Chapter 2 No.2

Historical Notices of the Rosicrucians.

So mysterious a sect were the Rosicrucians, and so involved in doubt and obscurity are most of their movements, practices and opinions, that nearly everything connected with them has been denied or doubted at one time or another by those who have written about them. Dr. Mackay says: "Many have denied the existence of such a personage as Rosencreutz, and have fixed the origin of this sect at a much later epoch. The first dawning of it, they say, is to be found in the theories of Paracelsus and the dreams of Dr. Dee, who, without intending it, became the actual, though never the recognised founders of the Rosicrucian philosophy. It is now difficult, and indeed impossible to determine whether Dee and Paracelsus obtained their ideas from the then obscure and unknown Rosicrucians, or whether the Rosicrucians did but follow and improve upon them. Certain it is, that their existence was never suspected till the year 1605, when they began to excite attention in Germany. No sooner were their doctrines promulgated, than all the visionaries, Paracelsists, and alchymists, flocked around their standard, and vaunted Rosencreutz as the new regenerator of the human race." According to Mayer, a celebrated physician of the times, who published a report of the tenets and ordinances of the new fraternity at Cologne in the year 1615, they asserted in the first place that the meditations of their founders surpassed everything that had ever been imagined since the creation of the world, without even excepting the revelations of the Deity; that they were destined to accomplish the general peace and regeneration of man before the end of the world arrived; that they possessed all wisdom and piety in a supreme degree; that they possessed all the graces of nature, and could distribute them among the rest of mankind according to their pleasure; that they were subject to neither hunger, nor thirst, nor disease, nor old age, nor to any other inconvenience of nature; that they knew by inspiration, and at the first glance, every one who was worthy to be admitted into their society; that they had the same knowledge then which they would have possessed if they had lived from the beginning of the world, and had been always acquiring it; that they had a volume in which they could read all that ever was or ever would be written in other books till the end of time; that they could force to, and retain in their service the most powerful spirits and demons; that by the virtue of their songs, they could attract pearls and precious stones from the depths of the sea or the bowels of the earth; that God had covered them with a thick cloud, by means of which they could shelter themselves from the malignity of their enemies, and that they could thus render themselves invisible from all eyes; that the first eight brethren of the Rosie-Cross had power to cure all maladies; that by means of the fraternity, the triple diadem of the Pope would be reduced into dust; that they only admitted two sacraments, with the ceremonies of the Primitive Church, renewed by them: that they recognised the Fourth Monarchy and the Emperor of the Romans as their Chief, and the Chief of all Christians; that they would provide him with more gold, their treasures being inexhaustible, than the King of Spain had ever drawn from the golden regions of Eastern and Western India.

Things went on pretty quietly for some time, converts being made with ease in Germany, but only with difficulty in other parts. In 1623, however, the brethren suddenly made their appearance in Paris, and the inhabitants of the city were surprised on the 3rd of March to find placarded on the walls a manifesto to this effect:-"We, the deputies of the principal college of the brethren of the Rosie Cross, have taken up our abode, visible and invisible, in this city, by the grace of the Most High, towards whom are turned the hearts of the just. We show and teach without any books or symbols whatever, and we speak all sorts of languages in the countries wherein we deign to dwell, to draw mankind, our fellows, from error and to save them from death."

Whether this was a mere joke on the part of some of the wits of the day, it is certain that it created a very wide-spread sensation, and no little wonder and alarm, particularly amongst the clergy. Very soon pamphlets in opposition, and intended to warn the faithful, began to make their appearance. The earliest was called "A History of the Frightful Compacts entered into between the Devil and the Pretended Invisibles, with their Damnable Instructions, the Deplorable Ruin of their Disciples, and their Miserable End." This was followed by another of a far more ambitious character, pretending to ability to explain all the peculiarities and mysteries of the strange intruders. It was called "An examination of the New Cabala of the Brethren of the Rosie-Cross, who have lately come to reside in the city of Paris, with the History of their Manners, the Wonders worked by them, and many other particulars."

As the books sold and circulated the sensation and alarm in the breasts of the people largely increased, approaching almost to a kind of panic. Ridicule and laugh as some would, it was impossible to disguise the fact that a vast number of the population went in bodily fear of this mysterious sect, whose members they had never seen. It was believed that the Rosicrucians could transport themselves from place to place with the rapidity almost of thought, and that they took delight in cheating and tormenting unhappy citizens, especially such as had sinned against the laws of morality. Then very naturally came the wildest and most unlikely stories, which, as is usual with such things, in spite of all their folly, were soon propagated far and wide, and increased the general alarm.

An innkeeper declared that a mysterious stranger entered his inn, regaled himself on the best of everything, and suddenly vanished in a cloud when the reckoning was presented. Another was patronised by a similar stranger, who lived upon the choicest fare and drank the best wines of the house for a week, and paid him with a handful of new gold coins, which turned into slates the following morning. It was also reported that several persons on awakening in the middle of the night found individuals in their bedchambers, who suddenly became invisible, though still palpable when the alarm was raised. Such was the consternation in Paris, that every man who could not give a satisfactory account of himself was in danger of being pelted to death; and quiet citizens slept with loaded guns at their bedside, to take vengeance upon any Rosicrucian who might violate the sanctity of their chambers. No man or woman was considered safe; the female sex especially were supposed to be in danger, for it was implicitly believed that no bolts, locks or bars could keep out would be intruders, and it was frequently being reported that young women in the middle of the night found strange men of surpassing beauty in their bedrooms, who vanished the instant any attempt was made to arouse the inmates of the house. In other quarters it was reported that people most unexpectedly found heaps of gold in their houses, not having the slightest idea from whence they came; the feelings and emotions thus excited were consequently most conflicting, no man knowing whether his ghostly visitant might be the harbinger of good or evil.

While the general alarm was at its height, another mysterious placard appeared, which said:-"If any one desires to see the brethren of the Rose-Cross from curiosity only, he will never communicate with us. But if his will really induces him to inscribe his name in the register of our brotherhood, we, who can judge of the thoughts of all men, will convince him of the truth of our promises. For this reason we do not publish to the world the place of our abode. Thought alone, in unison with the sincere will of those who desire to know us, is sufficient to make us known to them, and them to us."

The imposition thus perpetrated upon the credulity of the people had but a comparatively short life in Paris, a deal of controversy was engendered between those who regarded the whole affair as a stupid hoax, and those whose superstitious fears made them think there was truth in it, and the efforts made by its disciples to defend their theories overshot the mark, and exposed the fallacies of that which they were intended to support. The police were called upon the scene to try and trace out and arrest the authors of the troublesome placards, and the Church took up the moral and theological aspect of the sensation, and issued pamphlets which professed to explain the whole as the production of some disciples of Luther, who were sent out to promulgate enmity and opposition to the Pope. The Abbé Gaultier, a Jesuit, distinguished himself in this direction, and informed the public that the very name of the disciples of the sect proved they were heretics; a cross surmounted by a rose being the heraldic device of the arch-heretic Luther. Another writer named Garasse, declared they were nothing but a set of drunken impostors; and that their name was derived from the garland of roses, in the form of a cross, hung over the tables of taverns in Germany as the emblem of secrecy, and from whence was derived the common saying, when one man communicated a secret to another, that it was said, "under the rose." Other explanations were also freely offered, which we have not space to describe, but which may be reached by the aid of the learned works given in our list of authorities.

The charges of evil connections brought against the Rosicrucians were repudiated by those people with energy and determination; they affirmed in the most positive manner that they had nothing to do with magic, and that they held no intercourse whatever with the devil. They declared, on the contrary, that they were faithful followers of the true God, that they had already lived more than a hundred years, and expected to live many hundred more, and that God conferred upon them perfect happiness, and as a reward for their piety and service gave them the wonderful knowledge they were possessed of. They declared that they did not get their name from a cross of roses, but from Christian Rosencreutz, their founder. When charged with drunkenness, they said that they did not know what thirst was, and that they were altogether proof against the temptations of the most attractive food. They professed the greatest indignation perhaps at the charge of interfering with the honour of virtuous women, and maintained most positively that the very first vow they took was one of chastity, and that any of them violating that oath, would be deprived at once of all the advantages he possessed, and be subject to hunger, thirst, sorrow, disease and death like other men. Witchcraft and sorcery they also most warmly repudiated; the existence of incubi and succubi they said was a pure invention of their enemies, that man "was not surrounded by enemies like these, but by myriads of beautiful and beneficent beings, all anxious to do him service. The sylphs of the air, the undines of the water, the gnomes of the earth, and the salamanders of the fire were man's friends, and desired nothing so much as that men should purge themselves of all uncleanness, and thus be enabled to see and converse with them. They possessed great power, and were unrestrained by the barriers of space, or the obstructions of matter. But man was in one respect their superior. He had an immortal soul, and they had not. They might, however, become sharers in man's immortality if they could inspire one of that race with the passion of love towards them. Hence it was the constant endeavour of the female spirits to captivate the admiration of men, and of the male gnomes, sylphs, salamanders, and undines to be beloved by a woman. The object of this passion, in returning their love, imparted a portion of that celestial fire, the soul; and from that time forth the beloved became equal to the lover, and both, when their allotted course was run, entered together into the mansions of felicity. These spirits, they said, watched constantly over mankind by night and day. Dreams, omens, and presentiments were all their work, and the means by which they gave warning of the approach of danger. But though so well inclined to befriend man for their own sake, the want of a soul rendered them at times capricious and revengeful; they took offence at slight causes, and heaped injuries instead of benefits on the heads of those who extinguished the light of reason that was in them by gluttony, debauchery, and other appetites of the body."[3] Great as was the excitement produced in the French capital by these placards, pamphlets and reports, it lasted after all but a very few months. The accumulating absurdities became too much, even for the most superstitious, and their fears were overcome by that sense of the ridiculous which speedily manifested itself. Instead of trembling as before, men laughed and derided, and the detection, arrest and summary punishment of a number of swindlers who tried to pass off lumps of gilded brass as pure gold made by the processes of alchemy, aided by a smartly written exposure of the follies of the sect by Gabriel Naudé, soon drove the whole thing clean off the French territory.

* * *