Rosicrucianism

“ The hieroglyphics of alchemy appear to be peculiarly appropriate to the religious and philosophic ideas to be treated of. Rosicrucianism was, however, one of the forms into which alchemy was organized. It is further important that in just those societies of the beginning of the seventeenth century which outsiders called “alchymists” or “rosicrucians,” the characteristic emblems of the old lodge appeared, as, for instance, the circle, the cubic stone, the level, the man facing the right, the sphere, the oblong rectangle (symbol of the Lodge) , etc. (Keller, Zur Gesch. d. Bauh., p. 17.) ”

“ Cadbury Jones--are the work of men claiming or believing themselves to be initiated into Rosicrucianism or other occult systems of a kindred nature and as such in possession of peculiar and exclusive knowledge. This pretension may at once be dismissed as an absurdity; nothing is easier than for anyone to make a compound out of Jewish Cabalism and Eastern theosophy and to label it Rosicrucianism, but no proof whatever exists of any affiliation between the self-styled Rosicrucians of to-day and the seventeenth-century "Brothers of the Rosy Cross."263
In spite of Mr. ”

“ The Glory of God; (2) The service of men.
6. There is nothing in the imagery, mythi, ritual, or purposes of the elder Freemasonry, which may not be traced to the romances of Father Rosycross, as given in the Fama Fraternitatis.
De Quincey is not the only writer who has expressed himself to the effect that the systems of Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism are virtually identical; others have said so as well, and in stating their views have not scrupled to write most severely respecting what they believed to be the tricks and impositions of both. Mr. ”

“ It is well known that one of the cardinal points of the Rosicrucian belief is that bodily life can be prolonged through whole ages in two different ways; first, by means of the Elixir of Life; secondly, by means of mere will alone. In the first case beauty and youth accompany age; but in the second, age is apparent all along the centuries. This latter secret and the processes were revealed by a degenerate Rosicrucian in 1605; and all students of medicine are aware that great capital was made of it in later times by a French physician named Asgill. ”

“ But of all the professors of occult science, hermetic philosophy or Spiritualism, the Rosicrucians were the most exalted and refined. With them the possession of the philosopher’s stone was to be the means of health and happiness, an instrument by which man could command the services of superior beings, control the elements, defy the abstractions of time and space, and acquire the most intimate knowledge of all the secrets of the universe. ”

“ It is not very easy to trace the origin of the Rosicrucian Brotherhood. It is not easy, indeed, to get at the true derivation of the name ‘Rosicrucian.’ Some authorities refer it to that of the ostensible founder of the society, the mysterious Christian Rosenkreuse, but who can prove that such an individual ever existed? Others borrow it from the Latin word ros, dew, and crux, a cross, and explain it thus: ‘Dew,’ of all natural bodies, was esteemed the most powerful solvent of gold ”

“ The encyclopædist remarks that at first the title commanded some respect, as it seemed to be borrowed from the arms of Luther, which were a cross placed upon a rose.
The leading doctrines of the Rosicrucians were borrowed from the Eastern philosophers [4] ; the Christian Platonists, schoolmen, and mystics: mixed up with others derived from writers on natural history, magic, astrology, and especially alchemy. All these blended together, and served up in a professional jargon of studied obscurity, formed the doctrinal system of these strange philosophers. ”

“ Usually the Lodges of Rosicrucia meet once a week to hear lectures, exchange courtesies, thoughts, news; to listen to invited guests, debate questions in art, science, and philosophy; to mutually inform and strengthen each other; to investigate any and all subjects of a proper nature, and to cultivate that manly spirit and chivalric bearing which so well entitles their possessor to be called A MAN. These are a few of the good things of Rosicrucia. We seek no man—men seek us. ”

“ Today is a day of frankness and so the Rosicrucians boldly proclmm what they have known for centuries. The Rosicrucians (not a religious organization) , a fraternity of liberal-minded men and women, have dared to tear aside the veil that hid these facts about man's inner life. They have seriously investigated those realms upon which religion cast no light—and which the superstitious called magic. Their results have been astounding. They have discovered what caused some men and women to be successes, how personality originates and evolves ”

“ That celebrated sect of mystical philosophers, the Rosicrucians—famous for their profound acquaintance with natural phenomena, and the higher branches of physical, chemical, and medical science—considered that human existence might be protracted far beyond its supposed limits. ”

“ Satisfied, therefore, that the purity or depravity of every mortal was merely the consequence of the different purpose to which their senses had been directed, the Rosicrucian perceived the intimate relationship subsisting between the immaterial being and the physical organs. He perceived especially that those organs were the channels through which that immaterial portion of humanity was brought into communication with a material existence, was compelled to endure its miseries, or was enabled to appreciate its enjoyments. ”

“ Rosicrucians, a fraternity who, in the beginning of the 15th century, affected an intimate acquaintance with the secrets of nature, and pretended by the study of alchemy and other occult sciences to be possessed of sundry wonder-working powers. ”

“ In the present work every important and available fact has been carefully collected, and the manifestoes and other documents of the Fraternity are republished in revised versions. The Rosicrucians as represented by themselves are, therefore, offered to English readers for the first time in the literature of the subject. The task has been performed by a sympathetic but impartial writer, purged from the bias of any particular theory, and above all uncontaminated by the pretension to superior knowledge, which claimants have never been able to substantiate. ”

“ It was said in these volumes that the Rosicrucian society consisted of six-and-thirty persons in all, who had renounced their baptism and hope of resurrection. That it was not by means of good angels, as they pretended, that they worked their prodigies; but that it was the devil who gave them power to transport themselves from one end of the world to the other with the rapidity of thought; to speak all languages; to have their purses always full of money, however much they might spend; to be invisible, and penetrate into the most secret places, in spite of fastenings of bolts and bars ”

“ In all things else, every Rosicrucian is bound to help another, so long as he can do it with a clear conscience, and not violate his honor, derogate from his personal dignity, or sully his own manhood. ”

“ There was but one systematic extravagance in all nature which was to his purpose, the Rosicrucian Philosophy; and this by the effort of a well-directed imagination, he presently seized. The fanatic Alchemists, in the search after the great secret, had invented a means altogether to their end: it was a kind of Theological Philosophy, made up in a mixture of almost equal parts of Pagan Platonism, Christian Quietism and the Jewish Cabbala; a mixture monstrous enough to frighten reason from human commerce. ”

“ As the books sold and circulated the sensation and alarm in the breasts of the people largely increased, approaching almost to a kind of panic. Ridicule and laugh as some would, it was impossible to disguise the fact that a vast number of the population went in bodily fear of this mysterious sect, whose members they had never seen. It was believed that the Rosicrucians could transport themselves from place to place with the rapidity almost of thought, and that they took delight in cheating and tormenting unhappy citizens, especially such as had sinned against the laws of morality. ”

“ Every member to appoint some person with the proper qualifications to succeed him at his own decease. The word Rosy-Cross to be their seal, watchword, and characteristic mark. The association to be kept unrevealed for a hundred years. Christian Rosycross died at the age of a hundred years. His death was known to the Society, but not his grave; for it was a maxim of the first Rosicrucians to conceal their burial places even from each other. New masters were continually elected into the House of the Holy Ghost, and the Society had now lasted 120 years. ”

“ So far as the numerous works are concerned it is evident that the writers who posed as Rosicrucians were moral and religious reformers, and utilized the technicalities of chemistry (alchemy) , and the sciences generally, as media through which to make known their opinions, there being a flavour of mysticism or occultism promotive of inquiry and suggestive of hidden meanings discernible or discoverable only by adepts. ”

“ Moreover, this sect applied the term Lux to the seed or menstruum of the Red Dragon, or to that crude and corporeal light which, being properly concocted and digested, produces gold. A Rosicrucian, therefore, is a philosopher who, by means of dew seeks for light—that is, for the substance of the philosopher’s stone.
Mosheim declares the other interpretations of this name to be false and deceptive, being the inventions of the chemists themselves, who were exceedingly fond of concealment, for the sake of imposing on others who were hostile to their religious views. ”

“ This building in fact, represented the purpose or object of the Rosicrucians. And what was that? It was the secret wisdom, or, in their language, magic—viz., 1. Philosophy of nature, or occult knowledge of the works of God; 2. Theology, or the occult knowledge of God himself; 3. Religion, or God’s occult intercourse with the spirit of man, which they imagined to have been transmitted from Adam through the Cabbalists to themselves. But they distinguished between a carnal and a spiritual knowledge of this magic. ”

“ As a consequence of travelling on this royal road to knowledge, the Rosicrucian soon learns to despise the weakness of wickedness, not by reason of any long-faced cant being poured into his ear, but because he finds out practically that manhood and virtue are safe investments, while badness or meanness won’t pay. ”

“ Predestined [Pg 359] to the reformation which must take place speedily in the whole universe, the Rosicrucians are depositaries of supreme wisdom, and as undisturbed possessors of all gifts of Nature, they can dispense these at pleasure. In whatsoever place they may be, they know all things which are going on in the rest of the world better than if they were present amongst them; they are superior to hunger and thirst and have neither age nor disease to fear. They can command the most powerful spirits and genii. ”

“ With that the old gentleman condescended to enter into a very interesting, and, as it seemed to me, a very erudite relation, of the tenets of the Rosicrucians, some of whom, he asserted, still existed, and still prosecuted, in august secrecy, their profound researches into natural science and occult philosophy. ”

“ Most of the alchymists of the sixteenth century, although ignorant of the Rosicrucians as a sect, were, in some degree, tinctured with their fanciful tenets: but before we speak more fully of these poetical visionaries, it will be necessary to resume the history of the hermetic folly, and trace the gradual change that stole over the dreams of the adepts. It will be seen that the infatuation increased rather than diminished as the world grew older. ”

“ Also if there were still any alchemists searching for the philosopher’s stone and the transmutation of metals? This evoked the following reply:—
“Some say the modern Rosicrucians are the same as the Freemasons; but as in the main they lived isolated, they could have been but slightly connected with the masons. The range of [Pg 127] celebrated men included in the society is large:—Avicenna, Roger Bacon, Cardan, down to Mr. Peter Woulfe, F.R.S., who lived at No. 2, Barnard’s Inn, and was, according to Mr. Brand, the last true believer in alchemy. ”

“ Spectators
time. I suppose I need not inform my readers that there never was a Rosicrucius or a Rosicrucian sect. The Rosicrucian pamphlets which appeared in Germany at the beginning of the 17th century, dating from the Discovery of the
Brotherhood of the Honourable Order of the Rosy Cross
, a pamphlet published in 1610, by a Lutheran clergyman, Valentine Andreä, were part of a hoax designed perhaps originally as means of establishing a sort of charitable masonic society of social reformers. ”

“ It is well said that there is a time to sow, and a time to reap, and that there are certain times for all the works of life, and in accordance [pg 013] with this law of periodicity each impulse in spiritual uplift must also be undertaken at an appropriate time to be successful. The first and sixth decades of each century are particularly propitious to commence the promulgation of new spiritual teachings. Therefore the Rosicrucians were much concerned at this failure, for only five years were left of the first decade of the twentieth century. ”

“ Holding the same idea as the then obscure sect of the Rosicrucians, some of whom he had perhaps encountered in his travels in Germany, he imagined that, by means of the philosopher's stone, he could summon these kindly spirits at his will. By dint of continually brooding upon the subject, his imagination became so diseased, that he at last persuaded himself that an angel appeared to him, and promised to be his friend and companion as long as he lived. ”