S6-E12 – Magic or Masonry?-Stewart Clelland

My guest in this episode is author and scholar Stewart Clelland who recently published a book, ‘The Green Book of the Élus Coëns’, which reflects the main topic of this episode, the very particular ‘Order of Knight-Masons Elect Priests of the Universe’, the Élus Coëns.

Stewart Clelland was born and raised in the West of Scotland, in an area where freemasonry is part of the culture on a rather low-key basis. Having been drawn to writings of Nietzsche and Kant from an early age Stewart studied philosophy and later Western Esotericism at the University of Exeter. His goal was nothing else than to understand the spiritual tradition of masonry and the common boundaries of esotericism and freemasonry as well as where they do overlap indeed.

Stewart’s research led him to the Élus Coëns, ‘The Order of Knight-Masons Elect Priests of the Universe’, which was founded in 1767 by Martinez de Pasqually in France. Actually, this organisation which certainly had an influence upon later esoteric orders of the 19th century and among them especially on the Golden Dawn, had no lesser aim than to bring forth the apocalypse itself in order to restore mankind to its previous ‘Adam’-form within a Golden Age.

Find this book on the website of its publisher, Lewis Masonic, by clicking here

And this is the link to Stewart Clelland’s personal website

We’ll be talking quite a lot about the worldview of this order, its methods and especially the so-called Doctrine of Reintegration and what this exactly would mean on a spiritual as well as on a material level. We go into depths about how strong the apocalyptical aspect is and what the idea of modern practitioners might be regarding this concept.

Stewart leads us into the maze of the Élus Coëns’ relationship to historical and contemporary masonry and explains how Martinez de Pasqually used it as a vehicle for his own philosophical ideas of creating a kind of ecstatic form of masonry with mixing Gnosticism, Kabbalah, radical Protestantism, Catholicism and Masonic elements to establish a Prisca Theologia.

My guest will kindly shed some light onto his personal practice as well, and – something that is completely a ‘first’ in this show – announce the music that you’ll be enjoying as it is a piece that he composed and performed himself a few years ago.

Stewart’s ‘The Green Book of the Élus Coëns’ which is a translation from a document supposed to be written in 1772 will be a highlight for sure as we go into detail about the arduous writing process, the book’s structure, the reasons for incorporating the facsimile of the original document and specific sigils.

Music played in this episode

While researching and scanning the web for my usual preparation of the episode, I came across a Mexican musician by the Artist’s name of Elus Cohen! Well, would there be a better fit for this show?

So, here we present him with two of his tracks. If you want to find out more about him, click on the links posted next to the first title!

The other nice surprise was when my guest, Stewart Clelland, told me shortly before we were recording our interview, that he also made music and would be happy to include that in the show. So, there goes our Track 2 for today!

1) ELUS COHEN  – MERCURY RETROGRADE

Find his music here or on Spotify
And here is the Facebook page 
and the website

(Track starts at 7:20)

2) THE NEON LOWS – JACK RABBIT SLIMS 

Music written and performed by Stewart Clelland

(Track starts at 50:42)

3) ELUS COHEN – SHINING

(Track starts at 1:27:17)

Intro and Outro Music
especially written and recorded for the Thoth-Hermes Podcast by Chris Roberts