With some excitement I ran into a “Élu Coën Library” on Amazon. Four Élu Coën source books that were recently (re)translated. One of them, I proved to already have in a Dutch translation.
The current volume is a massive 680 page book which presents the notes collected by Lieutenant-Colonel Pierre André de Grainville (1728-1794), that he gathered as a student of Martinez de Pasqually. Interestingly, the documents are from the same “Fonds Maçonnique” that is kept in the Bibliotheque Nationale de France (and available online!) as the massive pile of ritual texts that form the basis of the Rite de France of Freemasonry. I suppose the documents are from the library of the Grand Orient de France.
the folios are not a complete Coen grimoire, but an incomplete and fragmentary snapshot of the original rituals in a state of rapid development.
Indeed. What you can find in this book are images of the pages of the notes, handwritten, hard to read and printed very small. On the opposite pages you will find English translations of these hand written texts. Thus, you have access to the original material and you do not even have to decipher the handwritten French.
“Élus Coëns Ritual and Instruction From the Eighteenth Century” does perhaps fit the bill, but I had some hope that there would be Masonic-like rituals here. Rather, there is a wild array of Theurgical and magical operations and invocations and only towards the end there are some Masonic-type questions-and-answers. Not really what I had hoped for.
It is great that this kind of material is more and more becoming available more easily, but I suppose this is a sourcebook for people with a more serious interest in the Élu Coën than myself. But, it was easier to read than De Pasqually’s text. The library contains two more books. I do not think I am going to try to read them.
2024 Rose Circle Books, isbn 9798892171977
