The Secret Teachings of All Ages · 158 of 236

The Second Postulate

Those Masonic brethren who have investigated the subject accept the historical existence of the "Brotherhood of the Rose Cross" but are divided concerning the origin of the Order. One group holds the society originated in mediæval Europe as an outgrowth of alchemical speculation. Robert Macoy, 33°, believes that Johann Valentin Andreæ, a German theologian, was the true founder, and he also believes it possible that this divine merely reformed and amplified an existing society which had been founded by Sir Henry Cornelius Agrippa. Some believe that Rosicrucianism represented the first European invasion of Buddhist and Brahmin culture. Still others hold the opinion that the "Society of the Rose Cross" was founded in Egypt during n the philosophic supremacy of that empire, and that it also perpetuated the Mysteries of ancient Persia and Chaldea.

Context

Hall is canvassing the standard nineteenth-century theories of Rosicrucian origin. Robert Macoy (1815-1895) was an influential American Masonic editor whose Worshipful Master's Assistant and General History of Freemasonry compiled Masonic and Rosicrucian lore. Johann Valentin Andreae (1586-1654), the Lutheran theologian, is the figure for whom we have the strongest case: he later acknowledged authorship of the Chymische Hochzeit (1616), and modern scholarship (Frances Yates, Carlos Gilly) accepts him as the principal author of the original Rosicrucian manifestoes, though as part of a Tübingen circle rather than alone. Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535), author of De Occulta Philosophia, is sometimes treated as a precursor but pre-dates the manifestoes by a century. The Buddhist/Brahmin and Egyptian-origin theories are later esoteric speculation.Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (1972); Carlos Gilly on Andreae's Tübingen circle.

In his Anacalypsis, Godfrey Higgins writes: "The Rosicrucians of Germany are quite ignorant of their origin; but, by tradition, they suppose themselves descendants of the ancient Egyptians, Chaldeans, Magi, and Gymnosophists." (The last was a name given by the followers of Alexander the Great to a caste of naked Wise Men whom they found meditating along the river banks in India.) The consensus among these factions is that the story of Father C.R.C., like the Masonic legend of Hiram Abiff, is an allegory and should not be considered literally. A similar problem has confronted students of the Bible, who have found not only difficult, but in the majority of cases impossible, their efforts to substantiate the historical interpretation of the Scriptures.

Insight

Godfrey Higgins's claim that the Rosicrucians descend from 'the ancient Egyptians, Chaldeans, Magi, and Gymnosophists' is the maximal esoteric-universalist reading. The Gymnosophists (Greek 'naked wise men') are the Indian ascetics encountered by Alexander the Great's army in 326 BCE; the most famous incident is the philosophical dialogue between Alexander and the gymnosophists recorded in Plutarch's Life of Alexander. The Roman-period writer Apollonius of Tyana (whom Hall covered at length in earlier chapters) made a famous pilgrimage to them, recorded in Philostratus. The line that the Rosicrucians descend from the gymnosophists is preserved as a kind of self-mythology in some seventeenth-century Rosicrucian texts; the historical evidence for any such transmission is essentially zero.Plutarch, Life of Alexander 64-65; Philostratus, Life of Apollonius III.

Admitting the existence of the Rosicrucians as a secret society with both philosophic and political ends, it is remarkable that an organization with members in all parts of Europe could maintain absolute secrecy throughout the centuries. Nevertheless, the "Brothers of the Rose Cross" were apparently able to accomplish this. A great number of scholars and philosophers, among them Sir Francis Bacon and Wolfgang von Goethe, have been suspected of affiliation with the Order, but their connection has not been established to the satisfaction of prosaic historians. Pseudo-Rosicrucians abounded, but the true members of the "Ancient and Secret Order of The Unknown Philosophers" have successfully lived up to their name; to this day they remain unknown.

Insight

Hall's claim that prominent figures like Bacon and Goethe were suspected Rosicrucians but no connection has been 'established to the satisfaction of prosaic historians' captures the structural problem with Rosicrucian scholarship. The order, if it existed, was secret by design; absence of documentation is consistent both with non-existence and with successful concealment. Yates's Rosicrucian Enlightenment (1972) argued for a wider intellectual current — the 'Rosicrucian invisible college' as a real network of Hermetic-Protestant thinkers around the 1614-1620 manifestoes — without claiming a formal initiatic society. Modern Rosicrucian historiography (Roland Edighoffer, Carlos Gilly) treats the manifestoes as a deliberate literary provocation that produced a real social effect — people sought out the order and a tradition formed around the texts — rather than as records of a pre-existing brotherhood.Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment; Edighoffer, Rose-Croix et société idéale.

During the Middle Ages a number of tracts appeared, purporting to be from the pens of Rosicrucians. Many of them, however, were spurious, being issued for their self-aggrandizement by unscrupulous persons who used the revered and magic name Rosicrucian in the hope of gaining religious or political power. This has greatly complicated