Forbidden Faith: The Gnostic Legacy from the Gospels to the Da Vinci Code by Richard Smoley

Author:Richard Smoley [Smoley, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-01-20T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

Rosicrucianism and the Great Lodges

“The history of the world,” wrote the novelist Ishmael Reed, “is the history of warfare between secret societies.”

A fascinating statement, although an unprovable one. If these societies are really secret, how can we know anything about them, much less the influence they have had over history?

And yet there are secret societies, and they occasionally make an appearance on the stage of world events. Among the most famous were the Rosicrucians, an elusive order of adepts that caused a brief but intense furor among the savants of Europe in the early seventeenth century.

That is, if the Rosicrucians ever really existed—a subject that remains a matter of debate. We know next to nothing substantial about them. Much of what we do know comes from two short treatises that began to circulate in manuscript form around 1610 and were published in 1614, in western Germany. They are entitled the Fama Fraternitatis (The Rumor of the Brotherhood) and the Confessio Fraternitatis (The Confession of the Brotherhood). They were anonymously published, and we don’t know who wrote them.

Nevertheless, the two Rosicrucian manifestoes created a myth that has exercised an intense allure among spiritual seekers right up to the present. They tell the story of a man named Christian Rosenkreutz (literally “Rose Cross”), who was born in Germany in 1378. Although of noble birth, Rosenkreutz was poor and was early in life apprenticed to a man named “Brother P.A.L.,” who was determined to visit the Holy Land.

Brother P.A.L. took the young Christian Rosenkreutz with him on his pilgrimage, but died en route in Cyprus, leaving his apprentice to go on without him. Christian Rosenkreutz arrived in Damascus at the age of sixteen, where he learned Arabic and translated an enigmatic text known only as “the Book M.” into “good Latin.” From Damascus he went to Egypt and then on to Fez, in Morocco, where he was initiated into the arts of magic and Kabbalah. As the Fama puts it, “Of these of Fez he often did confess that their Magia was not altogether pure, and also that their Cabala was defiled with their religion; but notwithstanding he knew how to make good use of the same, and found still more better grounds [sic] for his faith, altogether agreeable with the harmony of the world.”¹

After two years, C.R. (the Rosicrucian manifestoes often refer to him by his initials) left Fez for Spain, where he attempted to show the learned men something of his knowledge. “But it was to them a laughing matter; and being a new thing unto them, they feared that their great name should be lessened, if they should now again begin to learn and acknowledge their many years errors [sic].” Since “the same song was sung unto him by other nations,” C.R. made his way back to his native Germany, where he assembled a collection of eight adepts, “all bachelors and of vowed virginity,” and formed the Fraternity of the Rose Cross.

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