How to Study Magic by Sarah Lyons

Author:Sarah Lyons [Lyons, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Running Press
Published: 2022-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

THE ROSICRUCIANS (1614)

Like the Freemasons (whom we’ll discuss in a moment), the Rosicrucians technically began earlier than the nineteenth century, but I’m putting them in this part of the chapter because you mostly need to know about their impact on nineteenth-century occultism.

I don’t want to spend too much time on these guys because, at the risk of being mean, I find them kind of boring. However, you will undoubtedly see them pop up if you study any sort of nineteenth-century magic, so it’s good to be aware of them, even if just to know what not to pay much attention to.

It’s tough to pinpoint exactly when the Rosicrucians began as an organization. We know that there were a series of pamphlets published in the early 1600s that alleged the existence of a secret, ancient organization called the Rosicrucians. These people were said to be secret wizards who studied alchemy, Hermeticism, and science and influenced the world from behind the scenes. Over four hundred pamphlets were published about this group. However, it is almost 1,000 percent certain that this organization was completely made up. Europe was a chaotic and scary place in the seventeenth century, though, and the notion of a secret order of benevolent wizards was very appealing to people.

Because this idea was so exciting, people started to make the Rosicrucians a reality, kind of like how people started setting up secret vampire societies after Anne Rice books became popular in the 1980s and ’90s.

Rosicrucians use the language and tools of alchemy as metaphors for spiritual concepts. Their primary belief system can be seen as a blend of Hermeticism and Christianity. They would go on to influence Freemasonry’s ideas around initiation and ritual. Offshoots and orders within the Rosicrucians continue today, with some of the latest orders being created as recently as the 1980s.

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