The phenomenon known as Rosicrucianism has a complex history and a development that spans over five centuries. With its intriguing philosophy and symbolism, it has fascinated countless Esotericists and won’t fail to fascinate us in today’s episode, focused on the inception of the movement in the 17th century and its philosophical, symbolical underpinning.

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 Magic, Esotericism, Paganism, Shamanism and all things Occult.

Rosicrucianism has its origins in 1614 with a volume that appeared in Kassel, Germany, containing “Universal and General Reformation of the Whole Wide World,” the “Fama Fraternitatis,” “The Fame of the Fraternity of the Praiseworthy Order of the Rose-Cross” and also “A Short Response” signed by Adam Haslmayr.

In a new edition, published in 1615, the first item, a satirical extract translated from Traiano Boccalini’s Ragguagli di Parnasso, disappeared in favour of the “Confessio Fraternitatis,” (Confession of the Fraternity). The “Fama” was an indisputable success and was reprinted nine times through 1616, the year when a story entitled “The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz” appeared in Strasbourg. From the moment of their appearance, the two early manifestos and the novel “The Chemical Wedding” were well received across Europe.

However, these writings also encountered some criticism, as the authors of the Rosicrucian manifestos were accused of heresy, political agitation and/or diabolic pacts. Others attributed these mysterious writings to the alchemical tradition of Paracelsian Pansophy of the Hermetic currents of the Renaissance. Others again believed the source to be found in Brahmanism or even in Moses.

The aforementioned manifestos emerged from the “Learned and Christian Society” established by Johann Valentin Andreae in Tübingen in 1610. This was a small group comprised of friends of Andreae’s such as Christopher Christoph Besold and Tobias Hess with whom the Rosicrucian myth was constructed.

It’s likely that the Fama Fraternitatis and the Confessio resulted from the cooperation of several authors whereas the Chemical Wedding was written by Andreae alone.

In response to their historical time, this circle of friends deemed it necessary to return to the practice of Christian piety, detached from dogmatic orthodoxy and in accordance with the advancement of science and learning.

As Ronald Edighoffer explains The Fama, The Confessio, and The Chemical Wedding recalled a worldview based upon an analogical apprehension of God and of the world on the part of man based upon earlier esoteric sources and traditions in Western Esotericism.

The symbol of the rose parallels attributes similar to those of the lotus in East Asia. The lotus emerges on the surface of the earth mother while the mystic rose is an attribute of the Mater Dei, the Mother of God and of spiritualised matter.

According to the Zohar, the rose is the symbol of God’s presence in the world which will bloom again in messianic times.

The rose symbolizes the point of juncture, flowering between matter and divinity, symbolically placed at the centre of the cross that unites heaven and earth. As for the cross, John Dee in his “Monas Hieroglyphica,” the Hieroglyphic Monad, mentioned that this symbol can be seen as ternary and represents the Holy Trinity as much as the trinity of body, soul and spirit; that it is also quaternary, thus terrestrial and that it is also quinary, with the number five conjuring the sacred marriage of spirit and matter. Paracelsus, in his “Liber de resurrectiona et corporum glorificacione,” the book of “The Resurrection and Glorification of Bodies,” dated 1533, suggests that man, regenerated by the cross, acquires a spiritual body whose glorification is symbolized by the rose and leads to the transmutation in Christ, the Man-God.

Christian Rosenkreuz, founder of the Rosicrucians according to the Fama, is supposed to have died in 1484, though his mausoleum was not discovered until 1604.

Through his axiomata, he is said to have penetrated the secrets of divine mathematics; thanks to his knowledge of the Rotae Mundi, the wheels of the world. He is the universal man the axis of the cycles of renovation; and the book entitled “Proteus,” said to be in the library of the first Rosicrucians, evokes the theme of metamorphosis.

The Fama tells the story of Christian Rosenkreuz: his initiatic journey to the East, to Egypt and Morocco. The constitution of the Order of the Rose-Cross, the writing of their ‘secret and revealed philosophy’ which is a form of gnosis, and the miracles that can be worked thanks to their cosmosophy which is a pansophy, a form of natural Magic, a spiritualisation of matter, by means of which all things are ordered towards divinity.

The Rosicrucians’ wisdom is considered to be revealed for two main reasons. First, it is not the result of rational thinking and second, it is both knowledge and procreation. It is explained as an inner vision, a divine gift mediated through the mundus imaginalis, the imaginal world, the reason as to why the Fama mentions ‘the office of angels and spirits’ and evokes the elementary beings as intermediaries.

This philosophy is sourced from Hermeticism and Alchemy and can be examined as the philosophia perennis or the perennial philosophy. “Perennial” refers to the belief that it is a knowledge that has been perpetuated since the origins of humankind, and it is eclectic because it conciliates the divine revelation and its cosmic manifestations in a higher unity.

There’s also a significant value attributed to acquiring the language to communicate with the divine realms. Indeed, the Confessio states that the time has come to speak and to reveal the mysteries of the Adamic language, the primordial idiom, translucent as light, understood by the animals in paradise and that allowed Enoch to converse with angels.

Because the Rosicrucians already possess the knowledge of this language they claim to be able to go beyond the exoteric meaning of the Bible and give it a spiritual reading, so as to discover that the holy scriptures are quintessential to decipher the characters of the book of nature, that only a minority of people can truly read and understand.

Secrecy is also a condition of the relation with the sacred. Hermes Trismegistus says to Asclepius that ‘it is an impious thing to divulge to the masses a teaching filled with the divine majesty.’ and the epigraph of the Chemical Wedding recalls that pearls should not be cast before swine. The Rosicrucians’ secret is the possession of a gnosis that the Corpus Hermeticum defines as a gift from God.

According to the Chemical Wedding, that Johann Valentin Andreae admitted to having authored, the coming of a perfectly pure man, the ‘putissimus homo,’ also translatable as the highest thinking man, who appears on the earth in the last times. This being is not to be confused with Christ, whose redemptive sacrifice is believed to have already saved humanity and freed it from the original sin. The putissimus homo is also not the salvator microcosmi, the saviour of the microcosm that constitutes the human experience. This being is instead the servitor cosmi, meaning the liberator of the world, the total completed human being who will complete the redemptive work of Christ by practising “deliverance” interpreted as the Greek ‘maieutic;’ the birthing of nature, which Paul says in the Epistle to the Romans ‘has been groaning in travail up to now and waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.’

Edighoffer explains that this glorification of Nature to attain the work of redemption is interpreted as an alchemical opus: it is the Great Work, the effect of the double mystery of regeneration of the heiros gamos, the sacred marriage. Regeneration and heirogamy are seen as two salvific actions due to the intervention of Hermes or more precisely the spiritus Mercurius or Spirit of Mercury.

The mission of the servator mundi, the liberator of the world, is granted to the “Knights of the Golden Stone,” the symbol drawn on the invitation to the royal wedding that an angel brings to Christian Rosenkreuz, is an ideogram that was commented by John Dee in the Hieroglyphic Monad and symbolizes the sacred marriage between the material and the spiritual. It evokes the image of a mysterious character, the protagonist of this heirogamy, who manifests at a certain moment in the sight of the mortals and comes back periodically to guide humankind.

So this is it for this introductory video on Rosicrucianism. Thank you again, James Vitale, for reaching out and commissioning a video on this topic. It really helps this project.

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REFERENCE

Edighoffer, R. 2006. Rosicrucianism I: first half of the 17th century In: W. J. Hanegraaff, ed. Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism. Leiden, London: Brill, pp.1009–1014.

FURTHER READINGS

McIntosh, C. 1992. The Rose Cross and the Age of Reason: Eighteenth-Century Rosicrucianism in Central Europe and its Relationship to the Enlightenment. Leiden ; New York: Brill.

Yates, F. 2015. The Rosicrucian Enlightenment 2nd edition. Routledge.

First uploaded 21 Jan 2022