Stewart Clelland and the Elus Coens Texts

Welcome to Occult of Personality: esoteric podcast extraordinaire. I’m your host, Greg Kaminsky.

This is episode number 204 featuring an interview with scholar and initiate Stewart Clelland who is joining us to speak about the recently published THE GREEN BOOK OF THE ÉLUS COËN (The COMPLETE Manuscrit d’Alger 1772): A TREASURY OF COËN TEXTS IN TWO VOLUMES.

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Now, in episode #204, Stewart Clelland joins us to talk about the Élus Coëns, his work translating their texts, and more! You can find Stewart online at https://sjaclelland.com/.

As a teacher of Philosophy and Religious Studies in and around the North East of Scotland, Stewart holds a Master’s Degree (M.A.) in Western Esotericism (University of Exeter) and a PGDE in Religious, Moral and Philosophical Studies (The University of Aberdeen), as well as a B.A. (Hons) in Fine Art and Philosophy (University of Dundee).

His research background is centered on esoteric spirituality and the practice of heterodox religious traditions with a particular interest in marginalized and persecuted religious communities, both historical and contemporary. Stewart’s work engages with Religious Studies specifically in the so-called ‘Western Esoteric Tradition’ or Hermetic Tradition in religious and philosophical thought.

‘THE GREEN BOOK OF THE ÉLUS COËN (The COMPLETE Manuscrit d’Alger 1772): A TREASURY OF COËN TEXTS IN TWO VOLUMES. This book is an English translation of an obscure and previously unpublished French eighteenth-century masonic manuscript (1770) known as Le Manuscript d’Alger or, ‘The Green Book of the Elu Coen’. Detailing the inner workings and highest degrees of an occult esoteric order known as the Elus Coën, this fascinating manuscript has been lost for more than two hundred and fifty years and has only recently come to light. The information contained here is a must for anyone with a serious passion for masonic history. It was translated by Stewart Clelland, edited by Josef Wages, and designed Steve Adams.

As the High-Degrees of Freemasonry swept across the landscape of eighteenth-century Europe, an obscure and occult order started to develop known as l’Ordre des Chevaliers Élus Coëns de l’ Univers or the Order of Knight-Mason Elect-Cohens of the Universe, more commonly referred to as the Élus Coëns. Whilst once the most serious and illustrious of the eighteenth-century esoteric masonic societies, much of the Order’s authentic original materials have been lost or forgotten for centuries. This English translation of the rediscovered eighteenth-century Coën manuscript . . . was written by Léonard-Joseph Prunelle de Lière (1741- 1824), a close friend of Louis Claude de St Martin (1743-1803), and includes a copy of Pasqually’s list entitled ‘Alphabetical Table of 2,400 Names’ . . . Understood as a kind of directory of the celestial world, angels and spirits are alphabetically classified and each associated with two numbers. It is followed by a document of eighty-seven pages covered with hieroglyphic symbols from a variety of sources; Hebrew, Arabic, Egyptian and Phoenician. It is important to note that these luminous glyphs were not the actual goal of the operations. Pasqually saw in these glyphs signs that indicated to the theurgist that his reconciliation was in progress; the luminous glyphs are believed to be the marks of divine favor on the road to ‘reintegration.’

Also included from the ‘Fonds Prunelle de Lières’ is the strange ‘Book of Initiates’. A collection of 117 pages containing the messages delivered by an ‘Unknown Agent’ between 1785 and 1787 and excerpts from the magnetism sessions held in Lyon by Jean-Baptis