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CHAPTER I

THE BEGINNINGS OF ROSICRUCIANISM

ROSICRUCIANISM CAME INTO public notice early in the seventeenth century. The initial Rosicrucian manifesto, Fama Fraternitatis, was first issued as a manuscript and circulated among German occultists about the year 1610. It elicited several responses prior to the publication of the first printed edition at Cassel in 1614. In 1615 there was another printing, this time at Frankfurt-am-Main, and the same year and place seem to have seen the appearance of the second manifesto, Confessio Fraternitatis. Dutch translations of both books came out in 1615, and by 1617 four editions of the German version had been published at Frankfurt. Others followed in the years immediately succeeding.

The Fama and the Confessio tell the story of the Order and its mysterious Founder and set forth its principles and philosophy. These tiny volumes aroused great interest. Alchemists and Qabalists, magicians and astrologers, kept the German presses busy with letters and essays addressed to the mysterious Brothers. For six or seven years the Rosicrucian question engaged the minds and pens of European occultists.

In 1616 was published another little book, The Chymical Marriage of Christian Rosenkreutz. To it may be traced the supposition that the Order was founded by a man named Christian Rosenkreutz or by one who adopted this name as a mystical title. Years later, the authorship of The Chymical Marriage was acknowledged by Johann Valentine Andreae, who said it was a revision of an alchemical romance he had written in his youth, long before the publication of the Fama and the Confessio.

The style of this work is altogether different from that of the two manifestoes. Andreae seems to have revamped The Chymical Marriage in the hope of profiting by the excitement stirred up by the two manifestoes. He was interested in schemes for universal reformation and may have planned to establish a secret society of his own. Like many others of that period, he was familiar with the literature of alchemy, and his romance shows that he had more than a smattering of occult learning. Yet the assertion that Andreae founded Rosicrucianism has no support in fact. Arthur Edward Waite has dealt adequately with this question in his Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross.¹ We share his conviction that Andreae had no part in the authorship of either the Fama or the Confessio. Toward the close of his life Andreae ridiculed Rosicrucianism, and he probably never understood its real objectives. His book, however, roused great interest and fixed in the uncritical occult mind the mistaken notion that the Order was founded by a man named Christian Rosenkreutz. Even this name has been transformed by the carelessness that seems to be characteristic of a certain type of professed occultist. So little do some who write glibly about Rosicrucianism know of its origins that one writer tells his Theosophical readers the Founder's name was Christian Rosencrans.

In 1652 Thomas Vaughan edited and published an English translation of the two manifestoes. In his preface, Vaughan declares that the translation is the work of an “unknown hand,” and says, “The copy was communicated to me by a gentleman more learned than myself.” This version was reprinted by Arthur Edward Waite in his Real History of the Rosicrucians, published in 1887. The same version, duly accredited to Waite's history, was printed in a manual issued in 1927 for members of the Societas Rosicruciana in America. By 1937 the Rosicrucian Fellowship at Oceanside, California, made belated acknowledgment of the existence of the manifestoes in a series of magazine articles.

Possibly these manifestoes also may have been included in the miscellany of things Rosicrucian and otherwise printed at Quakertown, Pennsylvania, by Dr. R. Swinburne Clymer. Dr. Clymer offers voluminous documentary evidence that he is Grand Master of the Rosicrucian Order established by Pascal Beverly Randolph in 1856. Such as it is, few will seek to dispute this claim, for Randolph's titles to serious consideration may be judged by his own words. In Eulis (edition of 1874, page 47) he writes: “Very nearly all which I have given as Rosicrucian originated in my own soul.”

Among various publications of the society designated by the initials AMORC, there was a pamphlet entitled Fama Fraternitatis, but it was a strictly modern production, having no connection with the original manifesto apart from the title.

The Rosicrucian name flourishes because few persons who are attracted by the magic name and fame of the Order have any knowledge of the first published utterances of the Fraternity. Thus, it seems wise to reprint the English translation again. The manifestoes are short. Their anonymous authors needed but few words to say their say, but no person properly qualified to understand these little books could have mistaken their true purport. On the other hand, they were so written that, as they put it, they would not “move gross wits.” Nor have they, from that day to this. Minds duly and truly prepared can grasp what is hidden behind their story of the Order, and to help serious students of occultism to such understanding is the purpose of our work.

Our title is intended to intimate that the Fama and the Confessio were written by members of an actual fraternity that conceals itself from all who are incompetent to share its aims and participate in its work. This fraternity is not an organized society like the Freemasons. One may not join it by making application for membership, paying entrance fees and dues, and passing through ceremonies. The Rosicrucian Order is like the old definition of the city of Boston: it is a state of mind. One becomes a Rosicrucian: one does not join the Rosicrucians. The manifestoes make this clear, as will be shown hereafter.

The Order is designated as being invisible by the manifestoes themselves. It does not come in corporate form before the world, because by its very nature it cannot. True Rosicrucians know one another, nevertheless. Their means of recognition cannot be counterfeited nor betrayed, for these tokens are more subtle than the signs and passwords of ordinary secret societies.

Let none suppose that because the Rosicrucian Order is invisible it is composed of discarnate human intelligences. Neither are its members supermen inhabiting a region vaguely designated by the term “higher planes.” The Order is invisible because it has no external organization. It is not composed of invisible beings. Its members are men and women incarnate on earth in physical bodies. They are invisible to ordinary eyes because the minds behind those eyes cannot recognize the marks of a true Rosicrucian.

To say this is, of course, to repudiate any and all pretensions of societies claiming to be direct historical successors to the authors of the original Rosicrucian manifestoes. From what is written in the Fama and the Confessio, the only possible conclusion is that every claim to historical descent, every assertion that this or that association is “the original Order,” must be judged invalid.

Probably some of these pretensions are made in good faith. There is reason to believe that societies calling themselves Rosicrucian were organized shortly after the publication of the manifestoes, and it is possible that they have continued in some form to this day.

Here and there in America and Europe are societies working according to the Rosicrucian pattern explained in this book. Their members do not believe the societies, as such, to be the Rosicrucian Order. Having learned from the manifestoes the distinguishing marks of a Rosicrucian, these persons know that insofar as they exhibit these marks they are links in the chain of the invisible Order. They understand also that the membership of even the societies that falsely claim historic connection may include some who are true Rosicrucians, just as there are other persons in various parts of the world who merit this designation even though they may never have heard of the Order. How this can be will, we trust, become evident to the unprejudiced reader who follows carefully the argument of this book.

These conclusions are not offered as unsupported opinions. They are presented as being the inevitable consequences of unequivocal statements in the Fama and the Confessio. Unless one knows the contents of these initial announcements of the Rosicrucian Order, he can form no clear notion of what Rosicrucianism really is. Thus, the first step in our exposition is to present the manifestoes themselves. We use the translation published by Thomas Vaughan, because careful comparison with early German editions shows the substantial accuracy of this “work of an unknown hand.” The spelling has been modernized, but we have made no other alterations.

^l Arthur Edward Waite, Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross (London: William Rider & Son, 1924).

CHAPTER X

ROSICRUCIAN RELIGION AND POLITICS

IF THE “FAMA” AND “CONFESSIO Fraternitatis” are to be taken in their literal sense, the publication of these documents will not add new lustre to Rosicrucian reputations. We are accustomed to regard the adepts of the Rose-Cross as beings of sublime elevation and preternatural physical powers, masters of Nature, monarchs of the intellectual world, illuminated by a relative omniscience, and absolutely exalted above all weakness and all prejudice. We imagine them to be “holding no form of creed, but contemplating all” from the solitary grandeur of the Absolute, and invested with the “sublime sorrow of the ages as of the lone ocean.” But here in their own acknowledged manifestoes they avow themselves a mere theosophical offshoot of the Lutheran heresy, acknowledging the spiritual supremacy of a temporal prince, and calling the pope Antichrist…. All persons possessed of such positive convictions we justifiably regard as fanatics, and after due and deliberate consideration of the Rosicrucian manifestoes, we do not feel able to make an exception in favour of this Fraternity…. In other words, we find them intemperate in their language, rabid in their religious prejudices, and, instead of towering giant-like above the intellectual average of their age, we see them buffeted by the same passions and identified with all the opinions of the men by whom they were environed. The voice which addresses us behind the mystical mask of the Rose-Cross does not come from an intellectual throne, erected on the pinnacles of high thinking and surrounded by the serene and sunny atmosphere of a far-sighted tolerance; it comes from the very heart of the vexation and unprofitable strife of sects, and it utters the war-cry of extermination. The scales fall from our eyes, the romance vanishes; we find ourselves in the presence of some Germans of the period, not of “the mystic citizens of the eternal kingdom.”¹

Thus, did Arthur Edward Waite write of the manifestoes in his Real History of the Rosicrucians. Thirty-seven years after this was written, Mr. Waite elaborated the same theme in The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross, saying:

The Confessio is a scurrilous and blatant document on the subject of Latin Christianity. One would think that its author had reflected on a remark of the Fama concerning the original “Brethren and Fathers,” who if they had lived in the “clear light” of the post-Lutheran period would have handled the Pope more roughly. And thus reflecting it was concluded, one might think also, that the time was ripe for illuminati of the third circle to give samples of their mettle, seeing that-according to the Advertisement-it was now quite safe to call the Pope Antichrist, and to say what they would do with him, if only he came into their hands. The valour of Alsatia and Whitefriars broke out accordingly in the terminology of Colonel Blood. The Pope was found guilty of blasphemies against Jesus Christ; it was proclaimed, in hot-gospel derision of merely historical fact, that—“after many chafings in secret of pious persons”—he had been “cast down from his seat by a great onset” and nobly “trodden under foot.” But as he was enthroned actually at St. Peter's, or holding royal court in the Vatican, hearing nothing of these gutter-born ravings, the aspirations of the adepti went further, and they expressed three hopes for the future: (a) that his utter destruction was in reserve; (b) that he would be “torn in pieces with nails”; and (c) that a “final groan” would end his “asinine braying.” It may have been the manner born of the Holy Mysteries, as understood by the German mind in the early seventeenth century, and it may have breathed all the loving spirit of our highly “illuminated,” “loving” and “Christian Father”; but to us at the present day it seems redolent of stables which have not been built in Bethlehem and in which Christ was never born.²

So, without explaining how with such an opinion of its beginnings he still believes in a valid mystery of the Rosy Cross, concerning which he throws out dark hints in the manner of one who might say much if only he dared, Mr. Waite states his case. But with the actual texts before us, and remembering that Mr. Waite himself asserts that these manifestoes can yield nothing of value if taken literally, let us consider the matter.

It may seem to some readers of these pages that Mr. Waite's own choice of language is not beyond reproach, and if so, the reproach is the more merited in these days than in those when the manifestoes appeared. It was a time of plain speaking, and in polemical writing authors permitted themselves liberties that today would offend good taste.

Yet on the hypothesis I have advanced, that the mysteries of the Rosy Cross were and are survivals of Christian Gnosticism combined with Hermeticism, is there much to excite surprise if some bitterness of expression found its way into the manifestoes? Should we expect fair words from the spiritual and perhaps lineal descendents of the Waldenses and Albigenses? With the memory of the wholesale massacres ordered by Innocent III and the relentless hounding of the Albigenses by the Inquisition, could one expect tolerance for Rome and its representatives?

The manifestoes make the issue clear enough. There is a great gulf fixed between the fundamental stand of the Roman Church and that taken by all who rely on the Inner Light. The Roman Church stands for an outer and traditional authority. It concentrates the power to express the mind of Christ into a single man, the Pope, whereas those who are responsible for the Fama and Confessio found the Christ Consciousness to be a potential for every member of humanity.

On the other hand, we must admit that the Confessio specifically says: “We execrate the pope.” This, however, is by no means the same as declaring enmity against the Christian Church, even though Rome may so interpret it. The papacy is the outward and visible sign of an attitude of mind that Jesus himself vigorously condemned. This attitude is one of reliance on human traditions and authority, claiming for themselves the right to speak in the name of God. It is the attitude of mind that led to the Inquisition, to the burning of Savonarola, to the horror of St. Bartholomew's. Let me hasten to add that it is the attitude that led to the burning of Servetus by Calvin, to the witchcraft persecutions in Protestant New England, and to the intolerance shown toward Quakers and Baptists by the Puritans and Pilgrims of Massachusetts. The papacy is merely the oldest and strongest manifestation of this attitude, which encourages priestcraft and feeds the fires of intolerance.

Perhaps the strongest words on this subject were written by one whom thousands look upon as a great master of wisdom. In a letter to A.P. Sinnett, written in 1851 by Khoot Hoomi Lal Singh (the Master K.H.), we read:

And now, after making due allowance for evils that are natural and cannot be avoided-and so few are they that I challenge the whole host of Western metaphysicians to call them evils or to trace them directly to an independent cause-I will point out the greatest, the chief cause of nearly two-thirds of the evils that pursue humanity ever since that cause became a power. It is religion under whatever form and in whatever nation. It is the sacerdotal caste, the priesthood and the churches. It is in those illusions that man looks upon as sacred, that he has to search out the source of that multitude of evils which is the great curse of humanity and that almost overwhelms mankind. Ignorance created Gods and cunning took advantage of opportunity. Look at India and look at Christendom and Islam, at Judaism and Fetichism. It is priestly imposture that rendered these Gods so terrible to man; it is religion that makes of him the selfish bigot, the fanatic that hates all mankind out of his own sect without rendering him any better or more moral for it. It is belief in God and Gods that makes two-thirds of humanity the slaves of a handful of those who deceive them under the false pretence of saving them. Is not man ever ready to commit any kind of evil if told that his God or gods demand the crime?; voluntary victim of an illusionary God, the abject slave of his crafty ministers. The Irish, Italian and Slavonian peasant will starve himself and see his family starving and naked to feed and clothe his padre and pope. For two thousand years India groaned under the weight of caste, Brahmins alone feeding on the fat of the land, and to-day the followers of Christ and those of Mahomet are cutting each other's throats in the names of and for the greater glory of their respective myths. Remember the sum of human misery will never be diminished unto that day when the better portion of humanity destroys in the name of Truth, morality, and universal charity, the altars of these false gods.³

I do not offer this because of any supposed authority possessed by its writer. It does clearly set forth the attitude of one who is regarded by many as being high in the councils of the True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order. Furthermore, it likewise expresses an idea that the Roman Church invariably brands as heresy. This idea is that religious creeds and beliefs are, after all, confessions of ignorance. The Roman Church demands belief and proclaims itself the custodian of sacred mysteries. So do all other exoteric religions, with the exception of Buddhism.

Gnostic Christianity opposes itself to this false notion. It declares that man may know the Supreme Reality. Thus, we find the Fama saying, “We confess to have the knowledge of Jesus Christ (as the same now in these last days, and chiefly in Germany, most pure and clear is professed.)” A careless reader, like Mr. Waite, may interpret this as being a confession of Lutheran Christianity, if he will, but that one word “knowledge,” in a cryptic and Gnostic text like this, is our clue to the real meaning.

Remember, these manifestoes were written by persons adept in cryptic writing and were addressed to others like them. Thus, they are “never so much to be suspected as when they speak most openly.” The Lutheran Church in 1614 was just as bigoted and domineering as its Roman predecessor. Through the agency of one of its pastors at Gorlitz, it had actively persecuted Jacob Boehme for publishing his Aurora, and Boehme had been forbidden to write anything else. But to discerning eyes that word knowledge must have conveyed volumes. The exoteric Church has always demanded belief, has always imposed creeds. The true Gnostic Church has always pointed out the Way to Knowledge.

The very first paragraph of the Fama speaks of this knowledge of Jesus Christ as something to be perfected by a series of stages of unfoldment. The Confessio also says: “It must not be expected that new comers shall attain all at once all our weighty secrets. They must proceed step by step from the smaller to the greater, and must not be retarded by difficulties.” In speaking of the Rosicrucian philosophy the Fama expressly states that “truth is peaceable, brief, and always like herself in all things, and especially accorded by with jesus in omni parte and all members.” So the great Rosicrucian secret is seen to be nothing other than knowledge of Christ.

Now the opposite of this is the Scarlet Woman described in the Apocalypse, the great harlot who sits on many waters. Fanatic Protestantism of the kind Mr. Waite decries has erred in supposing that the Scarlet Woman is a symbol to be applied to no church but that of Rome. The Beast and the Woman were, in the minds of the early Christians, symbols of pagan Rome, the oppressor, but the meaning of the symbols must now be extended. The Beast is materialism, and the Woman is what may be called “Churchianity.” The harlot sits on many waters because water represents the psychic element in human nature and particularly the subconscious storehouse of traditions, superstitions, and other holdovers from the ignorance of the past. The scarlet beast on which she sits is the uncontrolled animal nature. The many waters are the appearance of multiplicity, which seems to deny the fundamental unity of Being. They refer also to the conflicting opinions that are the causes of all the cruelties we may trace to man's insane religious beliefs. Thus, the woman is called Babylon, and this gives us a sure clue to the underlying meaning of the symbol. It takes us back to the Old Testament story of the building of the Tower of Babel and the confusion of tongues. The essence of this Babylonian confusion is the error that anything sound in the way of philosophy or religion can be built on the foundation of the unregenerate human being's ordinary sense experience. So long as man accepts the uncorrected evidence of his physical senses as the final evidence, he is at the mercy of the fashioners of creeds.

Therefore the word Mystery is written on the woman's forehead; for priestcraft, pagan or Christian, Roman or Protestant, depends for its continuance upon the lie that the mysteries of the heavenly kingdom may not be known. Wherever we find the emphasis on creeds, wherever we find the laity misled into the belief that the arcana of the heavenly wisdom are beyond the limits of human knowledge, there we have the Scarlet Woman. The Church of Rome is, as I have said, the oldest and most powerful institution claiming final authority over the lives, consciences, and future destiny of human beings; but wherever a church organization imposes creeds and conceals from man his essential divinity and his power to advance step by step in the knowledge of Jesus Christ, that organization must be regarded as partaking of the nature of Babylon.

Opposed to the Beast and the Woman, according to Revelation 17:14 is the Lamb, and we have seen that the central figure of the Fama allegory is also the Lamb. The Lamb is destined to conquer, because he is Lord of Lords, and King of Kings. The Christos is eternally the ruling principle, which because of its omnipotence must ultimately overcome all that seems to oppose it.

This victory of the Christos over the forces of mystery and confusion is to be brought about by the awakening of a higher consciousness in man. It is what George Fox called the Inner Light. It is what the Confessio means when it asks: “Wherefore should we not freely acquiesce in the only truth than seek through so many windings and labyrinths, if only it had pleased God to lighten unto us the Sixth Candelabrum?” This Sixth Candelabrum is direct interior perception of the indwelling presence of the Christ. The perception itself is arrived at by the function of a center in the brain, called sometimes the Third Eye, sometimes the Transparent Jewel, and sometimes the Philosophers' Stone.

When this organ puts us in touch with the true Self, the Christos, then we are freed from fear of hunger, poverty, diseases, and age. When it gives us the knowledge that was in the mind of Christ Jesus, it makes us, like the writers of the Fama and Confessio, consciously immortal, so that we live as if we had lived from the beginning of the world and should continue to live to the end there of. At the same time it releases us from the fear and uncertainty concerning after-death states, which is the stock-in-trade of those who seek to control humanity by the wiles of priestcraft. By the functioning of the Third Eye we are brought into communication with other centers of the Life Power, no matter how distant their bodies may be from ours. By it we see into the Liber Mundi, the Book of the World, and learn from it the simple truth, agreeing always with itself.

This higher consciousness is called the Sixth Candelabrum, partly because it is a stage of the unfoldment of human consciousness taking us beyond the limits of ordinary sensation, which is represented by the number 5, because of the usual rough classification of the senses. Yet there is another reason for this particular term. The number 6 in the Qabalah, is particularly connected with the idea of the Christos, or Divine Son, sometimes called the King; that is, the Anointed One, or Messiah. And as the number 6 is also the number of the letter Vav in the Hebrew alphabet; this letter, which is the third letter of IHVH, Jehovah, is also identified with the Royal Son.

Now the name of this letter means “nail,” and we have seen that in the allegory of the vault of Brother C.R., the nail stands for the revelation of truth through intuition. Thus, we have no difficulty with what the Confessio has to say about the pope's being torn to pieces with nails. One would think the strange terminology might have struck a spark of understanding in the mind of one so well versed in the letter of the Qabalah as is Mr. Waite. What is meant is simply that the domination of man's thought by “Churchianity” will come to an end when intuitive knowledge of the One Reality takes the place of creedal bondage. Even the phrase “ass's braying,” crude as it seems, refers to something more esoteric. It will be remembered that Apuleius wrote of one transformed into an ass, who was restored to human form by eating roses. The ass is an ancient symbol of the bondage of materialism and of the ignorance of those who try to build their house of life on judgments from outward appearances. The Church of Rome and all the other forms of exoteric religion condemned in the passage I have quoted from K.H.'s letter keep man in bondage by frightening him, by denying the possibility of the interior illumination, by taking away the keys of knowledge. Thus, all such exoteric religious formalism (including the falsest of all false religions, materialistic agnosticism), whatever names it takes or whatever claims it makes to ancient authority, is actually the embodiment of the spirit of Antichrist, if the plain meaning of the New Testament is not utterly ignored.

Fanatic I may be, by Mr. Waite's definition, but I trust it has been made clear that I have no special antagonism to Rome and none at all toward the members of the Roman communion. I do not forget that even the Pope was once a lay member of that communion. I do not doubt that many a Pope and many a priest believes sincerely enough in all the doctrines of the church he serves. These men are victims of an idea, of a system, and the idea and system have just as poisonous an influence on persons outside the Roman communion. It is against the system that the Fama and the Confessio direct their shafts of satire. An authoritarian Church or an authoritarian “science” cannot permit freedom of conscience and uses force when it can, or whatever other weapons offer when brute force cannot be employed, to suppress that freedom. Thus, among the enemies of Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry today, we find exoteric materialism not less active than exoteric “Churchianity,” and for the same reasons.

Turning now to the political aspect of Rosicrucianism, we find the Fama saying: “In Politia we acknowledge the Roman Empire and Quartam Monarchium for our Christian head, albeit we know what alterations be at hand, and would fain impart the same with all our hearts to other godly learned men.” Similarly, the Confessio says: “We offer to the chief head of the Roman Empire our prayers, secrets, and great treasures of gold.”

The choice of words is significant. The Invisible Order, writing in 1614, acknowledges the existing political order. So might one today acknowledge the undoubted fact of the present Republican or Democratic administration in the United States and acknowledge the particular forms of social and economic procedure now in use. Acknowledge too the necessity of good citizenship and obedience to laws that are actually in operation, for he who understands the spirit of true Rosicrucianism must ever be a good citizen.

Yet with all this, such a person {like the Brethren who wrote the manifestoes we are considering) may know very definitely what alterations are at hand. Like Abraham Lincoln, who would not help a slave to escape while the institution of slavery continued to have legal sanction but who worked steadily toward the destruction of the institution itself, those who acknowledged the Roman Empire and the Quartam Monarchium foresaw the coming of the “strong child of Europe.” They knew, long before the Pilgrims had landed at Plymouth, what changes were at hand, and they were active in bringing about those changes. Thus, when the “strong child of Europe” had attained his growth on the American Continent, it was through the channel of Freemasonry that essentially Rosicrucian ideas were made the first principles of the “New Order of the Ages” begun by the American Declaration of Independence. Thus, it is not surprising to find that the symbolism of the Great Seal of the United States includes one detail that any Qabalist would represent by the letters ABRC, of which the first two, AB, spell the Hebrew noun meaning “father”; so that ABRC may be read in English, “Father R.C.”⁴

The first paragraph of the Confessio makes it evident that the authors of the manifestoes observed prudent reserve. It says: “We know certainly that what we here keep secret we shall in the future thunder forth with uplifted voice.” One hundred and sixty years later this promise was fulfilled by the Declaration of Independence, in which many of the Rosicrucian principles veiled by the careful phrases of the Fama and Confessio were set forth as self-evident truths. And as has been said, the manifestoes make it perfectly clear that their authors recognized that there is sometimes the need for the use of force in establishing a better social order.

A man who knows truth is willing to lay down his life for it. Revolution is deplorable, but there are times when it is necessary. If ballots fail, bullets must sometimes be employed. When those who, like the learned of Spain mentioned in the Fama, have profited personally by error and injustice, refuse to permit the establishment of better conditions and use their political power and wealth to keep their fellowmen in bondage, it is the right and duty of the oppressed to use force to overthrow tyranny. Yet all who feel impelled to employ force to gain their ends must be willing to accept the consequences of defeat. As Benjamin Franklin said: “Gentlemen, we must all hang together, or we shall all hang separately.” The spectacle of a person who advocates revolution endeavoring to evade punishment by appealing to technicalities of laws he is trying to destroy is one we see from time to time. Such persons have no cause for complaint. Revolution is always treason, unless it succeeds, and they who choose this dangerous weapon hastily, when peaceful means seem to them too slow, have little claim on our sympathy.

That pope who asserted that Rosicrucians and Freemasons are enemies of religious and legitimate authority was not altogether in the wrong. His was the voice of traditional order, always raised against those who believe in man's essential freedom. Today the world as a whole has little respect for religious authority. Yet there are many otherwise reasonable people who have too much respect for social authority merely because it happens to be legitimate. Few would now maintain the thesis that slavery is anything but an evil, yet for thousands of years human slavery was perfectly legitimate, and a man's control of his human “property” was maintained by the laws of so-called “civilized” countries.

Today there are other kinds of slavery, just as evil and just as “legitimate” as was chattel slavery in Georgia in 1850. If the persons whom the laws of the land place in positions of unjust, though perfectly legal, mastery over the lives and destinies of thousands of their fellow creatures will not themselves give up that mastery, it must be taken away from them-peaceably, if possible. The New Order of the Ages is imminent, and nothing can prevent its complete external expression. Because it is true now, as it was in 1614, that the Rosicrucian philosophy that proclaims the essential principles of that New Order has in it “much of Theology and Medicine, but little of Jurisprudence,” it becomes more and more evident that jurisprudence, as it affects the constitution of the social and economic order, must be thoroughly reformed.

The True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order foresaw that reformation and proclaimed it, under prudent reserves, in 1614. Today, as in 1776, its “Trumpet shall resound with full voice and no prevarications of meaning.” Behind the outer veil of human governments there is at work a force that is rapidly bringing to a crisis a great movement for the liberation of humanity. The first principle of that movement is the spiritual value and the spiritual equality of all human beings. This being perceived, it becomes evident that neither superior mentality nor wealth nor social position nor anything else gives any person the right to control the life and destiny of even the least of his fellowmen.

Does this mean that all men shall be permitted to do just as they please? Certainly not. It will be, also, many a long year before disease and crime are wiped out. For generations to come, in all probability, society must protect itself against evils that are largely of its own making. But there is a tremendous difference between social control of dangerous nonconformists and the purely personal power, extending even to the power of life and death, that our present faulty jurisprudence confers on private individuals. It is a hopeful sign of the times that many thoughtful persons are beginning to realize that even criminals are people, so that the emphasis is shifting from punishment to reformation and from the consideration of ways and means to fight the criminal classes to the search for remedies for the social maladjustments of which crime and criminals are but symptoms.

Rosicrucian religion, then, is Christian Gnosticism. It is opposed to organized religious authority because that authority imposes creeds, plays on the fears and hopes of believers, and in Christendom founds itself on the essential ignobility and worthlessness of man. Rosicrucian religion begins by proclaiming man's nobleness and worth and proceeds to declare its knowledge of the Christos. It describes that knowledge as being progressive and as leading eventually to conscious immortality. It offers no creed, establishes no set proceeding. “None of the posterity shall be constrained to wear one certain kind of habit.” It sums itself up in the word R.C., that is, in compassion and tenderness for all mankind; and it says that its religious philosophy agrees in all parts with “Jesus,” that is, with “The nature of Reality is to liberate,” which is the literal significance of the name Jesus.

In full agreement with this religious basis, the political philosophy of Rosicrucianism has always been on the side of freedom. It acknowledges the existing social order and offers to it its prayers, secrets, and treasures. That the offer is usually rejected is beside the point, for it should be understood that the Invisible Order is not less compassionate in its attitude toward those whose lot it is to be the instruments of oppression than it is to those who are cast for the role of the oppressed. The Pope it execrates is not the man who sits in Peter's seat. It is the office-of which the man is certainly as much a victim as the most ignorant peasant who lets his family starve that he may contribute his quota of Peter's pence. Similarly, a true Rosicrucian can feel no hatred for a political tyrant. For when “R.C.” is truly one's mark and character, one has insight enough to perceive that the political tyrants of this world are among its most tragic and pitiable figures.

Thus, in politics, we find the Invisible Order lending all of its influence to promote the cause of human liberty. Sometimes that influence works through revolutionary channels, as it did in the United States in 1776 and a little later in France and South America. Whenever possible, however, the Order seeks to gain its objectives by peaceful means, and in our times it is actively engaged in an endeavor to end war altogether.

In a word, the religion of Rosicrucianism is a quest for the Inner Light of the indwelling Christos, and its political aspiration is an extension to society of the words of Aristotle: “Freedom is obedience to self-formulated rules.”

^l Arthur Edward Waite, The Real History of the Rosicrucians.

² Arthur Edward Waite, The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross (London: William Rider&. Son, 1924).

³ The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, Co., 1924).

⁴ See Paul Foster Case, The Great Seal of the United States for further details.

CHAPTER XI

THE GRADES OF THE ORDER

THE CONFESSIO SAYS: “This Fraternity…is divided into degrees,” but neither of the original Rosicrucian manifestoes gives any details as to the system of Grades. Tradition, however, has it that the Grades are ten in number. Every Grade corresponds to one of the Sephiroth, or numeral emanations, represented by the circles on the Qabalistic Tree of Life.

The Grades ascend the Tree from the tenth circle to the first. Hence, progress in the Invisible Order is approach to Unity, and this is also approach to true self-knowledge, inasmuch as the highest Grade corresponds to the first circle, Kether (the Crown), the seat of Yekhidah (the Indivisible), or the macrocosmic I AM, which is the same as the Hindu Atman and is probably closely related to the Khu, or spiritual soul, of the ancient Egyptians. Yekhidah, in other words, is the essential Man whose true nobleness and worth it is the purpose of Rosicrucianism to reveal.

The ten Grades are divided into three classes or Orders. The First Order comprises the Grades corresponding to the circles from 10 to 7 inclusive. The Second Order has three Grades, corresponding to circles 6, 5, and 4. The Third Order includes the Grades corresponding to circles 3, 2, and 1.

Every Grade has a number, represented by an equation, in which the first figure represents the number of steps taken by the aspirant in his journey toward Unity, and the second number of the equation indicates the Sephirah to which the Grade corresponds. Thus, the Grade of Zelator is represented by the equation 1 = 10, because it is the first Grade of the Order, and corresponds to the tenth circle on the Tree of Life. Tradition gives these Grades the Latin names shown in Table 4 on page 156

Besides these ten Grades attributed to the Tree of Life, some societies working according to the Rosicrucian tradition include a preparatory Grade, that of Neophyte, 0 = 0. In this Grade are given certain preliminary obligations, together with practical work that prepares the Neophyte to enter the progressive training represented by the ten Grades corresponding to the ten circles on the Tree.

Table 4. Rosicrucian Grades

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This entire scheme will be understood better by reference to the frontispiece. There it will be seen that from each circle certain paths of the Tree of Life lead upward to the circles above. In the ceremonial work of societies following this pattern and in the actual work of physical and spiritual transformation corresponding to these ceremonies the paths of the Tree are traversed in reverse order.

Thus, it happens that entry into a given Grade does not always give one access to all the paths proceeding upward from that Grade. This will be understood better by reference to Figure 7. There it will be seen that the paths numbered 32, 31, and 29 all lead upward from the tenth circle. But when one has become a Zelator, the only one of these three that is open is the 32d path, because that is the path leading to the next Grade, the Grade of Theoricus.

When the Grade of Theoricus has been reached, the 31st path, from Kingdom to Splendor, is open, and also the 30th path, from Foundation to Splendor. Not until these two have been traversed, however, is the 29th path, that leading from Kingdom to Victory, open to the advancing aspirant, but when he has traversed this, he may pass through the 28th path, from Foundation to Victory, and through the 27th, from Splendor to Victory.

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Figure 7. Tree of Life Diagram showing the Grades of Initiation

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Figure 8. The Pattern on the Trestleboard illustrates the Ten Divine Emanations of the Cabalistic Tree of Life or ten aspects of God. It is also an evolutionary picture of man's destiny in unfolding his conscious awareness of the creator. Paul Case received these statements from the teacher who guides the work of Builders of the Adytum. The term trestleboard is used in Freemasonry to illustrate the plans of the Great Architect of the Universe, who is God. The term pattern indicates that ordered plan.

What this means is that although one enters the tenth Sephirah at the beginning of his Rosicrucian experience, he must have had the knowledge conferred in the Grade of Theoricus before he may enter either of the two paths leading upward to the Grade of Practicus. It is as if the doors to these paths were locked, and as if the keys were kept in rooms represented by circles 9 and 8. The keys to paths 31 and 30 are kept in circle 9; those to paths 29 and 28 are kept in circles 8 and 7, respectively; and the keys to paths 27 and 26 are also kept in circle 7, but the latter may not be used until the aspirant is ready to advance into the Second Order.

According to Qabalistic doctrine, the root of the Tree of Life is in Kether, and its fruit is in Malkuth, the Kingdom; that is, the Tree hangs upside down, like the Yggdrasil of Norse mythology and the sacred tree mentioned in the Bhagavad-Gita. The tenth Sephirah, the Kingdom, is the lowest or outermost manifestation of the Life Power and corresponds to the physical plane.

Consequently, the Rosicrucian scheme of initiation begins with this Sephirah and works upward toward Kether, the Crown, in the reverse order of the paths on the Tree of Life. This is in accordance with the notion that we must begin where we are, and that the path of initiation is a Way of Return. Hence, the Rosicrucian manifestoes speak of the amendment of philosophy as being a restoration rather than an innovation.

Every one of the circles on the Tree of Life has many occult meanings; so has every one of the connecting paths. The meanings of the circles are all developed from the abstract ideas of number. The meanings of the connecting paths are related to the occult significance of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. In the diagram the Hebrew letter in each path is the one pertaining to that path, and near each letter is a small arrow pointing to a number. This number is that of the Tarot Key corresponding to the letter. The other number in each path is its number in the scheme of the Thirty-two Paths of Wisdom. Of these thirty-two paths, the first ten are the circles on the Tree of Life. The eleventh to the thirty-second are the channels connecting the circles. Thus, the eleventh path is that of Aleph and of Key 0 in Tarot, and the thirty-second path is that of the letter Tav and Key 21.

In this book it is impossible to enter into a detailed analysis of the Tarot Keys. I have dealt with these at greater length in my book The Tarot: A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages and in courses on Tarot. Figure 8, The Pattern on the Trestleboard, should be studied as it will be referred to in connection with the Tarot Keys. The reproduction of the major trumps of Tarot used in this book are from the designs used by the Builders of the Adytum, one of the several societies working ceremonially according to the scheme of Grades explained hereafter.¹

The main thing to bear in mind in approaching this explanation of the Rosicrucian Grades is that every path on the Tree of Life corresponds to some particular mode of human consciousness. In the old Qabalistic books, the descriptions of these paths are very brief and are couched in language intentionally cryptic. Yet these descriptions are of vital importance, because they refer to mental states that are present in the life of every human being. Sometimes they are latent, sometimes active, but they are always part of the makeup of every man and woman.

The old Rosicrucian and Qabalistic training, therefore, is of immediate interest to you, because it not only deals with all the elements of your consciousness but also aims to bring each element into the best possible manifestation and into harmonious combination with all the others. No single book can exhaust this tremendous subject, but it is hoped that the following chapters will shed light on the Path of Return that leads to that priceless attainment, true self-knowledge.

¹ Courses on Tarot form part of the curriculum of instruction issued by Builders of the Adytum (B.O.T.A.), 5101 North Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, California 90042. The Tarot Keys used in this book may be obtained through Builders of the Adytum at the above address.