The Secret Teachings of All Ages · 187 of 236

Title Page of 1616 Edition of Chymische Hochzeit: Christi...

From Rosencreutz' Chemical Marriage.

The most remarkable of all the publications involved in the Rosicrucian controversy is that of The Chemical Marriage, published in Strasbourg. This work, which is very rare, should be reproduced in exact facsimile to provide students with the opportunity of examining the actual text for the various forms of cipher employed. Probably no other volume in the history or literature created such a profound disturbance as this unpretentious little book. Immediately following its publication the purpose for which the volume was intended became the subject of popular speculation. It was both attacked and defended by theologians and philosophers alike, but when the various contending elements are simmered down the mysteries surrounding the book remain unsolved. That its author was a man of exceptional learning was admitted, and it is noteworthy that those minds which possessed the deepest understanding of Nature's mysteries were among those profoundly impressed by the contents of The Chemical Marriage.

Insight

The Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosencreutz (Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz), published in Strasbourg in 1616, is the third of the three founding Rosicrucian texts and the only one Andreae publicly acknowledged authoring. He called it a ludibrium — a joke or amusement — in his autobiography, though he wrote it as an elaborate alchemical romance over seven days, drawing on the Aurora Consurgens, Splendor Solis, and the Chymische Hochzeit's own internal logic of the union of king and queen as the unification of opposites in the Great Work. The book was profoundly influential despite Andreae's apparent disavowal: it shaped Goethe's Faust, the modern Tarot's structure of seven days, and the entire genre of allegorical alchemical narrative. Modern scholarship treats it as a serious work of literary mysticism that Andreae downplayed for his own theological and career reasons.Andreae, Chymische Hochzeit (1616), ed. Richard van Dülmen; John Warwick Montgomery, Cross and Crucible.

stately and inspired music. For nearly half an hour no one spoke. Then amidst a great sound the door of the dining hall swung open and thousands of lighted tapers held by invisible hands entered. These were followed by the two pages lighting the beautiful Virgo Lucifera seated on a self-moving throne. The white-and-gold-robed Virgin then rose and announced that to prevent the admission of unworthy persons to the mystical wedding a set of scales would be erected the following day upon which each guest would be weighed to determine his integrity. Those unwilling to undergo this ordeal she stated should remain in the dining hall. She then withdrew, but many of the tapers stayed to accompany the guests to their quarters for the night.

Insight

The image of Virgo Lucifera — the radiant Virgin who enters with thousands of self-borne tapers and announces that each guest will be weighed in the balances of integrity — is one of the most striking moments of the Hochzeit and one of the cleaner cases of feminine divine personification in seventeenth-century Christian mysticism. She is at once Sapientia (the divine Wisdom of Proverbs 8 and the Wisdom literature), Sophia in the Boehmean-theosophical sense (the eternal feminine principle in the godhead), and Beatrice (Dante's guide through Paradise). The weighing of guests on the moral scale belongs to the Egyptian psychostasia (weighing of the heart against the feather of Maat) and to the Christian Last Judgment iconography; Andreae is gathering these traditions into a single ceremonial moment.Andreae, Chymische Hochzeit; Dante, Paradiso; Book of the Dead 125.

Most of those present were presumptuous enough to believe that they could be safety weighed, but nine--including C.R.C.--felt their shortcomings so deeply that they feared the outcome and remained in the hall while the others were led away to their sleeping chambers. These nine were bound with ropes and left alone in darkness. C.R.C. then dreamed that he saw many men suspended over the earth by threads, and among them flew an aged man who, cutting here and there a thread, caused many to fall to earth. Those who in arrogance had soared to lofty heights accordingly fell a greater distance and sustained more serious injury than the more humble ones who, falling but a short distance, often landed without mishap. Considering this dream to be a good omen, C.R.C. related it to a companion, continuing in discourse with him until dawn.

Insight

C.R.C.'s dream of men suspended over the earth by threads — the aged man flying among them cutting threads, those who soared highest falling hardest while the humble fall little distance — is a moment of remarkable clarity in the Hochzeit. The image is Job 4:19 ('how much less in them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, which are crushed before the moth'), Ecclesiastes 12:6 ('or ever the silver cord be loosed'), and the Sufi metaphor of the soul as a thread held by God all at once. The moral — that those who climb highest fall hardest, that humility is the protection against the cutting — is one of the simpler teachings of the work, before the elaborate alchemical drama begins. The Hochzeit uses the dream to mark C.R.C. as one of the nine who recognize they are not yet ready to be weighed.Andreae, Chymische Hochzeit; Ecclesiastes 12:6.