Gerard Encausse was born at Corunna in Spain on July 13, 1865, of a Spanish mother and a French father, Louis Encausse, a chemist. His family moved to Paris when he was four years old, and he received his education there. Encausse spent a great deal of time at the Bibliothèque Nationale studying the Kabbalah, occult tarot, the sciences of magic and alchemy, and the writings of Eliphas Lévi. He joined the French Theosophical Society shortly after it was founded by Helena Petrovna Blavatskyin 1884-1885, but he resigned soon after joining because he disliked the Society's emphasis on Eastern occultism. In 1888, he co-founded his own group, the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Croix. Encausse was also a member of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn temple in Paris, as well as Memphis-Misraim and probably other esoteric or paramasonic organizations, as well as being an author of several occult books. Encausse received his Doctor of Medicine degree in 1894 from the University of Paris. His early readings in tarot and the lore of the Kabbalah in translation was inspired by the occult writings of Eliphas Lévi, whose translation of the "Nuctemeron of Apollonius of Tyana" printed as a supplement to Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, provided Encausse with his nom de plume: "Papus." In 1891, Encausse claimed to have come into the possession of the original papers of Martinez Paschalis, or de Pasqually, and therewith founded an Order of Martinists called l'Ordre des Supérieurs Inconnus. It was also during this period, (circa 1894 - 1895), that he briefly joined and quickly resigned from the Theosophical Society. In March 1895, Encausse joined the Ahathoor Temple of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in Paris. In 1888, Encausse, Saint-Yves and de Guaita joined with Joséphin Péladan and Oswald Wirth to found the Rosicrucian Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Croix. In October 1901 he collaborated with Jean Carrère in producing a series of articles in the Echo de Paris under the pseudonym Niet. When John Yarker died in 1913, Encausse was elected as his successor to the office of Grand Hierophant of the Antient and Primitive Rites of Memphis and Mizraim. When World War I broke out, Encausse joined the French army medical corps. While working in a military hospital, he contracted tuberculosis and died on October 25, 1916, at the age of 51.