Rosicrucianism
The Fama Fraternitatis Rosae Crucis (The Fame of the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross) was circulated in manuscript among German occultists since about 1610, and published at Cassel in 1614.
[4][5] The manifestos elaborate these matters extensively but cryptically in terms of Qabalah, Hermeticism, alchemy, and Christian mysticism, subjects whose methods, symbolism, and allusions were ardently studied by many intellectuals of the period.
In his posthumously published autobiography, Johann Valentine Andreae acknowledged its origin in a romantic fantasy that he wrote before he was 16 years old (1602), among other likewise forgotten juvenilia, and which he elaborated in response to the Fame and Confession, and said of it that "the Chymical Wedding, with its fertile brood of monsters, a ludibrium which surprisingly some esteem and explicate with subtle investigations, is plainly futile and betrays the vanity of the curious" (Nuptiae Chymicae, cum monstrorum foecundo foetu, ludibriu, quod mireris a nonullis aestimatum et subtili indagine explicatum, plane futile et quod inanitatem curiosorum prodat).
[7] He called Rosicrucianism a "ludibrium" (a lampoon or parody) during his lifetime, in writings advocating social and religious reform through a sectarian Christian organization of his design.
[8] Some scholars of esotericism suggest that Andreae disowned Rosicrucianism to shield his clerical career from the wrath of the religious and political institutions of the day.
[4] In his work "Silentium Post Clamores" (1617), Michael Maier described Rosicrucianism as having arisen from a "primordial tradition", saying "Our origins are Egyptian, Brahminic, derived from the mysteries of Eleusis and Samothrace, the Magi of Persia, the Pythagoreans, and the Arabs".
The most influential of these societies was the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which derived from Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia and counted many prominent figures among its members.
Paul Foster Case, founder of the Builders of the Adytum as a successor to the Golden Dawn, published The true and invisible Rosicrucian Order,[10] elaborating the Qabalistic basis and interpretation of the Fame and Confession.
It is said that he studied in the Middle East under various masters – a story implying a possible link to Islamic mysticism or Sufism, which influenced a number of Western esoteric traditions.
Three such generations had supposedly passed between c. 1500 and c. 1600: a time when scientific, philosophical, and religious freedom had grown so that the public might benefit from the Rosicrucians' knowledge, so that they were now seeking good men.
Adam Haslmayr a friend of Karl Widemann wrote him a letter about Rosicrucian people who revealed the Theophrastiam[clarification needed] 24 December 1611.
[16] In his autobiography, Johann Valentin Andreae (1586–1654) claimed that the anonymously published Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz was one of his works, and he subsequently described it as a ludibrium.
The first said "We, the Deputies of the Higher College of the Rose-Croix, do make our stay, visibly and invisibly, in this city (...)", and the second ended with the words "The thoughts attached to the real desire of the seeker will lead us to him and him to us.
"[19] The legendary first manifesto, Fama Fraternitatis Rosae Crucis (1614), inspired the works of Michael Maier (1568–1622) of Germany; Robert Fludd (1574–1637) and Elias Ashmole (1617–1692) of England; Teophilus Schweighardt Constantiens, Gotthardus Arthusius, Julius Sperber, Henricus Madathanus, Gabriel Naudé, Thomas Vaughan and others.
Some later works impacting Rosicrucianism were the Opus magocabalisticum et theosophicum by George von Welling (1719) – of alchemical and paracelsian inspiration – and the Aureum Vellus oder Goldenes Vliess by Hermann Fictuld in 1749.
In his 1618 pamphlet, Pia et Utilissima Admonitio de Fratribus Rosae Crucis, Henrichus Neuhusius wrote that the Rosicrucians departed for the east due to European instability caused by the start of the Thirty Years' War.
Some modern scholars, for example Adam McLean and Giordano Berti, assume that among the first followers of the Rose Cross there was also the German theologian Daniel Cramer, who in 1617 published a treatise entitled "Societas Jesus et Rosae Crucis Vera" (The True Society of Jesus and the Rosy Cross), containing 40 emblematic figures accompanied by biblical quotations.
The idea of such an order, exemplified by the network of astronomers, professors, mathematicians, and natural philosophers in 16th-century Europe promoted by such men as Johannes Kepler, Georg Joachim Rheticus, John Dee and Tycho Brahe, gave rise to the Invisible College.
The Gold und Rosenkreuzer (Golden and Rosy Cross) was founded by the alchemist Samuel Richter who in 1710 published Die warhhaffte und vollkommene Bereitung des Philosophischen Steins der Brüderschaft aus dem Orden des Gülden-und Rosen-Creutzes (The True and Complete Preparation of the Philosopher's Stone by the Brotherhood from the Order of the Golden and Rosy Cross) in Breslau under the pseudonym Sincerus Renatus[29] in Prague in the early 18th century as a hierarchical secret society composed of internal circles, recognition signs and alchemy treatises.
Marconis de Negre,[31] who together with his father Gabriel M. Marconis is held to be the founder of the "Rite of Memphis-Misraim" of Freemasonry, based on earlier conjectures (1784) by a Rosicrucian scholar Baron de Westerode[32] and also promulgated by the 18th century secret society called the "Golden and Rosy Cross", the Rosicrucian Order was created in the year 46 when an Alexandrian Gnostic sage named Ormus and his six followers were converted by one of Jesus' disciples, Mark.
[35] The Neapolitan branch of the Memphis-Misraim rite, Grande Oriente Egizio, isntructed Giuliano Kremmerz to create the Brotherhood of Myriam with the aim of practising therapeutic magic for those affected by disease, including non-initiates.
He was carried away secretly by a monk, an Albigensian adept from Languedoc, and placed in a monastery under the influence of the Albigenses, where he was educated and met the four Brothers later to be associated with him in the founding of the Rosicrucian Brotherhood.
The Fellowship seeks to prepare the individual through harmonious development of mind and heart in a spirit of unselfish service to mankind and an all-embracing altruism.
Their inspired mentors compiled volumes of mystic philosophy which they combined with their personal notions of what the ancient Orders were, and so formed groups.
[44] According to Masonic writers, the Order of the Rose Cross is expounded in a major Christian literary work that molded the subsequent spiritual beliefs of western civilization: The Divine Comedy (ca.
