CHAPTER XIV

THE ROSICRUCIANS
One famous secret association, if it ever had a real existence, must be regarded as forming the connecting link between the esoteric bodies of the Middle Ages and those of our own times.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century an anonymous manuscript began to be passed from hand to hand among scholars in Austria and south-east Germany. It told the story of a certain Christian Rosenkreuz, how he had founded a hidden brotherhood which possessed mysterious secrets and occult powers; it went on to dwell upon the benefits that would accrue to Germany if all the learned could be induced to lay aside their mutual jealousies and combine in such a fraternal union; and it ended by inviting all men of good will to join the brotherhood established by Rosenkreuz.
Various men who had read this manuscript published pamphlets in reply, some of them even asking publicly to be received into the fraternity, as did one Haselmeyer in 1612 two years after the manuscript had fallen into his hands in the Tyrol; but it was not till the year 1614 that the manuscript itself was printed. In that year, not later than August, was published at Cassel in Hesse a book entitled : Universal and General Reformation of the Whole Wide World ; together with the Fama Fraternitatis of the Laudable Order of the Rosy Cross, written to all the Learned and Rulers of Europe, etc.1 It told the following story.
Christian Rosenkreuz, born of a noble German family in the year 1378, was at the age of five placed in a cloister,
1 Vide introduction by F. N. Pryce to the reprint of the Fama issued by the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, 1923, for complete information about the early editions of the book and the more important pamphlets evoked by it.
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where he acquired some knowledge of the Greek and Latin tongues. A brother of this cloister intending a pil¬ grimage to the Holy Land took the boy with him as companion; but this brother died in Cyprus, and Christian was thrown on his own resources. Having received a good report of the wise men of Damascus, the young pilgrim, then aged sixteen, abandoned his journey to Jerusalem and travelled to Damascus instead, where he was welcomed by the sages, who had foreseen his arrival. He remained in that city for the next three years, studying medicine, mathematics and Arabic. From Syria he proceeded to Egypt, where he made no long stay, but went farther west to Fez to study magic and the Cabala. After a stay of two years in Fez he journeyed to Spain, where he was unable to obtain a patient hearing for the new learning that he had brought with him. After that, having visited many countries and been coldly received in all, he at last returned to his native Germany, where, probably in some place in the Austrian Tyrol, he drew up an account of his travels, and reduced his system of philosophy into writing. Five years were spent in these labours. Then Christian Rosenkreuz decided that he would need help in his proposed reformation of the world, and claimed it from three brethren chosen from his old cloister; to these first disciples four others were subsequently added, all of whom he bound to be “faithful, diligent and secret.” They were to pursue as their chief ends the healing of the sick and the commitment to writing of “all that which men can desire, wish or hope for” — in short, the grand total of human wisdom was to be collected as a free gift for all humanity. “In all they were eight in number, all bachelors and of vowed virginity.”
After having lived together for some years, five of the brethren departed into foreign countries, to spread the wisdom they had already acquired and to gather more. They all entered into an agreement, the most important clauses of which were: that none of them should profess any power or mission but to cure the sick, and give his services gratis; that they should all meet together in the House of the Founder once a year; that each one should
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choose “a worthy person who after his decease might succeed him”; and that the Fraternity should remain secret for one hundred years. In due course the founder and his original disciples died, Christian Rosenkreuz in 1484 at the age of 106. They were followed by the consecutive Fratres of the “second row and succession.” A centenarian Frater of this “succession” became the chief instructor of the “third succession,” among whom the compilers of the Fama are to be reckoned. At this point the story becomes con¬ tradictory. Silence concerning the Fraternity had been enjoined for one hundred years, but apparently this silence was broken not because the period had expired, but because of the accidental discovery of the tomb of the Founder while the House of the Fraternity was undergoing some renovations. This tomb lay in a secret vault together with certain other deposits, and the Fratres accepted the dis¬ covery as a sign that the hour had come when the boundaries of the Fraternity should be enlarged and its existence avowed to the world. So after a brief and none too lucid statement about the tenets of the Fraternity the book con¬ cludes with what is practically an invitation to all men of learning and philanthropy to seek admission to the Order of the Rosy Cross.
The appearance of the Fama occasioned great excitement in Germany, which was increased by the publication in Cassel, probably in January, 1615, of another Rosicrucian document written in Latin, entitled Confessio C.R. ad Eruditos Europae, now usually known as the Confession. This book added little or nothing to men’s knowledge about the mysterious society, and its greatest interest lies in the fact that scholars have discovered in it a post-Refor- mation tendency as opposed to a pre-Reformation spirit in the Fama ; but the whole of Europe was already so curious about the Rosicrucians that the new book found an avid public awaidng it, as did any printed matter on that theme. Letters were published by individuals who wished to become Fratres, by others who denied the existence of the society, and by yet others who asserted their personal acquaintance with the Fraternity. Holland was already
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102 FAMOUS SECRET SOCIETIES
discussing the secret in 1615. A year later the Fraternity found an English defender in Robert Fludd. Edition after edition of the Fama and Confessio came from the Press. The last of these appeared at Frankfurt-am-Main in 1617, and had attached what purported to be a manifesto of the Fraternity declaiming against those who had sought admission for unworthy motives. “But men have either scorned our writings, or else have supposed we are going to teach them to make gold by alchemical art, or to bestow upon them riches to satisfy their pomp and ambition, their wars and greed, their gluttony and drunkenness and lust.”1
This was the last putative manifesto of the Fraternity, which, so far as printed evidence goes, renounced hence¬ forth the idea of making public appeals for support, and resumed its secret method of recruiting; that is, if it had ever had any actual existence or any more substantial form than the noble dream of a high-thinking philosopher.
The question whether the Fraternity had or had not an actual existence at that date has been matter of contro¬ versy for over three hundred years ; and the present writer is not called on to add to it. There is no doubt, however, that from time to time throughout these centuries individuals and groups of individuals have claimed to be members of the Fraternity.
Of the various writers, beginning with Martin Luther, to whom the authorship of the Fama and Confessio has been attributed, only one need be mentioned here, Johann Valentin Andreae (1586-1654), a theologian of Wtirtemberg, who has been the popular favourite. It is unnecessary to enter into a discussion of the evidence for or against his authorship, because if the Fraternity really did exist, or if the Fama and Confessio imply a wish to establish such a society, Andreae’s authorship is impossible2; while if the society was merely an erewhonian dream, the question of who started the myth does not affect the present inquiry.
1 F. N. Pryce, Op. cit.
3 The opinion of Dr. Begemann, the chief German adherent of the theory of Andreae’s authorship. Quoted by F. N. Pryce, Op. cit.
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As has been said above, from the year 1614 the world has been full of soi-disant Rosicrucians, as the new sect came soon to be called; and while none has clearly demonstrated descent from the original Fraternity, many have claimed it.
The name has been a cloak for many charlatans. During the course of the seventeenth century the term Rosicrucian came to connote a magician or alchemist knowing mysterious secrets and possessed of occult powers, and so the title was readily assumed by impostors who knew that dupes would accept them at their own valuation.
The quest of the Philosophers’ Stone was the usual object that brought the swindlers and swindled together; and that such things should happen in the name of Rosicrucianism is a paradox in human mentality, because the Fama dis¬ claimed any such hidden knowledge in the Fraternity. This ungodly and accursed gold-making, said that book, is so popular nowadays that not only all the world’s worst scoundrels but even many men of discretion look upon it as the goal of all wisdom; but we, the brethren of Christian Rosenkreuz, do publicly testify that such a view is false, and the true philosophers are they for whom gold-making is but a trifle and aj barer gon. But it was in vain that the true Frater1 might enter the protest: “He doth not rejoice that he can make gold, and that . . . the devils are obedient to him”; the words might never have been printed, for all the heed paid by the vulgarly covetous; the Rosicrucians were popularly supposed to possess great skill in the arts of magic and alchemy, and therefore any dabbler in the occult might be given or might assume the name of Rosicrucian, as the badge of his tribe.
On the other hand, there has been no lack of men of scholarship and upright life who also have assumed the badge of the Rosicrucian in widely different places since the year 1614, but their succession from the putative original society has never been proved, and in some cases has never even been claimed. It will readily be understood that during the first half of the seventeenth century when the Thirty Years’ War (1618-48) was raging, no secret society would have
•’The Rosicrucian style of entitling initiates.
104 FAMOUS SECRET SOCIETIES
been tolerated in any part of Germany, so that reports of regular assemblies of Rosicrucians in such places as Hamburg, Nurnberg, Danzig and Erfurt must be accepted with caution. We know, however, that such a gathering was forbidden at Amsterdam in 1619.
Isolated scholars, such as Michael Maier in Germany, or Thomas Vaughan in England, believed in the existence of the Fraternity, and defended the principles for which it stood, though confessing that they had never been received into it as members.
Robert Fludd (1574-1637) is the first celebrity to have his name connected by common report with the Fraternity in England,1 though Francis Bacon has also been claimed as a Frater without much confirmatory evidence. Fludd, however, studied medicine on the continent and defended the Rosicrucians in print, facts more than enough to acquire him the reputation of having belonged to the society. Similar claims have been made on behalf of other English¬ men; but, apart from all this, no organized body calling itself Rosicrucian is known to have existed in England until the nineteenth century. From 1830 till 1850 a society was in existence claiming such a title, but had died out by the later year.
In 1866 the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia was founded by Robert Wentworth Little on the basis of a Rosicrucian system or rite which had been communicated in Germany to Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie, who became a prominent member of the English society. Authority to practise this rite in England was obtained from Austria where it had been in vogue for many years. The first English College of Rosi¬ crucians then founded has since grown into a flourishing order with colleges scattered through the provinces. It also introduced the Society to Scotland and America, both of which countries now possess independent jurisdictions. The Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia demands a Masonic qualification in its candidates, and thus excludes women.
1 But merely by tradition, in defiance of documents and dates. Vide A. E. Waite, The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross, London, 1924. p. 271, et sqq. for a very emphatic mustering of the evidence against Fludd’s connexion with the Society of the Rose and Cross.
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Its object is to promote study among the members, not of occult matters solely, but of ancient wisdom, art, and literature generally, for which purpose a library is maintained for the use of the Fratres. It works an esoteric rite of nine grades. The head of the Order is known as the Supreme Magus, who is assisted by a Senior and Junior Substitute Magus.
As for continental societies claiming to be Rosicrucian, they are legion. In 1710 one Sigmund Richter, writing under the name of Sincerus Renatus, published a pamphlet at Breslau wherein he purported to give the laws of the society as then existing in a reformed model; and after him came many others.1
In France in 1754 a new Masonic degree suddenly cropped up, and attained great popularity, instanced by its having continued as an integral part of the Antient and Accepted Rite down to this day. It was known as the Rose Croix degree, and was only the first of many quasi- Masonic degrees that claimed to be Rosicrucian, but has, in the opinion of some scholars, a better claim on the title than most of the others.
Towards the end of the eighteenth century some of these quasi-Masonic Rosicrucian degrees had developed into a rite of nine grades, which was practised in various parts of Germany. These Rosicrucians had the reputation of being a reactionary secret society in contradistinction to many brands of Freemasonry as then practised on the continent.
From Germany Rosicrucianism passed into Russia, and flourished, in name at least, for a time. It would be impos¬ sible as well as unprofitable to discuss which of its many manifestations there as well as elsewhere had inherited any traditions of the original Fratres of the Rosy Cross, whom we have seen darkly in the Fama of 1614, hardly more than shadows, but wielding power over men’s imagina¬ tions and aspirations for generations to come.
1 For full details about Renatus and other eighteenth-century manifesta¬ tions of Rosicrucianism consult Waite, Op. cit.