Marie Routchine was born in Odessa on 25 November 1883. At a very young age she immigrated with her family to Paris, where she settled (1885).
At the age of 15 she learned to paint and draw and specialized in the study of flowers. She painted flowers with love and later studied them so much that she knew all the varieties in detail. Flower painting became her profession.
From a very early age, she expressed her love for the human being, especially for the socially oppressed woman, who was a constant object of her interest. And it was precisely this yearning, out of love for man and humanity, that led Maria to receive from a supreme spiritual source new revelation of truths, which she recorded, organized and offered to humanity through her work.
She was joined (1906) by Eugene Dupré, a French mechanical designer, with whom they married in Cairo, Egypt (1908), where they settled as a family. In Cairo, Dupré met (1910) Demetrius Semelas and developed deep spiritual ties and close collaboration with him.
After repeated spiritual conceptions, during the period 1913-1915, Maria formed her personal doctrine, pointing out the causes and the cure of human suffering, both individual and collective.
For the management and realization of this crucial conception, Maria founded the Order of the Lily and the Eagle, in Cairo, Egypt, on 6/19 January 1915, with the support of Demetrius Semelas and in the presence of three of her disciples, as witnesses of that official act.
Immediately afterwards (4 February 1915), she returned to war-torn Paris, where her husband Eugene was a soldier, from where she now worked tirelessly, imparting highly inspirational teachings to her disciples in Paris, Cairo and Athens.
With her untimely death, after a serious and short illness, in Paris on 30 January 1918, at the age of just 34, Marie Routchine-Dupré left to humanity an extremely important spiritual work for our time. This work was subsequently completed (1919-1924) by Demetrius Semelas, which continues to present time at the O.L+E.
Marie (Maria) Routchine-Dupré (1883-1918)
