Papus (1865 - 1916), co-founder and first Grand Master of the Martinist Order, was a renowned author, publisher, organizer and mystic. He organized a school of Hermetic philosophy, an important international convention of esoteric groups in 1908, and the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose Cross. At the onset of World War I, Papus joined the French Army Medical Corp as a Captain and served as a medical officer in the trenches on the Western Front. Reflecting on his experience there he wrote What Becomes of Our Dead as a study of various aspects of the afterlife. This work was intended to offer comfort to the many families struggling with the deadly upheaval of the era. Papus died while in service to his country in 1916, at the age of fifty-one.

This text was written in 1914. It was later translated into English through the Grand Heptad in San Jose, California for inclusion in the monographs of the Traditional Martinist Order. In this new edition, the language has been updated for the modern reader and the full text, including supplementary material to the original, has been restored.