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INTRODUCTION Rosicrucianism Is a Theosophy Advanced by an Invisible

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INTRODUCTION Rosicrucianism Is a Theosophy Advanced by an Invisible INTRODUCTION Rosicrucianism is a theosophy advanced by an invisible order of spir­ itual knights who in spreading Christian Hermeticism, Kabbalah, and Gnosis seek to enliven and to preserve the memory of Divine Wisdom, understood as a feminine flame of love called Sofia or Shekhinah, exoterically given as a fresh unfolded rose, yet, more akin to the blue fire of alchemy, the blue virgin. Rosicrucians have no organisation and there are no recognizable Rosicrucian individuals, but the order makes its presence known by leaving behind engram- matic writings in the genre of Hermetic-Platonic Christianity.1 The historical roots of Hermeticism is to be located in Ancient Egypt. Long before the rise of Christianity, Hermetic texts were struc­ tured around the belief that organisms contain sparks of a Divine mind unto which they each strive to attend. Things easily transform into others, thereby generating certain cyclical patterns, cycles that peri­ odically renew themselves on a cosmic scale. These transformations of life and death were enacted in the Hermetic Mysteries in Ancient Egypt through the gods Isis, Horus, and Osiris. In the Alexandrian period these myths were reshaped into Hermetic discourses on the transformations of the self with Thot, the scribal god. These dis­ courses were introduced in the west in 1474 when Marsilio Ficino translated the Hermetic Pimander from the Greek. The story of Chris­ tian Rosencreutz can be seen as a new version of these mysteries, specifically tempered by German Paracelsian philosophy on the lion of the darkest night, a biblical icon for how the higher self lies slum­ bering in consciousness.2 In this book, I develop the Rosicrucian theme from a Scandinavian perspective by linking selected historical events to scenarios of the emergence of European Rosicrucianism that have been advanced from other geographic angles. The Rosicrucian texts can be divided 1 One text that expands on this position is Paul Foster Case, The True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order, Weiser; York, ME, USA, 1985. Original edition in 1927, revised in 1937, 1953. 2 For the idea that Hermes Trismegistos and Christian Rosencreutz are "mystery- names" designed to meet slightly different ends see the preface by Joost R. Ritman in Carlos Gilly, Rosencreutz ab Europäische Phänomen (1995). 2 INTRODUCTION into three distinct epochs. In its first historical phase from about 1610 to 1620, Rosicrucianism emerged as a mixture of popular es- chatology and Paracelsian ideas that seemed to hold the promise of a fundamental change in Protestant culture, a fundamental social change to be sure, that never fully materialized. At the same time, early Rosicrucianism was characterized by resistance to the Counter- Reformation, urged on by the anonymous Rosicrucian writings and their call for a gathering of the reformers. The first pamphlet was published with a satirical text on Apollo and the seven wise men, being the seventy-seventh chapter of Trojano Boccalini's The General Reformation of the Whole Wide World. The call for reform was shrouded in reverence for Christian Rosencreutz, the German knight who had travelled in the Orient and whose grave from 1484 was described in the first Rosicrucian tract Fama Fraternitatis Roseae Cruris, published in 1614 at Kassel and adressed to all learned and to the governors of Europe. In a second phase, 1620-1660, Rosicrucianism was exploited to justify certain political causes; most notably, the Rosicrucian idea of a society of invisible agents in possession of higher spiritual knowl­ edge was absorbed into the clandestine cause for restoring the Stuarts to the British throne.3 In a third major phase, 1710-1740, Rosicrucian ideas were re­ vived in aristocratic circles to reinforce a somewhat different aim: to form a select spiritual elite in Europe through higher-grade Masonic initiation. As a self-contained fiction, Rosicrucianism offers the belief in a secret society that controls the ascent of the soul to the Divine essence through a carefully crafted hierarchy of insights, each level opening to some higher initiatory process of instruction. How this belief was placed in the society of the Enlightenment through Masonic and para-Masonic channels during the first half of the eighteenth cen­ tury is, however, a quite different story from how Rosicrucianism actually took root in Germany during the first decades of the sev­ enteenth century. While the first phase of Rosicrucianism was formed by radical Paracelsians, the second phase was right-wing, aristocratic, 3 It is uncontested that Rosicrucian rhetoric influenced Scottish Freemasonry by 1638; George Erskine, the former privy councellor to James VI and I, received an English translation of the Fama in 1639; David Lindsay Earl of Balcarres obtained a Scottish translation shortly thereafter. See Adam McLean, A Compendium on the Rosicrucian Vault, Hermetic Research Series no. 4; Edinburgh, 1985, pp. 1-17. .
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