patriarche Premier, the Church has been re-titled approximately five different times, each time by the Holy Synod (College of Metropolitans) and the reigning Patriarche for a specific reason not connected to schism in the vast majority of cases, as appears to be the fodder, intentional or unintentional, of many an author on the history of the Church. Let me comment upon those occasions for interested students herewith.
The original name of this Church at inception was the ‘Church of the Paraclet’, which was not chosen by vote or referendum, but by the consensus of the vision and revelation shared by the Taus and Sophias who, with Jules Doinel in Ecclesia Tau Valentin I, the Holy Spirit had descended from the Pleroma to assist in the establishment and guidance of the restoration of the Gnosis. In addition, the Church held to the identity of the Albi Church of ancient Cathars, who were known for usage of the Paraclet in the typology of the dove as its standard before the churches. This seemed consistent enough, at least for the time until tumult and controversy rocked the fledgling infant Church when the Patriarche vacated and renounced the Church of Gnosis for the Church of Rome, a rather striking reversal of his historic namesake Valentinus of Rome!
By consensus of Holy Synod, a pious and socially progressive symbolist poet Fabrè des Essarts ascended the gnostic patriarchal throne as Tau Synesius. It was then that the consensus to rename the Church "Eglise Gnostique" and to offer the image of a Church that catered to the needs of esoteric initiates, while at the same time fulfilling its primary ideological mission as the ‘restoration of the gnosis’. It is interesting to note from the annals of the Liberal Catholic Church forming at about this time, that their body was strongly inclined toward adopting for themselves that same title, only to abandon the idea after realizing that the name had [already] become registered in France. His Beatitude moved further, however, toward the Church’s former inclination as a principally neo-Cathar revival. In the meantime, the young Bishop Johanny Bricaud began to move the College back to an initiatique direction and toward international ecclesiastical status, having been received into the Antiochene Petrine succession of Archbishop Renè Villatte, Mar Timotheus, by the Patriarche of the Gallican National Catholic Church, Archbishop Francois Giraud. The Holy Synod embraced a change of leadership as necessary for the Church’s strength in the future, and in 1908 Tau Jean II became the Church’s third Patriarche. Tau Synesius and a small cadre of clergy continued as the Eglise Gnostique d’ France until his death. His disciples eventually reunited themselves with PAPUS, Bricaud, and a number of the original College. It truly deserves mention that through the years of the Church’s founding until 1916, the year of PAPUS’ death, the Church was very much under his direction, even though the celebrated french Hierophant held no ‘High’ title, other than member of the Sacred College of Gnostic Bishops, the Holy Synod.
Under Tau Jean II, the Church assumed the name Eglise Gnostique Universelle (Catholique), also oft' known as the Gnostic Catholic Church, based on the obvious new apostolical status. While the choice of the new name EGU was logical and appropriate, it brought our Church at the same time international ecclesiastical recognition as well as new peril. The Roman Catholic Church, unwilling to cede any such status to a new Catholic body not in its control, began to complain in almost every country where the EGU had transplanted. The Patriarche and Holy Synod largely ignored these complaints, but continued to build relationships with other small sacramental bodies where possible. The matter eventually came to confrontation with Vatican Treatises with first Mussolini and later the Third Reich, which already viewed the Martinist Order (under Tau Jean II an official Order of the Church as of 1911) as a Jewish secret society. According to Our Consecrateur Monseigneur Roger Herard, a letter was reputed to have been circulated, supposed to have originated from the Roman Curia of Pius XII to the Archbishop of Paris, requesting that the representatives of the French government assist in guarding the Roman Church's faithful from the apostacy which EGU represented to the Vatican in Europe. Some short time afterwards, the Vichy government closed the Church, and Tau Harmonius met a martyr's end on March 25th, 1944 C.E.
The Gnostique Universelle Church continued in South America under Dr. Arnoldo Krumm-Heller, facing similar but by no means as dangerous threats, but the mother Church was completely underground, with priests keeping guns close by in sanctuary, and Bishops moving from place to place like criminals on the lamb. Some accounts of the hidden anguish of these leaders read almost like Les Miserables, ironically as the author of that famed story, Victor Hugo, was an early initiate of Martinism. However, as WWII began to subside, reconstruction had slowly begun, and the Church, having been sent underground, started to re-emerge. In Paris and in Lyons in the south, the two branches attempted to convene a Holy Synod for the election of a successor to the martyred Constant Martin Chevillon, in Ecclesia Tau Harmonius.
In 1945, with Europe struggling to recover itself with bombed out cities, still unfound dead from the carnage of bombings, a wondrous thing was taking place in Egypt, especially from the gnostic perspective. There in Nag Hamadi, close to Christmas Day, an ancient cachè of lost documents was recovered from a cave. This was, of course, the famed discovery of the lost gnostic gospels, believed to have been completely obliterated since the destruction of wisdom perpetrated by Christian Churches against the hidden knowledge in about 400 A.D. This remarkable event, which is still infuencing the theological and literary world today, must have been viewed by our brethren all over the world as nothing less than a God send! It is an event that continues to change the present Church altogether.
In Paris, new representatives of this now historic yet relatively young Church was forming. The principals were Rene Chambellant (Tau Renatus) and Robert Ambelain (Tau Jean III, also referred as Tau Robert) under the guidance of Henri DuPont (Tau Charles- Henri), Antoin Fayolle, and Victor Blanchard (Tau Targelius). There has been considerable banter as to whom was the intended and best suited candidate to lead the EGA, which is so much diversion from the issue at hand, now as well as then. Both young candidates carried unique and laudable credentials and shared common visions for the EGA. It was, according to Mgr. Roger Herard, the vision to spread the authority of Primats to key international stations, which both Ambelain and Chambellant felt resolved to accomplish. R. Ambelain concentrated on the Americas as R. Chambellant [did] in Africa, where he apparently lived out a great part of his life (French Congo and Ivory Coast). Inevitably, as perhaps was all along the will of the Supreme Archetype, the Patriarchate was transferred to South America in 1970, where its Primate (since 1956) Dr. Pedro Friere was elected as Tau Petrus Johannes XIII, who hyphenated the name of the Church to EGA (Catholique/Katholica), an attempt to reassert the Church's identity to the Bricaud era. He also created a new Seal replacing that of Tau Jean III’s Black Madonna, who had by many gnostiques in France been regarded [as] the true Patroness of Initiates, an icon of the Pneuma Hagion, and to some a Catholicized Isian figure. For more on the Sacred Labarum of the Church, consult Mgr. Herard's article, originally written for the Athenea Theologica official clergy publication.
In summation, the changes in the Name and Official labarum or seal of the Church were always a consensual matter of the Holy Synod in concert with the reigning Patriarche. It is a gross error for anyone to detract from thus. After my consecrateur and predecessor Roger St. Victor Herard's passage, I, as instructed by him, struck up a series of correspondences with Renè Chambellant, Tau Renatus, Primatie des Gaules, Patriarche d’ Afrique and constitutional Patriarchate of the Church, “Eveque d’ Saint Montsegure”, according to the ‘Protocol of the Seine 1906’, also known as the ‘Synesius Constitution’. Five correspondances were exchanged between 1991 and 1993, and were of tremendous assistance and support at a critical time in my Episcopate. I regret not having initiated these contacts earlier. We never discussed any controversial issues of Church history as pertaining to Tau Jean III (R. Ambelain) and himself. I never received even the slightest impression of a separation in the Church, and His Grace and Beatitude spoke to me and treated me with the dignity of a Bishop in an united EGA. He did so as one who was most truly a First among equals.
Tau Charles Harmonius II
Robert M. Cokinis Ep.Gn.
A.M.D.G
Notes:
1. I don’t believe any conscious misogyny existed on Tau Jean II’s part, while controversial at the time, given the institution of the Church under Doinel was known to be co-founded by ‘Sophias’. The issue of the feminine ordinand has always loomed threateningly over the Church’s head. It is known that Mrs. Bricaud was very active in the background of her husbands reign. In one letter from Chambellant, he addressed the feminine episcopate by saying that the Sophias by tradition were to be autocephalous and independent of the Church structure proper. I later became aware that Chambellant had ordained his own wife who reportedly assisted him liturgically on a personal basis.
2. It is consistent with Bricaud's traditionalism relating to Fraternal regulations, as he followed the ecclesiastical norms as noted above. With respect to this, it is inconceivable that he would break with these standards or even suggest so in the matters related to the 18° degree of A.A.S.R. masonry.
3. The Gnostic Church acknowledged a special mission to accommodate the victims of conscience such as initiatic fraternities who are denied the sacraments on such a basis.