06/09/2026
June 9: Esoteric Ecclesia and Rose+Croix Day of Commemoration for Jeanne de Guyon (1646-1717):
-Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon better known simply as Mme Guyon was a French and Swiss noblewoman, Christian Mystic (Quietist) religious leader and author. Her mystical experiences started at an early age but because she was a member of a influential family she was forced into marriage with a wealthy suitor. After 12 unhappy years of marriage after which she was widowed, she sought mystical instruction from François La Combe, a Barnabite.
After a third mystical experience in 1680, Madame Guyon felt herself drawn to Geneva where she unsuccessfully attempted to found a religious community. This effort was unsuccessful in part because her religious ideas brought condemnation upon her from the Bishop of Geneva and she was forced to flee.
She then moved to Grenoble, where she spread her mystical ideas more widely with the publication in January 1685 of "Moyen court et facile de faire oraison" (A Short and Simple Method of Prayer). After this publication she was again chased out of the city by the local Roman Catholic Bishop and so returned to Paris, only to be imprisoned in the Bastille.
She was eventually released after which she settled in Blois. For the rest of her life she had to defend her ideas against the Church hierarchy and in Blois she passed some fifteen years surrounded by a stream of pilgrims, many coming from the Low Countries (Holland and Belgium), England and Scotland.
She continued writing and in 1717, the year of her death, she published "Ame Amante de son Dieu, representée dans les emblems de Hermannus Hugo sur ses pieux desirs" (A Loving Soul as shown in the emblem of Hermannus Hugo on his pure desires), which features her poetry written in response to the striking and popular emblematic devotional images of Herman Hugo and the Flemish master Otto von Veen.
All of her writings emphasize the importance of being in a constant state of prayer and love for God and because of her emphasis on Grace she was very much a bridge figure uniting around her mystically inclined members of both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.
Her Mystical Quietism also had a strong impact on the Rose+Croix movement. For example, Eliphas Lévi discovered her when he decided to reconsider the Priesthood and spent one year in contemplation at the Abbey of Solesme (1839-1840), which library happened to possess her works. Here is how he describes her infleunce on him:
"The life and the writings of that sublime women opened many doors to the mysteries for me which I had been unable to pe*****te until then; her doctrine of pure love and total passivity towards God turned me off completely from (the ideas of) hell and free will; I saw God as the only being in which must be absorbed all human personality; I saw (with her ideas) disapear the phantom of evil...I was stunned to find in Mme Guyon the predictions of the future reign of the Holy Spirit, that consumation into unity through love, which all Christians have waited for in all centuries and I understood how the Cult (Worship) of Mary served as a transition from the reign of Christ to that of the Celestial Dove." (In "L'assomption de la femme," p.xxi)
Lévi would also later describe this "reign of the Celestial Dove" or Mother in his most mystical work: "La Mère de Dieu" (The Mother of God) (ca. 1844).
