Magic and Mysticism by Arthur Versluis

Author:Arthur Versluis
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781461639879
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2013-06-26T16:00:00+00:00

PANSOPHY

Rosicrucianism is pansophic rather than theosophic. Pansophy, in contrast to theosophy, is universal, not specifically Christian, in its aims and sources. Pansophy emphasizes magic, alchemy, herbalism, healing, [Christian] cabala, and inquiry into nature more generally, and it incorporates much earlier “pagan” traditions like those attributed to Egypt and Persia. In many respects, pansophy resembles the aims and works of Giordano Bruno, the Nolan genius of the Renaissance who was burned at the stake for his troubles. Pansophy is the emergence of a universalist Western esotericism willing to draw on all previous esoteric movements, Christian or not, magical, alchemical, cabalistic, and gnostic, in order to form the basis for a new, universal culture like that imaged in Bacon’s New Atlantis or other utopias of the time. Although the word pansophy mostly vanishes from the European vocabulary after the seventeenth century, what the word signifies certainly did not disappear. A pansophic approach to esotericism represents an alternative to the emergent extreme rationalism and materialism that also gave birth to scientism, mechanism, and technologism.

Pansophy incorporates all the primary streams of esotericism, including, of course, various forms of magic—it is magico-mysticism. It centers on natural magic, or magia naturalis, but one also finds the emergence of various other shades of magic, often with Kabbalistic influence. We might recall that, although the Kabbalists we discuss above were almost exclusively interested in what we may call high mysticism, there is a long tradition of Kabbalism as the basis for magical practices including sorcery. And in fact most grimoires (magical handbooks) have a Hebrew basis for the angelic and demonic names and characteristics that they list for invocation or evocation. One also can see in such willingness to incorporate any form of knowledge whatever, including sorcery, the pansophic impetus behind the legend of Johannes Faust, who refused to allow any boundaries to his search for knowledge.

Like Faust, Rosicrucianism sought to penetrate the secrets of the cosmos, as evidenced by its intricate tables, diagrams, and illustrations. Among the first of these, predating the Rosicrucian furor but certainly influencing its later productions, was the Calendarium Naturale Magicum Perpetuum Profundissimam Rerum Secretissimarum Contemplationem [Perpetual Natural Magical Calendar] of Tycho Brahe, printed by Theodore de Bry in 1582. Here we have a massive compendium of magical knowledge, including the names and seals or sigils of angels in Hebrew and Latin, magic squares, planetary correspondences, and much else. This compilation is of special importance for us because it reveals the far-flung syncretic origins of the pansophic impulse, which later emerged in almost endless detail in the Geheime Figuren [Secret Figures] of the Rosicrucians.

The Geheime Figuren der Rosenkreuzer, a series of extraordinarily complex illustrations, was published at Altona in 1785-1788. It was probably preceded by and certainly followed by other versions, including a French edition, and in all cases is replete with examples of the effort to map universal knowledge not only physical, but also metaphysical. There are a number of such manuscripts with various versions of these illustrations, chiefly under the title Physica, Metaphysica, et Hyperphysica, D.

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