This is the fifth in a series of essays where I go through each chapter of Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin’s “Natural Table”. You can find the previous chapter here.

In this chapter Saint-Martin outlines his thoughts on how we fell to our present position, so it is important to keep in mind the ideas he had on our original place in the Universe. After the Fall of the first spirits into matter, the original Adam was emanated for one reason — to prove the existence of God and to demonstrate His Glory for materiality.

In other words, we were given the role of Divine Priest to the Fallen World.

Try to keep this in mind when reading his description of the state in which we find ourselves today.

The Original Crime

Regarding our crime, Saint-Martin uses an interesting metaphor. He says that we did the following.

…put the Victim in the place of the Priest, and the Priest in the place of the God he served…

Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin

This matches well with the description from “Errors and Truth” of how the pages of the Book of Man have become confused. In that description Man has swapped the fourth page (true religion) with the fifth (idolatry), and so we directed our worship towards another, immediately losing sight of the Light.

God did not act to push us away as some sort of punishment. We fell. Automatically and immediately, as soon as we set our gaze on another. Since God is Truth, losing sight of the Divine means losing sight of Truth and descending into confusion and error.

Confusion

As he outlined in a previous chapter, the world is full of signs of the Divine truth of Creation, but he is now tempering that message. Yes, there is evidence all about us, and most especially within us, but this is diluted by confusion.

Instead of the true unity of the Divine, we see apparent unities. The world we see with our material senses is relative, and so instead of absolute truths we have to make do with relative truths.

But note that this is not an “illusionist” perspective. He says clearly that the argument of whether matter is real or illusory is a false debate. Matter is most certainly real for matter, but it is nothing for spirit. Death is catastrophic for the body, but effectively nothing for the intellect:

Indeed, when the intellect leaves the body, it is simply leaving an appearance or, to state this more strongly, it is leaving nothing.

Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin

Rebellion

Even worse though is that we are so deep in confusion and error that some of us – including myself several years ago – make use of our abilities to try to disprove the existence of the Divine, and to proselytize for atheism! Take a second to think about that. The Ur-Priests of Creation, tasked with demonstrating God’s life and love to the material world is now in active rebellion against this mission.

And to whom do we do most harm with this rebellion? Other humans. Those other divine Beings who share in the very same task.

Instead of bringing Light, we obscure. Instead of Truth, we spread lies. We should bring justice to the Universe, but millennia of debate show that we no longer even know the meaning of the word.

Our failure is absolute.

Drowned in the confusion of the apparent world, and in the face of the suffering that it causes, with our bodies subject to decay and death, we turn inwards. The goal of our lives becomes the search for happiness and comfort, and we turn further away from the Light. In trying to heal the symptoms, the Universe risks losing the last virtuous man.

The man of the Spirit is left to wander alone in a desert surrounded by demons.

Meant to be representatives of the Living God, Saint-Martin draws a picture of us as the most miserable pitiable creatures, below even insects.

He describes us as Prometheus. Our periods of hope and comfort are only pauses between agonising torture.

Before the Flambeaux