Rosicrucianism from Its Origins to the Early 18Th Century

CHAPTER TWO ROSICRUCIANISM FROM ITS ORIGINS TO THE EARLY 18TH CENTURY In order to understand the 18th-century Rosicrucian revival it is necessary to know something of the origins and early history of Rosicrucianism. This ground has already been covered many times,1 but it is worth covering it again here in broad outline as a prelude to my main investigation. The Rosicrucian legend was born in the early 17th century in the uneasy period before religious tensions in Central Europe erupted into the Thirty Years' War. The Lutheran Reformation of a century earlier had finally shat tered the religious unity of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. On the other hand, as the historian Geoffrey Parker has observed, the Reformation had not produced the spiritual renewal that its advocates had hoped for.2 In the prevailing atmosphere of political and religious tension and spiritual malaise, many people turned, in their dismay, to the old millenarian dream of a new age. This way of thinking, dating back to the writings of the 12th-cen tury Calabrian abbot Joachim of Fiore, had surfaced at various times in the intervening centuries, giving rise to movements of the kind described by Nor man Cohn in his Pursuit of the Millennium3 and by Marjorie Reeves in her Joachim ofFiore and the Prophetic Future.4 Joachim and his followers saw history as unfolding in a series of three ages, corresponding to the three per sons of the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in that order. They believed that hitherto they had been living in the Age of the Son, but that the Age of the Spirit was at hand. In the meantime there would be a period of purgation presided over by the Anti-Christ. When the new age would begin was debat able, and Joachim's arithmetic was manipulated to produce many different 1 Sec for example: Will-Erich Peuckert, Das Rosenkreuz (reprint, Berlin, Erich Schmidt, 1973); Hans Schick, DÛS ältere Rosenkreuzertum (Berlin, Nordland Verlag, 1943; second edition, 1980); Frances Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972); and Christopher Mcintosh, The Rosicrucians (first published as The Rosy Cross Unveiled, Wellingborough, TTiorsons, 1980; re-issued in revised form as The Rosicrucians, 1987). 2 Professor Parker addressed this question in his special lecture, "The First Century of the Reformation: Success or Failure?", delivered at Oxford on 23 January 1987. 3 Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium (London, Seeker and Warburg, 1957; paper back, London, Paladin, 1970). 4 Marjorie Reeves, Joachim ofFiore and the Prophetic Future (London, SPCK, 1976). 24 ROSICRUCIANISM FROM ITS ORIGINS possible dates, but there was a wide expectation in Germany that the new age would begin some time in the early years of the 17th century. These millenarian expectations went hand in hand with an esoteric view point that drew on a variety of sources including Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, the Hermetic tradition, Kabbalah and alchemy and was represented by the writings of such men as Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, Jacob Boehme and Heinrich Khunrath. As RJ.W. Evans remarks: Occult undertakings were inseparable from a religious standpoint close to the mysticism of some sixteenth-century heterodoxy, and the occult rejection of a rational approach to the world often stood in alliance with a spiritual rejection of both brands of established religion, the Protestant and the Roman Catholic. That held especially true in German lands, where the Renaissance magical tradition of Trithemius, Agrippa, and Paracelsus was steeped in Neoplatonism and intimately linked with the mystical experience of men like Valentine Weigel.5 This esoteric gnosis (using the term in its wider sense) was soon to be chal lenged by the advance of an increasingly mechanistic science, but in the early 17th century it was still vital enough to provide a powerful source of inspira tion, capable of transcending religious barriers and offering a vision of a so ciety nourished by ancient wisdom while advancing fearlessly into the future. Given the vitality of this gnosis in Germany and the fact that the German lands were the main theatre of sectarian conflict, it was natural that many Germans who hoped for a better age should express their vision in terms of the esoteric tradition. Such were the conditions out of which grew the phenome non known as Rosicrucianism, the history of whose emergence is briefly as follows. In 1614 there was published at Kassel in Hesse a curious text of anonymous authorship entitled the Fama Fraternitatis dess Löblichen Ordens des Rosen- kreutzes,6 which had evidently already been circulating in manuscript form. The Fama described a fraternity founded by one "C.R.C." or "C.Ros.C." (it was assumed that these letters stood for "Christian Rosenkreutz"), a German who in his youth had travelled to the Arab world and there studied science and the magical arts. On his return to Germany he had founded the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross, whose members devoted themselves to healing the sick and to spreading wisdom, but always working incognito. When the founder died his place of burial was kept secret, but recently, says the Fama, the brethren have discovered the vault containing his body along with various books and arti- 5 RJ.W. Evans, Rudolf II and his World (Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 197. 6 Most conveniently available in: Johann Valentin Andreae, Fama Fraternitatis I Confessio Fraternitatis I Chymische Hochzeit Christian Rosenkreutz, introduced and edited by Richard van Dülmen (Stuttgart, Calwer Verlag, 1973). .

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