Rose Cross

In 1520, Martin Luther had a seal made with a five-petaled white rose encapsulating a heart, with a simple cross in the centre.

Johannes Valentinus Andreae, a likely candidate for the authorship of the third Rosicrucian manifesto, the Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, came from a family whose crest featured an X-shaped cross with roses in the four corners.

[7] It has also been suggested that the rose represents silence while the cross signifies "salvation, to which the Society of the Rose-Cross devoted itself by teaching mankind the love of God and the beauty of brotherhood, with all that they implied.

Connections between Freemasonry and Rose Cross exist from times preceding the formation of the original Grand Lodge (landmarks of Andersen, in 1717).

The Rosy Cross is also a symbol found in some Masonic Christian bodies[c] and employed by individuals and groups formed during the last centuries for the study of Rosicrucianism and allied subjects,[d] but derived from the adoption of a red rose.

Of one version of the degree, Albert Pike wrote in 1871, Thomas De Quincey suggested that Freemasonry was possibly an outgrowth of Rosicrucianism.

[citation needed] The symbol of the rosy cross played a substantial role within the system of Thelema as developed by Aleister Crowley.

In a cosmological context, the rose is Nuit, the infinitely expanded goddess of the night sky, and the cross is Hadit, the ultimately contracted atomic point.

This grade is symbolically that of beauty and harmony; it is the natural stopping-place of the majority of men and women; for to proceed farther, as will appear, involves renunciation of the sternest kind.

Here then is all joy, peace, well-being on all planes; the Sovereign Prince Rose Croix is attached equally to the higher and the lower, and forms a natural link between them.

Waite made its rites to reflect his interest in the history of the Rosicrucian Order, Freemasonry, and Christian mystical teachings through the ages.

[f] The Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis (AMORC) is the largest Rosicrucian group today, extending worldwide through twenty-three grand lodges or jurisdictions.

In both cases the symbolism suggests that In addition, the gold Latin cross version is interpreted as a person with arms outstretched in worship, and the rose at its center as the unfolding of the human soul over many lifetimes of work.

A Rose Cross with a fleur-de-lis design on its spokes
The Luther rose , a symbol of Lutheranism and the Protestant Reformation
The rose gives the bees honey from title page of Fludd (1629) [ 11 ] [ b ]
The jewel of the 18° in the Masonic Scottish Rite, a degree titled Knight or Sovereign Prince of the Rose Croix
The Rosy Cross lamen as worn by adepts in the Rosae Rubae et Aureae Crucis , an inner order of the Golden Dawn .
Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Cross version of Rosy Cross – the Hebrew Tetragrammaton divine name on the arms of the cross, and the Pentagrammaton in the inner pentagram
Rosicrucian Fellowship emblem