Baron Grigory Ottonovich Mebes (Russian: Григорий Оттонович Мёбес) was born in Riga in 1868. After graduating in 1891 from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics at the University of St. Petersburg, Mebes abandoned his academic career to focus entirely on the study of occult knowledge.
During the 1904-1905 school year, he taught physics and mathematics at the Czarkoye Selo Directing School and at the Nikolaev Gymnasium. He also taught physics at the girls’ school of the Ministry of Public Education. From 1906 to 1917, Mebes continued to teach mathematics at the Nikolaev Cadet Corps.
His first wife was Olga Yevgrafovna Nagornova, from whom he separated in 1912. Despite their separation, she later played a significant role in the Martinist 1 movement.
The Martinist Lodge, a branch of the French Order known as the Cabalistic Order of the Rose and the Cross, was established in Russia by the French occultist Gérard Encausse, also known as Papus. In late 1910, Mebes was appointed Inspector General (Secretary) of the St. Petersburg section of the Order. Between 1911 and 1912, he delivered a series of lectures in St. Petersburg on the Encyclopaedia of the Occult, which closely followed Papus’ theories. These lectures, published under the pseudonym GOM, gained significant popularity, as reflected in numerous memoirs and reviews.
In August 1912, Mebes sought to free himself from the control of Parisian leaders by proclaiming the independence of the Russian Martinists. He declared the Apollonia lodge, which he led (and for which he used the initiatory name Butator, the angel regent of calculations), as the Grand Lodge (Grand Council of Russia). By the end of 1912, the situation had become clearer following Mebes’s official report and Papus’s information about the dissolution of the original order. These circumstances led to the establishment of a new entity in Russia, the “Autonomous Section of Russian Obedience Martinism,” overseen by the “Invisible Master.”
In 1913, the Martinists in St. Petersburg, led by Mebes, established an autonomous branch of OMOR with distinct Templar influence. By 1916, this branch evolved into the “Eastern Obedience of the Martinist Order,” overseen by the “Invisible Master” and the Father (GOM). The official representative at that time was IK Antoshevsky, a student of Mebes, who held the initiatory name Hyacinthus. Following Antoshevsky’s assassination in the summer of 1917, VV Bogdanov, another of Mebes’ students, succeeded him. The Chapter of the Order consisted of seven members, and the official publication for the Russian Martinists was the magazine “Isis.”
Between 1918 and 1921, Mebes delivered a series of lectures in Petrograd on the Book of Zohar, while his second wife, Maria Nesterova, focused on the history of religions. Maria Nesterova had a significant influence on occult movements; she founded the Society for the Awakening of Pure Wisdom in 1916 and established the Martinezist Order 2. Additionally, the Promethean Group was created to develop an inner circle of GOM initiates, whose teachings were shared in secret during the Civil War from 1919 to 1922.
The primary aim of the Russian Martinists was twofold: first, to prepare individuals for high initiatory attainment, which was their primary objective; and second, to enhance the secondary esoteric education of those who may not reach the highest initiation. They believed that these individuals were still capable of achieving significant spiritual progress. In addition to theoretical studies, the Martinists organised practical activities to develop telepathic and psychometric 3 skills among their members. These activities included practices such as inferring facts and events by making contact with various objects.
Aleksandr M. Aseev (1902-1993), a physician and the editor of the book “Occultism and Yoga,” presents the view that the three main branches of the Russian initiatory movement—Freemasonry, Martinism, and Rosicrucianism—functioned as separate and independent organisations. However, they were all led by the same individual, G.O. Mebes. These three orders collaborated closely and often included the same members. According to Aseev, the Martinist and Rosicrucian lodges were located in Mebes’s mansion in the Pesky district, which was magnificently furnished.
However, a critic of A.M. Aseev, N.A. Bogomolov points out that Mebes’ apartment was located not in Pesky but at 5 Rozhdestvenskaya Street. While this is accurate, Bogomolov overlooks that Mebes lived briefly in Pesky from 1917 to early 1918, during which he taught there. This indicates that A.M. Aseev was well informed and that his information is reliable. However, Aseev’s claim that Mebes was the unofficial leader of the Russian initiatory movement, both at the beginning of the last century and during the 1920s, is a noticeable distortion. Additionally, it is essential to note that Freemasonry, Martinism, and Rosicrucianism are interconnected; they have long collaborated closely.
Boris Astromov, appointed Inspector General of the Martinist Order by the Grand Orient of Moscow, had a falling out with his superior and decided to establish two rival organisations: the Free Freemasons of Russia and the Grand Lodge Astreia. In 1925, he offered his services as an informant to the OGPU, the secret police of the Bolshevik regime, betraying his former associates. The subsequent wave of arrests in 1926 became known as the Leningrad Freemason Case. According to reports from the Leningradskaya Pravda and Krasnaya Zvezda newspapers, the investigation revealed that Leningrad was home to “obscure Masonic lodges with several dozen members, Masters, consecrations, blood oaths, statutes, foreign correspondence, and participation fees.”
GOM was arrested on charges of being a ‘Black Wizard’ and was sent to a gulag on the White Sea islands in Ust-Sysolsk. He is believed to have died in 1930, though some sources suggest it was four years later.
- Louis Claude de Saint-Martin (1743-1803), often referred to as the “Unknown Philosopher,” was a mystic influenced by Christianity and played a pivotal role in founding the Martinist Order. Born into a family of minor French nobility, he met Martinez de Pasqually during his military service, who introduced him to mysticism and theurgical rites. Throughout his life, he associated with prominent thinkers and esotericists, including Jakob Böhme, whose ideas significantly impacted him and, in some ways, distanced him from Pasqually’s teachings. Saint-Martin’s philosophy is rooted in Christian mysticism, positing that creation is an outpouring of divine love. He believed that the human soul, intellect, the spirit of the universe, and material elements represent four stages of divine emanation. Since humanity has fallen from an Edenic state—where matter is viewed as a consequence of this fall—he asserted that individuals must strive to rise again and regenerate themselves through divine love and a union with Christ. ↩︎
- Martinez de Pasqually, born Jacques de Livron de la Tour de la Casa Martinez de Pasqually (circa 1727-1774), was a theosophist and theurgist of uncertain origins. He is best known as the founder of the Order of Elect Masonic Knights Cohen of the Universe and was the initiator and tutor of Louis Claude de Saint-Martin. His origins remain a subject of debate; some authors propose that he was Spanish, while others suggest that he was Portuguese. The doctrine he taught and practised, as articulated in his work “Treatise on the Reintegration of Beings,” posits that God emanates beings in an androgynous form. According to this belief, Adam, the first human, became mortal and enslaved by his corporeal existence due to his ambiguity. Therefore, humanity must strive to reclaim its divine origin by pursuing inner perfection. For Martinez, this process should involve theurgic and ritual operations designed to invoke angelic entities. In 1774, he sailed to Santo Domingo to receive an inheritance, where he ultimately passed away. After his death, the Order disintegrated; however, some groups today still attempt to reconstruct the original Cohen rites. ↩︎
- Psychometry is the divination of facts about an object or its owner through contact or proximity to the object itself. Not to be confused with the similar term in psychology, which refers to the quantitative analysis of human behaviour. ↩︎