ROSICRUCIANS

ROSICRUCIANS . Although the secrecy pledged by members necessarily limits knowledge of Rosicrucian fraternities and their legendary founder, Christian Rosencreutz (whose surname means "rose cross"), documents published in the early seventeenth century and specific historical allusions to the Rosicrucians from that time on both provide basic information on these fraternities and adumbrate their significance within the esoteric traditions that arose in early modern Europe. The story of Christian Rosencreutz was promulgated through the publications Fama Fraternitatis (1614) and Confessio Fraternitatis (1615), which recounted his life and teachings and described the fraternity he founded. A third document, the Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosencreutz (Chemical Wedding; 1616), portrayed an alchemistic initiatory process, the representation of which was based in part on the actual wedding of Frederick V, Elector Palatine, and Princess Elizabeth, daughter of James I of England.

History

According to the story recounted in these documents, Christian Rosencreutz was a German scholar born in 1378. He lived to be 106. One hundred and twenty years after his death, his followers, obeying his instructions, opened his tomb; they heralded this event as the "opening" of a new era in Europe. The tomb purportedly contained Rosencreutz's uncorrupted body, various artifacts, and texts summarizing his teachings. In his quest for wisdom, Rosencreutz had traveled to the Holy Land, Egypt, Morocco, and Spain; his teachings reflected the influences of alchemy, Alexandrian Hermetism, Christian gnosticism, Jewish mysticism (Qabbalah), and the Paracelsian medical tradition. Following his own preparation and study, Rosencreutz, with three companions, established the Society of the Rose Cross. This fraternity was to have no other profession than (in the manner of Paracelsus) to attend to the sick for free. Members were also required to travel in order to gain and to disseminate knowledge, to report yearly by letter or in person to the center Rosencreutz had founded (called the Home of the Holy Spirit), to wear no distinctive garb, to seek worldly successors, and to employ the rose cross as their seal and symbol.

Significantly, both the publication of the aforementioned Rosicrucian documents and the purported opening of Rosencreutz's tomb occured in the early seventeenth century, thus placing Rosicrucianism directly in the context of Reformation and Counter-Reformation currents. Further, the documents originally appeared in Bohemia, which at the time was a haven for alchemists, freethinkers, millenarians, and adherents of diverse religious traditions. The authorship of the three key texts has been attributed to Johann Valentin Andreae (1586–1654), a Lutheran theologian and mystic. Andreae later described the history of the Rosicrucians up to his time as pure fabrication; at their publication, however, his texts met with a receptive and enthusiastic audience. With the collapse in 1620 of the brief reign in Bohemia of Frederick and Elizabeth and the onset of the Thirty Years War, Rosicrucianism became associated with Protestantism and "heretical teachings." As part of their campaign against Rosicrucianism, the Jesuits even penned their own Rosicrucian-style document, the Rosa Jesuitica (c. 1620).

During the seventeenth century, Rosicrucian figures such as the "Great Hermeticist" Michael Maier (1568–1622) and the physician Robert Fludd (1574–1637) were instrumental in the spread of Rosicrucian thought and influence on the European continent and in England, respectively. The antiquarian Elias Ashmole (1617–1692) is believed to have brought the Rosicrucian current into speculative Freemasonry. What linked these writers, as well as numerous minor figures, was less an identifiable Rosicrucian brotherhood than an adherence to Rosicrucian beliefs. The claims of Descartes and Leibniz—that, the secrecy of the Rosicrucian order notwithstanding, their efforts to meet a live Rosicrucian were in vain—support the contention that Rosicrucianism existed mainly as a religious and intellectual approach to life rather than as an actual association. In this connection, the question of whether Francis Bacon was a Rosicrucian is unimportant, for he certainly was influenced by, and a participant in, the Rosicrucian trends affecting European intellectual life.

Following a period of relative quiescence in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Rosicrucianism was revived. The Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, founded in the latter part of the nineteenth century by Robert Wentworth Little (d. 1878), played an important role in the renewal and spread of Rosicrucianism. This was not, however, the only strain. Here, polemic concerns of divers Rosicrucian groups obscure the already uncertain history of interactions among European currents and the introduction of Rosicrucianism into America. In the mid-1980s, two major Rosicrucian societies exist in the United States: the Society of Rosicrucians, or Societas Rosicruciana in America, founded in New York City and presently located in Kingston, New York, and the Ancient and Mystical Order of Rosae Crucis, based in San Jose, California. The Societas Rosicruciana publishes the Mercury quarterly; the first issue appeared in 1916. The Ancient and Mystical Order issues the Rosicrucian Digest, which began publication as the Triangle in 1921.

In addition to the establishment of Rosicrucian organizations, the late nineteenth century witnessed Rosicrucianism's strong influence upon Western esotericism. Rosicrucian traditions took form in the Order of the Golden Dawn, a Hermetic society whose initiates practiced a spiritual discipline that they claimed was based upon principles of occult science and the magic of Hermes Trismegistos. At various times, the order numbered William Butler Yeats and Aleister Crowley among its members. Rosicrucianism's influence was also felt in the artworks of an idealist renaissance fostered by the occult aestheticism of Joséphin Peladan's Salons de la Rose + Croix in Paris and in the work of Rudolf Steiner and the Anthroposophical Society.

Doctrines

From its beginnings, Rosicrucianism spread a message of general reformation, preached a new enlightenment, promised a new Paradise, and taught a combination of religious illumination, evangelical piety, and magic. Rosicrucian "science" comprised a system of mathematics and mechanics for the lower world, celestial mathematics for the higher world, and angelic conjuration for the supercelestial world. In principle, the angelic sphere could be penetrated by the use of Rosicrucian technique, and, thus, the essence of all reality was graspable. The initiates were offered insight into the nature of all life. The Hermetic axiom "As above, so below," typical of Rosicrucian teaching, had a profound effect on early modern scientific thought, and Rosicrucianism—like other occult paths—has been credited with having helped to prepare the way for the rise of modern science.

The Chymische Hochzeit depicts the initiatory aspects of Rosicrucianism. Echoing themes of the Fama and the Confessio, its story recounts Christian Rosencreutz's participation in the celebration of a royal wedding. Called on the eve of Easter from his preparation for Communion, Rosencreutz journeys to a magical castle full of treasures. There he joins the wedding party, and over the course of the Christian Holy Week he views many marvels and becomes initiated into chivalric orders. This romance stands as a spiritual allegory both of Rosencreutz's inner transformation and of the transformation of the Rosicrucian elect.

The esoteric dimension of the transformation is rendered in alchemical symbols. Union of bride and bridegroom represents a mystical marriage of the soul, and this spiritual image is bound to an alchemic metaphor of elemental fusion. Likewise, the theme of spiritual death and rebirth is tied to the alchemy of elemental transmutation. The symbolic components of the rose cross may further evidence the importance of the alchemical tradition to Rosicrucian spiritual discipline: Within the alchemical lexicon, ros, or dew, is the solvent of gold, and crux, the cross, is the equivalent of light.

The emblem, however, clearly draws on other symbolic traditions as well. Rosicrucianism's roots in chivalric traditions are revealed in certain aspects of the rose cross. The "chemical wedding" leads to Christian Rosencreutz's initiation as a Red Cross knight, and the initiation he experiences in the allegorical tale is similar to that actually undergone by Frederick V (at the time of his marriage) into the English Order of the Garter, whose heraldric symbol is the Red Cross of Saint George.

The symbol of the rose and the cross also evokes mystical images of the rose of the Virgin and the death of Christ. (Coincidentally, the rose cross was one of Luther's emblems.) For contemporary Rosicrucians, the interpretation of the rose cross centers in the maxim "No cross, no crown," that is, the belief that one comes to the rose (signifying the divine) through mortal suffering.

See Also

Anthroposophy; Freemasons; Paracelsus; Steiner, Rudolf.

Bibliography

Arthur E. Waite's Real History of the Rosicrucians (London, 1887) is the standard account of Rosicrucianism. The Secret Doctrine of the Rosicrucians (Chicago, 1918), by Magus Incognito (pseudonym for Clifford Edward Brooksmith), is a partisan study of teachings and symbols. The best recent account, particularly of the cultural, intellectual, and political milieu in which Rosicrucianism emerged, is Frances A. Yates's The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (London, 1972). This book draws upon the full range of recent scholarship. A Christian Rosenkreutz Anthology, edited by Paul M. Allen and Carlo Pietzner (Blauvelt, N.Y., 1968), offers a useful compilation of traditional texts as well as essays by Rudolf Steiner and others associated with Anthroposophy. Francis King's Magic (London, 1975) explores Rosicrucian influences on Western magic.

New Sources

Åkerman, Susanna. Rose Cross over the Baltic: The Spread of Rosicrucianism in Northern Europe. Boston, Mass, 1998.

Melton, J. Gordon, ed. Rosicrucianism in America. New York, 1990.

Mulvey Roberts, Marie. Gothic Immortals: The Fiction of the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross. New York, 1990.

McKintosh, Christopher. The Rose Cross and the Age of Reason: Eighteenth-Century Rosicrucianism in Central Europe and Its Relationship to the Enlightenment. New York, 1992.

McKintosh, Christopher. The Rosicrucians: The History, Mythology, and Rituals of an Esoteric Order. York Beach, Me., 1997.

Harry Wells Fogarty (1987)

Revised Bibliography