Once Freemasonry was introduced into eighteenth century Continental Europe, it quickly evolved into a number of different and disparate bodies, all claiming authority to confer and determine degrees. Mesmer’s Order of Universal Harmony and Cagliostro’s Egyptian Rite, a new system of Clermont (1758) were just two of many such groups. Another, Martinism, was created by Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, author of a 1775 book, Des Erreurs et de la Verite. and a disciple of the adventurer and seer, Martines de Pasqually who wrote the incomplete, Traite de Reintegration. "Swedenborgian in view, Christian in origin, theurgic or magical in its implications," Martinism first appeared in the south of France in the 1750s under the name of Juges Ecossais.
John M. Roberts tells us: "On top of the network of orthodox masonic lodges had been built first the higher grades of Scottish rite lodges and then, on them, the Strict Observance, which... fragmented into what were virtually a number of separate systems."
Karl Gotthelf Baron Hund introduced a new Scottish Rite to Germany, Rectified Masonry; after 1764 to be known as the "Strict Observance". He termed the English system of Freemasonry the 'Late Observance.' It appealed to German national pride, attracted the non-nobility, and was allegedly directed by Unknown Superiors.
"The Strict Observance was particularly devoted to the reform of Masonry, with special reference to the elimination of the Occult Sciences which at the time were widely practised in the lodges, and the establishment of cohesion and homogeneity in Masonry through the enforcement of strict discipline, the regulation of functions, etc."[Vernon L. Stauffer]
John Augustus Starck joined Hund, claiming alchemical knowledge and a lineal descent, not from the Knights Templars, but from the clerics of that order, the "true" custodians of its secrets. A union was formalized in 1772 at Kohlo, where Hund’s dominance began to wane while Starck’s occult and hermetic ideology grew. [Roberts pp. 107-09]
The Convent at Wilhelmsbad (July 16, 1782 - September 1, 1782), a meeting of the various bodies working the Strict Observance system of degrees in Europe, lead to the dissolution of the Strict Observance. It may be said to have continued to 1855 when the Danish lodges adopted the Swedish Rite although in practice, it ceased to exist after the death of Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick in 1792. It had no effect on regular Freemasonry.
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Louis Claude De Saint Martin - Theosophic Correspondence
