CHAPTER XIU.

CONSIDERATIONS ON THE MYSTIC ANATOMY OF THE ROSICRUCIAN PHILOSOPHERS.
Tue heroes of the Holy Graél are the divine guardians of its meanings. ‘They are chosen of God, set aside in their purity, and although gifted with the might of Mars, or the valour and address and the sublime angelic strength of the shepherd-boy David, they are harmless to all the humble, deserving, and good, and are the chosen exe- cutants of the heavenly purposes, to be committed alone to those “spotless as children.” In a sense, partly (when adopted into the higher forms of God’s service, which service assumes all sorts of ranks and degrees, and all forms of superiority, and of inferiority, in the ascending, according to the gifts and movements upward of the server, or of the heavenly-assisted influences—the more effectually or the less effectually availed of),—the cham- pions of the Holy Graél were gradually cleared of their mortal disabling conditions. ‘They progressed, according to their purity, in magic power. They acquired beauty upon beauty and grace upon grace, kindled in new know- ledge, passed up into a newer level of excellence, and acquired, when they were accepted, the mysterious double nature, the possibility of which is known only in the counsels of the Almighty, by which, when despatched to discharge some particular office of championship as the servant-soldiers of the Lord, they resigned, temporarily, their semi-angel character and passed to earth as men, and
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mixed in the affairs of men, and lived and mingled with people in the ordinary way with a man’s body, only to be glori- fied and to be testified to (in the assurance of all) tran- sitorily, as more than human when they chose to display themselves as superhuman. ‘Thus from the tale of the champion Lohengrin we learn that the warrior is the sacred mystic brother of the undiscoverable monastery, or hold, or fortress, or castle, or hermitage, or palace— whatever name we choose to give it—of the mysterious Mount of Safety, or Salvation, or “ Mont Salvagge,” or “ Selvaggio,’ that “castled peak” amidst the encircling woods, which, although sought for ever by human foot and eye, is never to be found except through the assent of the brothers themselves. The knight is represented as rising from his knees there in the “ Chapel of the Graél,” before the altar of which he passes his days and nights in ceaseless prostrate adoration. He hears the single warn- ing quiet stroke of the holy bell, which declares that in some part of the world (as yet unknown) some deserving sufferer groans or shrieks in “sore strait,” and that he (the champion) is the one selected and summoned for the surpassing duty of the interference and the rescue. Armed and helmed, with his mailed foot ready to be placed in his knightly stirrup, and his hand twisted in the long mane of his charger, ready to mount, the champion, with his eyes raised to heaven in expectation, waits for the magic sign which shall convey to him its hieroglyphical directions. The orders arrive; the path is pointed out, He resigns himself to invisible guidance. In his dream, or in his sleep,—couchant like the glorious lily flower upon his burnished shield which flashes to the light his cognizance, the “silver swan,’—the knight Lohengrin
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fancies that he is traversing the latitudes “a thousand miles or more, or many more.” He thus proceeds until, to the last summons of the trumpets of the heralds, and in almost the despair of the masses of the people, all gathered to witness the destruction, doubtless by the fire or severing sword, of the fated Princess Elsa of Brabant, the approaching boat, towed by something which seems to the people like a magnificent swan, impossible for its size, its whiteness and beauty, nears the strand. The wondrous Knight of the Graé]—the holy saint or angel Lohengrin—treads to the shore, welcomed by the shouts of the Flemish multitude, awestruck in the miracle of the sight, but intoxicated with joy. It is a sudden and a signal rescue. How the champion sped, how he fought, how he conquered, how he lived among the people familiarly for his prescribed period, how he was honoured by being raised to the highest rank by the emperor, Henry the Fowler, ‘ Enrico Uccelerato,” how the rescued Elsa fell in mad, passionate love with her deliverer (as how could she help it or withstand such wondrous gifts °), how Lohengrin reciprocated her love as far as he could or dared, consistently with the awful vows of resignation and of abnegation which avow him as one of the elect holy knights of the “Graél,” sworn to denial of and im- possibility of approach by the embraces of woman; how the wail or plaint of the “ sacrifice” implied in the feigned marriage is sung as a dirge* to the mtertwining mazes
* Of course the people of the Principality of Brabant do not know of the real character of this pretended, ill-starred, impossible marriage -with their princess, for the apparent human knight Lohengrin is taken by the concourse for a real man, as also by the bride and the emperor and his court. He is only suspected for his real character by
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of the solemn wedding-dance, so significant of German mysticism, and termed the “ 'Torch-Dance of the Bridal,” or the famous Fackeltanz, almost always performed at court. and other grand weddings, which in such a serious country as Germany are solemnities ; how all these stirring and weird and strangely-interesting circumstances and events came to pass, and what is their (even historical) issue we shall leave the historians of the Teutonic profundities to declare, and the romancists of the German Fatherland more fully to describe and to embellish. Further, let the profound musical intricacies and the deep-dreaming of the sometimes over-clouded meanings and purposes of the
the enchantress Ortrud and by the evil-minded intending assassin ‘Telra- mond when he is vanquished. The Knights of the Graél were bound never to reveal their real character, and to forsake all their human engagements and entanglements at the first recall to their secret habita- tion or castle. ‘The council of the Knights or Brothers of the Holy Grail, or Grael, was a reflex of the sacred bond sanctified by sacra- ments which held the majestic and mystic Rosicrucians together. These were really the guardians of the greater mysteries. In this sense of the mysterious and the sacred, the “ garter”’ of the “‘ Most Noble the Order of the ‘Garter’ ”’—the first of chivalry—is not a “ garter’ at all, but the “‘ Garder,” or “ Keeper,” the sacredest and holiest guardian of the supernatural chastity of none other than the most exalted feminine personality (of course in the abstract and miraculous sense), the very foundation of Christianity—the “ Cestus’’ or girdle of the blessed and immaculate Virgin Mary, the Queen of Heaven, with her victorious foot, for all the ages past and to come, trampling upon the Dragon, in her celestial purity, as the ‘“‘ Mother of Christ.”
In advancing this very original and unexpected but genuine reading of the mysteries which appertain subjectively to this magnificent order, we can at once see the absurdity of conferring the order upon sovereigns or princes or upon any persons who are not Christians, however politi- cally important they may seem to the people of England. Heralds and skilled archeologists and philosophers, who are presumed to be people of penetration, will perceive al] this at once.
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composer Wagner be had recourse to in order to raise the mind and attune the interest and attention to the meta- physical subtleties involved in the adequate consideration of the design, authority, and weight of this legend, or story, or fable, or history, or allegory ¢or truth, to a certain impressive extent), of Lohengrin, the Knight of the Sangrael, at once the puzzle of all commentators, of all antiquaries, nay, of all Christianity. But, understood or not, the whole story is very beautiful, poetically graphic and interesting, and at the same time religious and sacred.
In brief, and as an explanation of their supposed real character, the knights of King Arthur’s court were aim- ing to achieve, by their efforts in this world and in their acts of rescue and of beneficence, their presumed angel- assisted traverse up the difficult heights set with moral precipices to the aspiring heaven.
They were, in their worldly character as holy pilgrims, set a task, sworn to sacred obligations, united in a fraternity whose distinguishing mark and boast were the maintenance among themselves of rites and of an elaborate knightly— even monastic—rule as nearly as possible and as far as was consistent with the continual necessary exercise of their warlike calling. They were enjoined to this so long as their youth and powers and the spirit of adventure remained to inspire them with the uses of the elaborate cere- monial. ‘These masters in the profession of chivalry realised the active and sublime knightly characteristics in the old days, ages before the false idea entered men’s minds that their ov/y purpose in the world was to engage in commerce and in buying and selling and exchanging and bargaining, in adding this item to that item, in con- solidating the increase, and in realising capital, The capital
K
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they sought was the accumulation of health, of peace and quietness, of comfort and happiness, of rest, enjoyment, and competence. ‘Their aims were moderate wants and satis- faction, knowledge and wisdom, piety, and hope, and trust. Compare this unworldly life, and the ideas that these heroes entertained of the enchantments of music,* with
* The ideas of the ancients as to the character and the power of music were very remarkable. The music of the spheres was the grand harmonious rhapsody—the life and breath and language of the divinities, wherewith the gods first imagined, and then ‘ built up”’ and “ endowed’ Nature. Thus music is magical, and we have in it the tradition of the first state, or of Paradise, now feebly, intermittently recalled as hints —that are so sad that they move to tears as in a “ dream,”
The Rosicrucians contend that music, or melody, which is enchant- ment, pervades all nature in its prosperous or intended progress, although it is only the wail, or plaint, of the instinctive soul on its wounded, or sacrificed, or ‘ Ruined” Side. It mourns for its Original Lost Para- dise. ‘The music of’ the spheres is no unreal thing, but real as is the atmosphere of the spirits. For music is as the atrnosphere of the spirits and discords, though the necessary support and balance of Creation, are a medium for the coarse and low spirits, who inundate, as if were, the lees and settlings of Nature, or the shadows and dark places of Nature ; for the dass is as necessary to emphasise and to bring out and support the lighter, or motived side of music, as the shadows are indispensable to supply the life and reality to objects in the real world. It is only the responsive soul of man that is moved by music, The lower animals have no sense of music, although there is no doubt that they have a means of communicating with each other, or some sort of language. But the lower animals are all stopped short at something (whatever it be, for it is totally unknown by man), which state has the effect as of a sort of limited dream to them, and therefore they make no progress, although they have certain spiritual perceptions greater and more delicate than mankind. The whole world is taken as a musical instrument. Heavenly music is produced from melodious supernatural impact upon the paths of the planets, which stand, as chords or strings, by the cross-travel of the sun, in the ecliptic, from star to star, and from note to note, or from planet to planet. Earthly music is microscopically an imitation of the same, and a relic of heaven. The Rosicrucians taught that all nature is
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the mean pursuits of the moderns, wholly given over to common things. These mystical persuasions, abounding in that remote early time when religious feeling was possible, when reverenceand respect for sacred ideas and theosophical theses were possible, when the modes and methods of life were either markedly simple or grandly and impressively magnificent, when poverty was only comparative on account of the fewness of wants, and the curse of conceit and of pride was neither so prevalent nor so fierce nor so flagrant. These fearing doubts, this emphasising and humanising into forms and voices of the forces of Nature, and this solicitous invoking or assuagement of the friendliness, or the hostilities, of the outside powers into accessible per- sonality, into concentrate motived end, into intelligence, into spite and persecution, or assistance and guardianship and defence, all placed under special rule and committed to the charge of subordinated invisible spirits or ministers, be- neyolent or malign or neutral, actors or witnesses or both; call all this superstition, and say that these romantic, highly- toned fervid motions were mere delusion and dreaming, the result of a state of society unintelligible to the moderns. Granting all this—nay, conceding more :—and how far are we advanced in the conviction of the true certainty of our gains, and of the meaning and purport of the march of the
produced, like a piece of music, by melodious combinations of the cross movement of the holy light playing over the lines of the planets, light flaming as the spiritual ecliptic, or the g/adius of the Archangel Michael, to the frontiers or extremities of the solar system. ‘ Music, colours, and language (the vowels of the latter intermittent through the mouth, and therefore producing speech), the phenomena (in the world) of music, colours, and language are allied.”—“ The Analogy of the Laws of Musical Temperament to the Natural Dissonance of Creation,” by M. Vernon. London: 1867. Seealso ‘The Rosicrucians,” p..23 5 e¢ supra.
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generations? We think that the story of the centuries tells in reality of no progress. The world revolves in a never-ending circle. Civilisations rise and fall, contradict each other, change wholly in their character. But that is all. Nations only advance to achieve their highest point, and then to recede. Such is the fate of communities, such the fate of individuals, such is the fate of the world.
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