Rosicrucians

Rosicrucians
Thomas Allen

[Editor's note: Footnotes in the original are omitted.]

One of the great secret societies originating in ancient times was the Rosicrucian society. The Rosicrucians (the Great White Brotherhood) trace their origin back to the ancient Egyptians—at least as far back as Ahmose I, who reigned from 1580 B.C. to 1557 B.C. Thutmose III, who reign from 1500 B.C. to 1447 B.C., is credited with organizing the present physical form of the secret society of the Rosicrucians.[1]

Several centuries later the Rosicrucians began to spread to other lands. Those who went to Palestine became known as the Essenes. Those who went to Greece became known as the Therapeuti.[2]

The Essences were ascetics. They held their goods in common and rejected marriage. Living in an egalitarian community, members were prohibited from exercising authority over one another and were required to serve one another mutually. They were associated with esoteric healing traditions. Bounded by a horrific secret oath, they were forbidden to reveal their sacred mysteries and secret doctrines. The sect divided itself into three degrees through which members progressed. Using secret spiritual keys, the Essences reinterpreted the Pentateuch. They were Cabalists and Gnostics and practices a primitive form of Communism.

On Mount Carmel, the Essenes built their monastery and temple in the ninth century B.C. Shortly before the birth of Jesus, they built a new monastery and temple at Heliopolis, which became the center of their activity. Several centuries after the birth of Christ, the Rosicrucians moved their headquarters to Tibet.

During the reign of Charlemagne, Rosicrucian Order came to France when Arnaud established a Rosicrucian lodge in Toulouse in 804 A.D. Soon afterwards, Charlemagne introduced Rosicrucianism in Germany. In 1100 a lodge was established in Worms.

After the twelfth century, Rosicrucianism was mostly inactive until the sixteenth century. It had a revival in Protestant circles in Germany during the Counter Reformation. Many people began looking to the Orient, past civilizations, and speculative ideas of contemporaries for a hidden wisdom to counteract the disquieting events of the day. They consulted alchemy, the Egyptian Mysteries recorded by Hermes Trismegistus, Sufism, and the Cabala. A synthesis of alchemy, astrology, Cabalism, mysticism, and Theosophy provided the basis of the revived Rosicrucianism.

In 1586, Simon Studion, a Rosicrucian of the high degree of Imperator in Germany, planned and called an international convention. This convention was known as the Cruce Signatorum Conventus and was held in Hanover. The ostensible purpose of the convention was to prevent the misuse and abuse of the cross. Henry IV, King of France, Elizabeth I, Queen of England, and Frederick II, King of Denmark, sponsored this convention.[3]

As a result of this convention, the Militia Crucifera Evangelica was established to defend the cross and stop its use in religious warfare, religious persecution, other destructive contests. It opposed persecution because of religious or scientific teaching. This Militia was an organization of loyal Rosicrucians. It became the protector of the Rosicrucians and revived their pure physical mystical teachings.

The Militia Crucifera Evangelica became the inner circle, the secret organization, within the Rosicrucian Order. Its membership was, and continues to be, limited to advanced adepts of Rosicrucian teachings, who had devoted their lives to the Rosicrucians, and who loyally supported the Imperator in each country where the Militia existed.

The first written document of Rosicrucianism, the Fama Fraternatis (the history of the founding of Rosicrucianism), appeared in 1614 at Cassel. It urged the learned to abandon the false teachings of the pope, Galen, and Aristotle and to join the Rosicrucians. It promised “a deeper knowledge of nature and a share in bringing about a general reformation of the world.”[4] This document was read widely throughout Europe.

A stated objective of the Rosicrucians was to restore the lost secrets of science, especially in medicine. They also sought to provide rulers sufficient wealth to take care of their subjects.

Johann Valentine Andrea is believed to be the reviver of the Rosicrucians. He had been a student of astronomy, mathematic, optic, and philosophy at Tubingen. Millenarian and visionary forms of religion gained his interest. Later he became a Lutheran deacon, after which he became a faithful upholder of Lutheranism and apparently remained such for the remainder of his life. He seemed to have used the Rosicrucian Order to advance Protestantism and abandoned the Order when Catholics captured it and started to use it to advance Catholicism.

Whatever its use to advocate Protestantism or Catholicism, the Rosicrucian Order was an anti-Christian society. It was Gnostic in nature and promoted Theosophy and Cabalism. It taught that “the soul of man moves in a spiral upward through spheres of angelic hierarchies toward God,”[5] who is not the God of the Christians. Rosicrucianism is a convoluted system of rituals and ceremonies combined with enigmatic teachings laced with Judaic and Christian tenets and merged with occult practices and pagan mythology. It is a mixture of the tenets of the Egyptian Mysteries, paranormal and psychic phenomena, and pseudo-science like alchemy. The god of Rosicrucianism is an impersonal god who is the “Supreme Intelligence,” a form of “pure energy,” and “the First Cause of All.”

Rosicrucians of this era included Dante Alighieri (author of The Divine Comedy), Sir Francis Bacon (philosopher), Dr. John Dee (scientist and a spy for Queen Elizabeth I), and Robert Fludd (one of the translators of the King James version of the Bible and a Jesuit).

By 1630, Rosicrucianism seemed to have ceased to exist. It next surfaced in the early eighteenth century when two detailed sets of rules were published, one in 1710 and another in 1777, in Germany. It also appeared in England, France, and Russia. This revived Rosicrucianism stressed superstition and ceremony. It possessed little of the ideals of the early Rosicrucians.

Modern Rosicrucianism appeared in 1865 with the establishment of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (Rosicrucian Society in England). Actually, it was not a true Rosicrucian society. It was not a direct descendant of earlier Rosicrucian orders. Rather, it was an off shoot of Freemasonry. However, the difference between Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry is not much. Philosophically, both are illuministic, pantheistic, and gnostic. Only Master Masons could be members. Robert Wentworth Little, a Freemason, was the primary organizer of this society. Its stated aims were “to afford mutual aid and encouragement in working out the great problems of life, and in discovering the secrets of nature; to facilitate the study of the systems of philosophy founded upon the Cabala and the doctrine of Hermes Trismegistus.”[6] Its structure was similar to that of the Bavarian Illuminati.

A related society, the Order of the Golden Dawn (or the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn), a Hermetic society, was founded about 1887. Dr. William Wynn Westcott, a London corner and third Supreme Magus of Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, founded this society. Westcott, Dr. Robert Woodman, and MacGregor Mathers (all three were Freemasons) ran the Order. (Mathers became the sole leader after the death of Woodman and the resignation of Westcott and remained so until the Golden Dawn lodge in London ousted him and selected three new chiefs.)Kenneth MacKenzie, who died in the 1870s was probably the mind behind the creation of the Golden Dawn and its tents and practices. The purpose of this society was to study Cabalistic doctrine and magic rites. The Golden Dawn has been credited with bringing about the modern expansion of ritual magic and the occult explosion in the West. Philosophically, it was close to the Theosophical Society except it studied magic, which the Theosophical Society denounced. It was connected with the Martinists of France. An order in Germany known as the Hidden and Secret Chiefs of the Third Order, whose members were unknown, was the real controller of the Golden Dawn. Members of the Golden Dawn included Algernon Blackwood (novelist), Aleister Crowley, Maud Gonne (Irish patriot), Annie Horniman (theater manager), George Russell (Irish poet, artist, and conservationists), and W. B. Yeats (a poet).

In 1903, the Golden Dawn split into the Golden Dawn with Arthur E. Waite as its leader and the Stella Matutina with Dr. R. Felkin as its leader. Waite, MacGregor Mathers, and their followers denied the existence of the Third Order, rejected the occult, and insisted on working along mystic lines. Felkin, Crowley, Westcott, and their followers retained the belief in the Third Order and continued their occult works. The two societies reunited in 1912.

Endnotes

1. H. Spencer Lewis, Rosicrucian Questions and Answers with Complete History of the Rosicrucian Order (Second ed. San Jose, California: Rosicrucian Press, 1932), pp. 21-22.

2. Ibid., p. 53.

3. Ibid., pp. 96-98.

4. Norman MacKenzie, ed., Secret Societies (New York, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967), p. 137.

5. Dennis L Cuddy, Now Is the Dawning of the New Age New World Order (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Hearthstone Publishing, 2000), p. 16.

6. Lady Queenborough (Edith Starr Miller), Occult Theocracy (Two Vol. Hawthorne, California: The Christian Book Club of America, 1933), p. 499.

References
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Cuddy, Dennis L. Now Is the Dawning of the New Age New World Order. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Hearthstone Publishing, 2000.

Daraul, Arkon. A History of Secret Societies. New York, New York: The Citadel Press, 1961.

Kah, Gary H. En Route to Global Occupation. Lafayette, Louisiana: Huntington House Publishers, 1992.

Kirban, Salem. Satan’s Angels Exposed. Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania: Salem Kirban Inc., 1980.

Larson, Bob. Larson’s Book of Cults. Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. 1982.

Lewis, H. Spencer. Rosicrucian Questions and Answers with Complete History of the Rosicrucian Order. Second Edition. San Jose, California: Rosicrucian Press, 1932.

MacKenzie, Norman, ed. Secret Societies. New York, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967.

Marrs, Jim. Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids. New York, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2000.

Monteith, Stanley. Brotherhood of Darkness. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Hearthstone, 2000.

Mullins, Eustace. The Curse of Canaan: A Demonology of History. Staunton, Virginia: Revelation Book, 1987.

Preuss, Arthur. A Dictionary of Secret and Other Societies. St. Louis, Missouri: B. Herder Book Co., 1924.

Queenborough, Lady (Edith Starr Miller). Occult Theocracy. Two Volumes. Hawthorne, California: The Christian Book Club of America, 1933.

Webster, Nesta H. Secret Societies and Subversive Movements. Palmdale, California: Omni Publication, 1924.

Copyright © 2009 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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