The Man of Desire: Internal Theurgy: "Path of Desire"

. . . images, being related to their originals, must always tend towards them. This is the route which all theurgic operations take, in which are employed the names of spirits, their signs, characters, and everything which, being derivable from them, may have relationship with them: this was the course of the Levitical sacrifices; this is the way, above all, of the law of our central and divine initiation, by which, on our presenting to God, as pure as we can, the soul which He gave us, and which is His image, we must attract the original to ourselves, and form the sublimest union, beyond any ever made, by any theurgy or any mysterious ceremony of other initiations. As to your question on the aspect of flame, or elementary light, how to attain the virtues which are its originals, you must see that all this is purely theurgical, and of that theurgy which makes use of elementary nature, and as such, I believe it to be useless, and foreign to our true theurgy, where no flame is needed but our desire; no light but that of our purity.

--Saint-Martin, Theosophic Correspondence

Saint-Martin's spiritual path was, if his own writings bear reliable witness, one of radical simplicity but extraordinary profundity. Hints, clues and even details of the method of internal theurgy advocated by Saint-Martin can be found everywhere in his writings, especially if one looks carefully. The best place to start is the Theosophic Correspondence, a collection of letters between Saint-Martin and his friend Kirchberger, where Saint-Martin's spiritual priorities and ideas about the path to God towards the end of his life are made as explicit as possible. It can be freely read and downloaded in the English translation of Edward Burton Penney from Google Books:

THEOSOPHIC CORRESPONDENCE

OTHER GUIDES ON THE PATH -

Boehme

"I frankly acknowledge, Sir, that I am not worthy to untie the shoe-strings of that wonderful man, whom I look upon as the greatest light that has appeared on the earth since Him who is the Light himself." (Saint-Martin, Theosophic Correspondence, Letter II)

Saint-Martin was by no means the only one who wrote of this path of radical contemplative interiority. For all his many unique characteristics, Saint-Martin has many affinities with many great Christian mystics throughout the ages, especially with the members of that school of theosophy that arose in the wake of the Reformation, and whose most important expounder (and Saint-Martin's great teacher after Martines de Pasqually) was Jacob Boehme. Readers of the Theosophic Correspondence will soon realize just how important "mon cher B" was to Saint-Martin, and their basic method of contemplation would appear to be essentially identical. Readers who are interested in Boehme's way of contemplation should consult The Way to Christ, which is probably Boehme's most accessible book and a veritable manual of thesophick prayer. Of this text, Saint-Martin wrote:

I will refer you to our friend's [Boehme's] little treatises on Repentance, Prayer, and True Resignation, in his 'Way to Christ'; you will there see, at every step, if every human method has not vanished, and whether it is possible that anything can be truly transmitted to us, if the Spirit do not create itself in us, as it creates itself eternally in the principle of universal nature, where the image from which we took our origin is in permanence, and which served for the framework of the Incarnation. (Theosophic Correspondence, Letter LXXIV)

The Way to Christ can be read in English here: THE WAY TO CHRIST

Law

All of William Law's later books, after his discovery of Boehme around 1734, are fundamental reading for students of theosophy (see links on main page). He was Boehme's great English disciple and was, as A.E. Waite once wrote, "in some respects the Saint-Martin of England." This is quite a perceptive observation, and the works of the two writers go very well together. The best place to find Law's teaching on the practical aspects of spiritual life are in his The Spirit of Prayer:

THE SPIRIT OF PRAYER - LAW

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