We have already addressed the History of Rosicrucianism in the 17th Century and in the 18th Century in previous episodes and, in this one, we will dive into the 19th and 20th Centuries’ developments, including the three largest organisations: the Rosicrucian Fellowship, Lectorium Rosicrucianum and AMORC.
Come along to learn more about this fascinating order!
Hello everyone, I’m Dr Angela Puca and welcome to my Symposium. I’m a PhD and a University Lecturer and this is your online resource for the academic study of Magick, Paganism, Shamanism, Rosicrucianism and all things occult.
Today’s video is brought to you by the friend of the Symposium, Regulus! Thank you so much for commissioning this video and I hope you find it interesting!
According to Massimo Introvigne, the source of this video’s content, there is no direct connection between 19th and 20th-century Rosicrucian Orders and their 17th-century counterparts. (Introvigne, 2006, pp.1018–1020)
I will therefore address Rosicrucian Orders as autonomous organizations, excluding Rosicrucian degrees within Freemasonry.
The oldest modern masonic Rosicrucian Order is the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, founded in London in 1865-1866 by Freemason Robert Wentworth Little (1840-1878).
This society led then to the birth of two American ones, the Societas Rosicruciana in Civitatibus Foederatis and the Societas Rosicruciana in America, both of which are still active.
As I already mentioned in a past episode, the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia also influenced the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and, later, the Builders of the Adytum (BOTA) founded by Paul Foster Case (1884-1954).
Meanwhile, in France, small Rosicrucian groups were active in Toulouse from the first decades of the 19th century, gathering around Viscount Louis-Charles-Edouard de Lapasse (1792-1867).
A larger and more significant organization was the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose Cross, founded in Paris in 1887 by Stanislas de Guaita (1861-1897), Papus or Papus (Gérard Encausse, 1865-1916), and → Joséphin Péladan (1858-1918). The latter, an eccentric poet and independent Roman Catholic left the Kabbalistic Order in 1890 to create the Catholic Order of the Rosy Cross of Temple and Grail. The two Orders were in a state of rivalry, a controversy that was noticed by the press and called the “war of the two roses”. Péladan’s organisation was neither popular nor influential, except for the fact that it inspired French literature, art, and music at the time. More influential for the first modern Rosicrucian generation was the Kabbalistic Order, even though it is challenging to distinguish it from several other occult groups similarly led by Papus.
There are numerous Rosicrucian organizations but I will focus on the ones that have reached international visibility and impact: the Rosicrucian Fellowship, the Lectorium Rosicrucianum, and AMORC or A-M-O-R-C. Carl Louis von Grasshoff (1865-1919) was born in Denmark into a German aristocratic family. In his youth, he joined the Theosophical Society, and in 1907 travelled to Germany, where he met Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), who later founded Anthroposophy while, at the time, was leading the German Theosophical Society. As Introvigne explains, Grasshoff later claimed to have met a mysterious “Elder Brother of the Rose Cross”, who took him to a secret temple on the border between Germany and Bohemia. After his return to California, Grasshoff published in 1909 his magnum opus, “The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception,” under the pseudonym of Max Heindel; and in 1910 he married a popular astrologer, Augusta Foss (1865-1949). After publishing more works on astrology, Freemasonry and other esoteric topics, he launched a Rosicrucian Fellowship in 1909, which was officially integrated in 1911. He also supervised the creation of the Fellowship’s international headquarters in Oceanside, California, which included a temple and beautiful gardens.
After Heindel’s passing in 1919, his wife Augusta fostered the Fellowship’s expansion into several foreign countries, with a membership of thousands. Differently from other Rosicrucian organizations, the Fellowship had a more religious inclination in its structure, which is made plain by the inclusion of rituals for weddings and funerals, as well as spiritual healing services. Astrology was and remains an essential part of the Fellowship’s teachings even today along with Theosophy and Anthroposophy. Indeed, we find here teaching pertaining to karma – the “Law of Consequence”, reincarnation – the “Law of Rebirth”, and beliefs in a succession of theosophical “root races” on Earth. The Fellowship promotes vegetarianism and warns against the detrimental effects of tobacco drugs and alcohol, which lead humans to forget their higher selves.
The Lectorium Rosicrucianum, or the International School of the Golden Rosy Cross, was founded by Jan Leene (1896-1968) and his brother Zwier Wilhelm Leene (1892-1938), both leaders of the Rosicrucian Fellowship in the Netherlands. Even though the events that lead to the Lectorium’s foundation date back to August 24th 1924, it was only in 1935 that the Leenes and Ms Henny Stok-Huyser (1902-1990), who joined them in 1930, formally declared their independence from the Fellowship and established a Rosicrucian Society of their own (Rozekruisers Genootschap, whose name was changed to Order of the Manicheans in 1936).
After Z.W. Leene’s death in 1938, Jan Leene and Stok-Huyser, under the respective pen names of Jan van Rijckenborgh and Catharose de Petri, began writing several books about their teachings, which resembled a kind of Christian Gnosticism influenced by Hermeticism, 17th century Rosicrucianism, and Jacob Boehme (1575-1624). Following the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands, the movement was proscribed, its property confiscated, and several members executed. However, it still continued its activities underground throughout the war years and in 1945 the movement was reorganized and resurfaced under the name of Lectorium Rosicrucianum. In 1948, the two founders met Antonin Gadal (1871-1962), one of the founding fathers of modern neo-Catharism, who in 1957 would become the first President of the French branch of the Lectorium. It was after the founders’ deaths that the Lectorium, led by an International Spiritual Directorate, became a truly international movement, with currently around 15,000 “members” and “pupils”. “Members” of the school are those not yet prepared to “live” the teachings and are distinguished from “pupils” who meet regularly for services in the temples that the Lectorium has established in a number of countries. Pupils – Introvigne remarks – are expected to conduct a healthy lifestyle, abstain from alcohol and drugs, and reject all occult practices and any form of communication with the dead. Interestingly, they would also need to be vigilant of the damaging influence of the media, especially television.
Oh, naughty YouTube.
In terms of their theoretical framework, the Lectorium endorses concepts akin to Gnosticism and Catharism, along with trying to reconcile its teachings with those of 17th-century Rosicrucianism. Key teaching maintains that there is a distinction between the original divine Order and the “dialectic” Order. This includes the dead and the living, everyone who is part of the cycle of living, dying and being born again. Notably, here it is not the ego which is deemed to get reincarnated, but rather the human microcosm. By being reincarnated, the human microcosm needs to overcome the wheel of life and death to attain the divine realm of immortality and Light. Yet, even within the human microcosm, a divine spark remains latent in the heart and calls for a return “home” to the Kingdom of Heaven. Therefore, the main purpose of the Lectorium is precisely this. To Guide its members in this process of awakening and “transfiguration” from microcosm to divine.
Last but most certainly not least, we have AMORC, the Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis. AMORC maintains that the order is not a religion and that it includes members – “students” from several different religious backgrounds. AMORC was founded in 1915 by Harvey Spencer Lewis (1883-1939), a New York advertising agent who had been one of the founders of the New York Society of Psychical Research. Interesting to notice that Lewis considered the Wissahickon (Pennsylvania) community founded in 1694 by Johannes Kelpius (1673-1708) as the first American Rosicrucian experiment and claimed that some of his ancestors had been involved in it. In 1909 Lewis visited France and reported that he had been initiated into the Rosy Cross in an “old tower” in Toulouse. The first national AMORC conference was held in Pittsburgh in 1917 but the Order later moved to San Francisco; Tampa, Florida and in 1927 to San Jose, California, where its world headquarters, including a temple, museum, library, and planetarium, have become one of the city’s main tourist attractions. As a result of AMORCs’ success in the United States, numerous more or less independent AMORCs were established in Europe. Some of them later became independent organisations, like AAORRAC.
Seriously? That’s a mouthful! But wait for the full name in Latin, a language I feel comfortable with!
The Antiquus Arcanum Ordo Rosae Rubae Aureae Crucis.
This order was led by Eduard Munninger, 1901-1965. Interesting to notice that Lewis, working along with Jeanne Guesdon (1884-1955), managed to keep the large French-speaking branch within the main branch. After him, the leader or “Imperator” of AMORC became his son, Ralph Maxwell Lewis (1904-1987). When Ralph died, Gary L. Stewart, despite being only 34 years old, was elected Imperator with the support of Raymond Bernard, the powerful leader of the French-speaking branch. Stewart found himself in conflict with the Board of Directors, however, and in 1990 was replaced by Raymond Bernard’s son, Christian. After the 1990 crisis, two of Stewart’s supporters, Paul Walden and Ashley McFadden, established the Ancient Rosae Crucis (ARC), while Stewart himself founded a Confraternity of the Rose Cross. The elder Bernard, in turn, dissociated himself from AMORC and founded a number of separate organizations including CIRCES (International Committee for Charitable and Social Works), now presented as the humanitarian branch of the Sovereign Order of the Temple of Initiation, a Neo-Templar organization Bernard had created while still a leader of AMORC. Introvigne deems it fair to affirm that AMORC remains, by far, the largest international Rosicrucian organization, with hundreds of thousands of members, the figure of “six million”, often quoted, refers to the Order’s mailing list. Most AMORC members enrol in correspondence courses and follow the instructions included in the Order’s “monographs”.
For the first nine degrees, initiations may be self-conferred at home although they may also be received in a temple. For the tenth, eleventh and twelfth degrees, there are no initiations because the member at this stage is advanced enough to establish direct contact with the occult hierarchy. Before entering the nine degrees, each student goes through five introductory lessons and three “Atria” as a neophyte, learning – among other things – concepts like the structure of matter, the power of thought, Rosicrucian healing treatments, as well as karma and reincarnation. Additional information about these and other esoteric themes is offered during the course of the nine degrees process, usually completed in five or six years. Beyond the ninth degree, secret teachings include mystical techniques of concentration, meditation, visualization, and spiritual alchemy. AMORC teaches that, ideally, humans should reincarnate every 144 years or live to the age of 144, then die and reincarnate immediately.
The students’ main purpose is not to escape the cycle of reincarnations but rather to be received into the Great Wide Brotherhood thanks to a “cosmic initiation”. AMORC claims to be the descendant of a tradition dating back to ancient Egypt and Pharaoh Tutmosis III († 1450 B.C.). They also assert that there are documents that confirm this claim and that they are stored in the San Jose archives. Other teachings of the order concern Jesus Christ, who is regarded as a member of the Essene Brotherhood. He did not die on the cross but was saved from crucifixion and retired to a monastery on Mount Carmel. Additional teachings include Astrology, occult Anatomy, and the study of the esoteric meaning of numbers, sounds and geometrical shapes. AMORC maintains a very visible presence, thanks to its temples, publishing houses, and magazines in several countries.
Beyond the three largest organizations, several dozens of smaller Rosicrucian bodies are also active throughout the world. One of the most influential is the Fraternitas Rosicruciana Antiqua (FRA), founded in the 1920s in Latin America by Arnoldo Krumm-Heller (1879-1949)., who was once an associate of Aleister Crowley (1875-1947). Krumm-Heller managed to establish the largest Spanish- speaking Rosicrucian organization, with teachings sourced from Freemasonry, Theosophy, and several different systems of sex magic. This organisation split into several competing branches after Krumm-Heller’s death in 1949, none of them as large as the original organization had been before World War II. The influence of this organisation and Krumm-Heller relies on the role they played in the formation of the Gnostic Movement and the Gnostic Church founded in the 1950s in Mexico [by Samael Aun Weor (Víctor Manuel Gómez Rodríguez, 1917- 1977), a Colombian FRA member and a pupil of Krumm-Heller]. Even though it got divided into dozens of rival groups after the founder’s death, the Gnostic Movement founded by the Colombian esotericist still upholds the teachings and features of Krumm-Heller’s FRA. If we combine the membership of its branches, they run in the tens of thousands, and, despite it non-being “purely” Rosicrucian, this Gnostic movement – Introvigne argues – probably still needs to be included, alongside the Rosicrucian Fellowship, AMORC and the Lectorium Rosicrucianum, among the largest international bodies still claiming a Rosicrucian heritage in the 21st century.
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REFERENCE
Introvigne, M. 2006. Rosicrucianism III: 19th-20th Century In: W. J. Hanegraaff, ed. Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism. Leiden, London: Brill, pp.1018–1020.
First uploaded 23 May 2022