How far does our participation in the Rosicrucian tradition influence our historical understanding of it? Can we be both initiate and academic? In the following paper, we investigate scholarly approaches for the initiate’s ongoing historical studies.
Introduction: Scholar-Initiate (sympathetic empiricism)
This paper looks at what possible links might have existed between the original seventeenth-century Rosicrucian manifestoes and later eighteenth-century Rosicrucianism. However, it opens first by addressing the fundamental question of methodology. Indeed, in many ways, the following paper is one focused rather more on a discussion surrounding academic methodologies and the problematic issue of Rosicrucian readings of Rosicrucian materials, than on any in-depth discussion in the specifics of our question. This has been done in order to try and provide a vehicle of sorts through which we might address the more fundamental questions surrounding apparent scholarly assertions made by those who inhabit both the role of the initiate and academic, and the extent by which they can be valued. Can someone actively participating in a tradition be qualified to give an objective appraisal of it historically or sociologically? What is the relationship between scholarship and personal experience? Can, or should, the esoteric scholar go ‘native,’ as it were?
This is not a question of mere bias. If we were, for instance, through our academic anxieties, to begin our historical studies by denying outright the intellectual validity of the Rose Cross and it’s marvelous, fantastical claims to antiquity, prophecy and intrinsic mystery as portrayed in the primary texts themselves, thereby adopting the positivist-reductionist or empirical-historical stance of explaining the links by merely external means i:e, political, economic or environmental – as many formal academics do, is this indicative of the kind of academic ‘neuroticism,’ and intellectual insincerity renowned esoteric academic, and exception to the rule, Arthur Versluis claims it to be? [1] If so, what does this mean then for our research or academic esoteric research in general? In order to be objective religious historians, shouldn’t we, in the interest of scholarly diligence, abandon a text’s more outlandish claims? Shouldn’t we psychoanalyse Rosenkreuz?
Methodology
To begin with, I would suggest not. There is clear evidence to show Versluis’ argument is a valid one, and if ours is to be a productive study, we must not abandon the texts. Neither scholarly nor initiatic approaches can abandon the texts. In the case of this paper, I intend to illustrate (in a small way) that certain vitally important historical links within the seventeenth and eighteenth-century Rosicrucian traditions would be altogether lost if our approach to the texts did not utilise the implementation of what Versluis called ‘sympathetic empiricism’. [2] By which I mean, a middle-position of empathy expressed in an empirical framework – a phenomenological position that those who would identify as ‘scholar-initiates’ naturally inhabit.
Furthermore, whilst this paper is not an esoteric investigation in the style of Rudolph Steiner (1861-1925) or René Guénon (1886-1951), nor is it a wholly emic or etic one either. [3] Instead, I suggest we champion the ideas of Versluis, and that our investigations begin fully engaged in the kind of systematic dialectical application further advocated by the renowned scholar of esotericism Wouter J. Hanegraaff. [4] We should always present an open discussion, and one which has considerable emphasis placed on achieving what Hanegraaff describes as a dialectically formed middle-position of empathy (emic) expressed in an empirical (etic) framework, which thereby might enable us to reply to the call of Arthur Versluis’ for sympathetic ‘neutrality’. [5] Wholly accessible to the scholar-initiate (that is, the academic participating in the intiatic moment) this ‘neutrality’ can provide their assertions with a certain analytical advantage over purely historicist examinations of the tradition and its fundamental texts. In our case, the two primary texts – Fama Fraternitatis (1614) and Confessio Fraternitatis (1615).
Such an approach puts us at an advantage in our studies as we adopt the claims of the manifestoes themselves as important empirical points of reference; something that must remain of the utmost importance in esoteric academic study. We must continue to respect the claims of the tradition as having been understood as a true living Revelation, as a theology that must be understood on its own terms and by way of its subsequent contrasts in later historical developments – in our case what we know of the later eighteenth-century Rosicrucian tradition. This should be achieved with direct reference to the primary sources, again in our case in contrast with the relevant eighteenth-century texts, such as Samuel Richter, Die wahrhaffte und vollkommene Beschreibung des philosophischen Steins der Bruderschaft aus dem Orden des Gulden-und Rosenkreutzes denen Filiis Doctrinae zum Besten publiciret (1710), Georg von Welling, Opus Mago-Cabalisticum et Theologicum (1719), and the Gold-und Rosenkreuz manual, Eingang zur ersten Classe des preisswürdigsten Ordens vom Goldenen Rosen Creutze nach der letzten Haupt-und Reformations-Convention as reproduced in J.J Bode’s Starke Erweise (1788).
Any analytical conclusions we make should be understood by way of how these links would have been understood in their relevant historical context, again in our case – the seventeenth and eighteenth-century Rosicrucian traditions from which we are drawing them from, and not solely through the artificial sun of modern-day reductionist or ideological fashions. [6] Indeed, the advantages of this are evident: (1) we gain an understanding of the ‘metaphysical and cosmological self-understanding’ of both the seventeenth and eighteenth-century Rosicrucian traditions, (2) we do not distort or misread our primary sources, and we faithfully present a sympathetic yet objective account of the tradition. [7] Given the Rosicrucian tradition’s ephemeral, clandestine and epistolary nature, such methodological exchanges should provide a suitably fertile ground for successful analysis.
To this I might add, that while it is true I personally do not adopt the path of scholars such as Rudolph Steiner, as displayed in his The Secret Stream: Christian Rosenkreutz and Rosicrucianism: Selected Lectures and Writings (2000), I believe it fundamentally important to fully recognise the multifaceted nature of Rosicrucianism as a religious construct, as he did, and as, indeed, we should all do in the study of the Western esotericism. [8]
Critical Textual & Hermeneutic Analysis of Rosicrucian Documents
Hanegraaff states ‘we should give attention to all dimensions which may be distinguished in the religious traditions generally (social, ritual, experiential, doctrinal, mythic, ethical, and symbolic)’. [9] In order to suitably identify these internal dimensions of Rosicrucianism within the textual evidence, the critical textual methodology of the likes of scholar Jerome J. MacGann in his The Beauty of Inflections: Literary Investigations in the Historical Method and Theory (1985), might be beneficial.
Indeed, the need for critical textual analysis in the study of any western esoteric tradition, such as Rosicrucianism, is evidenced by its almost universal requirement for a heightened state in the initiate’s capacity to receive a spiritually hermeneutical engagement in the attainment of symbolic knowledge. If we are to inhabit then the role of both academic and initiate, we must meet this requirement sympathetically.
Gnosticism, Hermeticism, and Neoplatonism are all fundamentally concerned with varying levels of increased hermeneutical knowledge. Through different initiatory and visionary hermeneutical approaches, the esoteric traditions teach us to turn inward towards an experience of transcendence and transmutation. Out of our knowledge of the sympathies and antipathies of the universe, particular ontological hermeneutics might help achieve transcendental enlightenment that transforms not just the text but the reader and the entire world that surrounds them both. The universe is a ‘book’ to be ‘read; God is known by his signature. We can decipher the symbols which point towards God. Therefore as we emerge from Plato’s hermeneutical cave, we can traverse a multitude of metaphors and symbols that help illuminate the levels of knowledge available to the human soul. In short, then, the sympathetic empiricism of the scholar-initiate must critically help the ‘logos become flesh’, whether within the Temple or the Academy.
In our case, my intention is to illustrate the links between the original seventeenth-century Rosicrucian manifestoes and later eighteenth-century Rosicrucianism, what MacGann would, therefore, describe, in a rather technical way, as ‘a finished programme of historicist textual criticism’ – a literary critique. [10] This is because as Roland Edighoffer points out: ‘Rosicrucianism has become concrete in texts- at first in manifestos and a novel, then in a very large number of pseudepigraphic writings’. [11] Rosicrucian history is almost always documentary or textually based, the written and printed word represent seventeenth-century Rosicrucianism almost in its entirety; therefore, notwithstanding the overall visionary hermeneutics of Western esotericism, textual criticism is a fundamental scholarly component in the sympathetic historical Rosicrucian study. Moreover, I would propose it fundamental to the studies of the scholar-initiate that they strike the proper methodological balance of textual and hermeneutic criticism, non-reductionist historicist contextualisation, and sympathetic neutrality.
Esoteric historicist textual criticism?
Clearly, our studies should recognise that the historical situation is, of course, important, yet we should also recognise ‘reductionist’ historicism that does not seek to understand the subject on its own terms as inconsistent on the basis that, as Thomas J. J. Alttizer states, it represents ‘a total immersion in historical time, an immersion that is totally isolated from any meaning or reality that might lie beyond it’. [12] Historicism, a form of literary theory whose goal is to understand intellectual history through literature, and literature through its cultural context, struggles with the idea of a manifested atemporal, ahistorical ‘timelessness’ at the center of the Rosicrucian tradition. Yet, by critically participating in the Rosicrucian initiatic moment, the scholar-initiate is better able to appreciate the ‘internally’ shared connected quality of manifested ‘timelessness’ and initiatic ‘liturgical mystery’ conveyed throughout the tradition – something that really must be honestly engaged with in any scholarly study. Versluis describes it as ‘common affirmations of authentic spiritual experience and transmutation’ which is outside of any relevant temporal, historical or confessional background. [13] In Platonic terms he states; ‘a true history of theosophy, must be paradoxical, for it is a history of those who have encountered ahistorical reality, and whose kinship consists precisely in this fact’. [14]
Yet, as earnest as our efforts are, however, the wholesale rejection of a priori typologies in our critique is not an entirely tenable position, specific historicist frameworks can indeed be useful, and some are, as Versluis states – ‘necessary’. [15] Our studies inevitably require a certain level of definitive terminology, and primary concepts to sufficiently engage with the material. Our engagement then should remain a wholly sympathetic one and one that recognises any historicist framework or typology must be applied only in order to facilitate a greater phenomenological understanding of the material on its own terms.
The originary textual Rosicrucian moment: Links in the seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century movements.
Donald R. Dickson in his The Tessera of Antila: Utopian Brotherhoods and Secret Societies in the Early Seventeenth Century (1998) advocates MacGann’s methodological schema that a text should be viewed primarily as a ‘social product’ and as ‘something complexly written not by isolated individuals but by a large number of people and ultimately by the society of which they are a part’. [16] Which some may understand in the somewhat alternative nomenclature as the Egregore.
MacGann states in his book The Beauty of Inflections: Literary Investigations in the Historical Method and Theory (1985) that we should examine a text in ‘the originary textual moment’ followed by the ‘secondary moments of textual production and reproduction’. [17] By this he means that we must examine first the Author, then the other people or groups who were involved in the initial process of production – collaborators, scribes, people who commissioned the work, editors and so on. Following this, we should analyse the phases or stages in the initial productive process, here meaning the distinct personal, textual, or social states along with their defining causes, functions, and characteristics. The last area of the ‘originary textual moment’ to be considered is the materials, means, and modes of the initial productive process; be it physical and psychological or ideological. MacGann explains that once done, we must then explore ‘the secondary moments of production and reproduction’. He states, ‘this material should be ranged under two periodic subsets: a period of reproduction carried out during the author’s lifetime; the periods of production and reproduction which begin with author’s death’. [18] He continues by suggesting that we should examine this with the same considerations as the initial originary moment. Again, starting with the Author, but as ‘a critical and historical reconstruction’ and ‘as a range of ideas or concepts of the author which have emerged in the minds of various people and the ideologies of different classes, institutions and groups’. [19] He illustrates that employing this sort of framework enables our ‘finished programme of historicist textual criticism’. [20] As Edighoffer reminds us, Rosicrucianism became ‘concrete’ in texts.
Microcosm-macrocosm: The warping of the texts themselves.
Susanna Åkerman’s book Rose Cross over the Baltic: The Spread of Rosicrucianism in Northern Europe (1990) arranges the Rosicrucian phenomenon into three major phases.
The first phase, 1610 to 1620, is defined by Åkerman as a ‘mixture of popular eschatology and Paracelsian ideas‘. [21] She states that this phase was ‘characterized by a resistance to the Counter-Reformation‘. [22] Here Åkerman is employing something close to MacGann’s schema by focusing on the social states along with their defining causes, functions, and characteristics within a historicist framework – but she falls short of the required ‘sympathetic empiricism’ accessible to the scholar-initiate as her assertions are blinkered by the kind of academic ‘neuroticism,’ and intellectual insincerity Versluis suggests arises when the academic isn’t participating in the initiatic moment of the tradition they are writing about. Åkerman’s assertions are valuable and relevant, but if we look phenomenologically at the philosophical and theological arguments representative of Rosicrucianism at this time on their own (emic) terms, as portrayed in the actual manifestos and accompanying materials, then the complex nature of the worldview presented is described there as completely at odds with Åkerman’s assertations. They describe themselves as ‘nothing new’, as concerned with a ‘general reformation of the whole wide world’, with the global reformation, indeed, cosmic. Why then is Åkerman talking of a specific provincial theologico-political opposition movement? Surely this is a contextual distortion, as the texts themselves, the Author and their readership have a much higher calling in mind. The microcosmic-macrocosmic shift here is worth noting.
The texts:
- Allgemeineund General Reformation der gantzen weiten Welt (Universal and General Reformationof the Whole Wide World)
- Fama Fraternitatis, Des Loblichen Ordensdes Rosenkreutzes, an alle Gelehrte und Haupter Europae geschrieben (The Fame of the Fraternity of the Praiseworthy Order of the Rose-Cross, Written to all the Learned and Rulers of Europe)
- Auch einer kurtzen Responsion (Also a Short Response) by Adam Haslmayr, and a year later Confessio Fraternitatis. [23]
Between 1614 and 1620 more than two hundred different replies were published both for and against the movement in response to these original manifestoes, giving rise to what has been labeled the Rosicrucian ‘furore’, this number is said to increase to nine hundred by the beginning of the nineteenth century. [24]
Do any of these primary materials reflect Åkerman’s statements? The Confessio states;
It is the Lord Jehovah (who seeing the Lord’s Sabbath is almost at hand, and hastened again, his period or course being finished, to his first beginning) doth turn about the course of Nature; and what heretofore hath been sought with great pains, and daily labour, is now manifested unto those who make small account…but the wickedness of the ungodly thereby, with their due and deserved punishment, be augmented and multiplied. [25]
In the Confessio, it is clear that the message of the manifestoes is to be seen as a universal and timeless Revelation, in the Biblical, as well as in the Paracelsian sense. There is nothing in the texts to suggest they are to be viewed solely as a localised type of millenarianism activity specific to the contemporary political or historical situation, as might be implied by Åkerman’s analysis. Once again, the sense of scale here has been warped from that of the primary sources in order fit a larger, artificial, superimposed narrative. This distortive approach continues.
Åkerman goes on to describes the second phase, 1620 to 1660.
She states that this phase of Rosicrucianism was ‘being exploited to justify certain political causes’. [26] Echoing here the sentiments of the largely discredited Frances Yates and her seminal The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, Yates believed that the Rosicrucian manifestoes represent ‘protestant propaganda’. Versluis regards this as an arrogant dismissal of the validity of one’s subject. Surely the marginalisation of the Rosicrucian worldview to ‘propaganda’ is a disingenious asseration when one is dealing with what was understood as a revealed theology? Indeed, Christ was more than a polictical reformist. Åkerman states, ‘Yates thus created a new scenario in which Rosicrucian ideals formed political initiatives in Wütterberg and Bohemia in 1617-1620’. [27] Donald R. Dickson states that Yates ‘created at the court of The Winter King of Bohemia a Hermetic golden age, inspired by the Rosicrucian movement that made The Royal Society itself’. [28] Dickson describes this thesis as ‘a rather sensational one’. [29] Such marginalisations represent an intellectual slight of hand, where academics are replacing their focus from the symbolic mythology of the Rosicrucian texts, their subject (which they consider neither valid nor essential) to discussions surrounding a mythology of academically constructed ‘Grand Narratives’- permanently replacing one mythology for another.
What has slipped out of history is the fact that a ‘Rosicrucian’ phase of culture was attached to this episode, that the ‘Rosicrucian manifestoes’ were connected with it, that the movements stirred up by John Dee in Bohemia in earlier years were behind those manifestoes, that the brief reign of Fredrick and Elizabeth in the Palatine was a Hermetic golden age. [30]
Heavily criticised, Yates’ book is still of much importance, no less so here. Åkerman states that there exist two main historical interpretations of Rosicrucianism – ‘Frances Yates and her followers argue for its concrete theologico-political significance in an all European setting, while most continental scholars try to narrow the context to specific publishing activities of German/Swiss Alchemists and Paracelsians’. [31] Both these are historicist approaches and while accurate, both virtually ignore the claims of the actual Rosicrucian documents as neither important nor true. Neither approach seems to acknowledge the symbolic Rosicrucian story of its existence or purpose. These approaches while of course helpful, are reductive of a religious construct, in this case, Rosicrucianism, to non-religious factors and therefore have a complete inability to convey the overall sense of pansophy, universality and syncretism so intriguing and appealing in both the seventeenth-century manifestoes and eighteenth-century Rosicrucianism. A vitally important link ignored by the reductionist mindset.
Of these of Fez he often did confess that their Magia was not altogether pure…but notwithstanding he knew how to make good use of the same, and found still more better grounds for his faith, altogether agreeable with the harmony of the whole world…thence proceedeth that fair concord, that, as in every several kernel is contained a whole good tree or fruit, so likewise is included in the little body of man the whole great world, whose religion, policy, health, members, nature, language, words and works, are agreeing, sympathizing, and in equal tune and melody with God, heaven and earth. [32]
If we compare this with a quote from the eighteenth-century Gold-und Rosenkreuz manual.
To make effective the hidden forces of nature, to release natures’ light which has become deeply buried beneath the dross resulting from the curse, and thereby to light every brother a torch by whose light he will be able better to recognize the hidden god …and thereby become more closely united with original source of light. [33]
The purely historic-empirical approach fails to see the perfect harmony of the microcosm- macrocosm analogy evident in both the manifestoes and the eighteenth-century documents, as shown above. If we are to understand the links in Rosicrucianism, we must work in a manner that at least acknowledges those claims described by the materials as worthy of consideration and reverence in their own right, not reduce them to something else. We can see that without the application of a neutral sympathetic methodology, we would miss this critical doctrinal, mythic, ethical, and symbolic link. Åkerman herself goes on to state of Yates that ‘her constant effort to link events into a single pattern was steadily undermined by its own unfruitfulness’. [34] Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke states, ‘Yates thesis has many merits as she relates the manifestoes to the contemporary political and cultural landscape of central Europe’. [35] Indeed, as these writers show, the advantages of a specific methodology depend on what links we are investigating.
The secondary moments of production and reproduction
Åkerman explains the third phase, being 1710 to 1740 which of course is not the end of the Rosicrucian phenomena, but states that Rosicrucianism is revived at this time in aristocratic circles’ through Masonic and para-Masonic means. [36] ‘While the first phase of Rosicrucianism was formed by radical Paracelsians, the second phase was right-wing, aristocratic and restorationist’. [37] Again we see, rather than focusing on the theological, philosophical or internal aspects of continuity, the historicist approach favors political and economic speculation. We also see the application of MacGann’s historicist textual criticism yet again – Åkerman is considering here a range of ideas or concepts of the authors which have emerged in the minds of various people and the ideologies of different classes, institutions and groups since the appearance of the original manifestoes. Åkerman concludes stating ‘Rosicrucian texts were then taken up on the one hand by early British Freemasons (Robert Morlay, George Erskine, Elias Ashmole) and on the other the hand by German Piets’. [38] What does this mean for our links then?
The later part of the eighteenth-century Rosicrucianism and its Masonic manifestations represents with MacGann calls ‘the secondary moments of production and reproduction’. [39] Breaking the broad tendencies of eighteenth-century German Masonry into three different spectrums, Macintosh states there existed; (1) a secular, egalitarian and enlightenment orientated stream, (2) a Templar chivalric stream and (3) one which is Rosicrucian in orientation. [40] What we find here within the breaking up of these streams is what MacGann describes as ‘a critical and historical reconstruction’, in this case, a critical and historical reconstruction of the original Rosicrucian manifestoes and its doctrinal, mythical and symbolic components.
In Germany, a doctor Johann Ludolph ab Indagine printed a new edition in 1751 of Conrad Orvius’s Occulta Philosophia (first published in 1737), which purported to be from a Rosicrucian society in Holland. In 1762, it was in France that baron Schoudy, originally from Metz, organized Adonhiramite Freemasonry, the seventh grade of which was called Knight of the Rose Cross or of the “unknown philosopher”, thus introducing a Rosicrucian tendency into the lodges. [41]
Macintosh explains that Rosicrucian movements in the eighteenth-century were built under a backdrop of resurgent interest in Alchemy, a transformative art and a subject not as active in the seventeenth-century Rosicrucian tradition. Seen clearly in the society known as the Gold-und Rosenkreuz, Macintosh states it is this interest in Alchemy that distinguishes it from the older traditions. Referring to Georg von Welling, Opus Mago-Cabalisticum et Theologicum (1719) as a very ‘confusing work’ and one that ‘deals with the three basic substances of the alchemical process…it became perhaps the most important book used’. [42] The first alchemical Rosicrucian document of the eighteenth-century is Samuel Richter, Die wahrhaffte und vollkommene Beschreibung des philosophischen Steins der Bruderschaft aus dem Orden des Gulden-und Rosenkreutzes denen Filiis Doctrinae zum Besten publiciret (1710). Both these documents show what MacGann would call the secondary reconstruction of the original Rosicrucian texts.
As scholar-initiates, our central concern is experience, rather than representation or narrative. From such a stance we can see that although the traditions are very different, we can at least say that both, from the phenomenological perspective, are concerned with the betterment of Man, although in a differing way; one alchemically, the other revelatory. Although their ceremonial and ritual acts may have altered, the mystic, symbolic, and ethical role of seventeen and eighteenth-century Rosicrucianism is still the same; the Rosicrucian ‘metaphysical and cosmological self-understanding’ remains constant throughout.
Conclusion
Our paper is not one that has focused on the organisational continuity of the Rosicrucian tradition in the historicist sense as such as a link. While no doubt an important consideration, the primary material suggests that the linear heritage of the tradition was not a central concern to those brethren involved, and taken as granted. While there is clear evidence to show that a shared existence links both traditions in an epistolary or virtual network, both the original Rosicrucian manifestoes and eighteenth-century Rosicrucianism are linked by a continuous emergence of a symbolic, mystical and ethical, yet also an active role in the progress of Mankind and his union with God.
Such is the romance and allure of the Rose Cross that we began our inquiry with a brief aide- mémoire. That was, if our study was to remain a scholarly one, it was to be both methodological open yet entirely restrained in its assumptions. Clearly, with as amorous and mercurial a subject as Rosicrucianism, the requirement for speculative constraint is evident. As persistently evident as that requirement is, we are also compelled to take the advice of Arthur Versluis and not allow it to entirely obscure or fetter that sense of sympathetic engagement also required. This raises the question then of what kind of balance must be struck in our paper and study of esotericism in general. From a phenomenological understanding of the Rosicrucian experience, of the initiatic moment, with all its intentionality, temporality and intersubjectivity, we might find a sympathetic understanding of the internal links our reply is attempting to achieve. Our focus should be as stated; the social, ritual, experiential, doctrinal, mythic, ethical, and symbolic links, by which we come to understand sympathetically yet empirically through the etic framework of the likes of MacGann’s historicist textual criticism.
References:
[1] Arthur Versluis, ‘What is Esoteric? Methods in the Study of Western Esotericism’, Esoterica, IV (2002) <www.esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeIV/Methods.htm> [accessed 20 December 2011] (para. 19 of 53)
[2] Versluis, (para. 16 of 53)
[3] Wouter J. Hanegraaff, New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought (Leiden: Brill, 1996), pp. 4-7.
[4] Hanegraaff, pp. 4-7.
[5] Versluis, (para. 18 of 53)
[6] Versluis, (para. 31 of 53)
[7] Versluis, (para. 29 of 53)
[8] Hanegraaff, pp. 4-7.
[9] Versluis, (para. 36 of 53)
[10] Jerome J. MacGann, The Beauty of Inflections: Literary Investigations in the Historical Method and Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), p.82.
[11] Roland Edighoffer, ‘Rosicrucianism: From the Seventh to the Twentieth Century’ in Modern Esoteric Spirituality, ed. Antoine Faivre and Jacob Needleman (London: SCM Press Ltd, 1993), p.186.
[12] Thomas J. J. Alttizer, Mircea Eliade and the Dialectic of the Sacred, (Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1975), p.23.
[13] Arthur Versluis, Theosophia: Hidden Dimensions of Christianity (New York: Lindisfarne Press, 1994), p. 12.
[14] Versluis, Theosophia, p. 27.
[15] Versluis, (para. 28 of 53)
[16] Donald R. Dickson, The Tessera of Antila: Utopian Brotherhoods and Secret Societies in the Early Seventeenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 1998), p.4.
[17] MacGann, p.82.
[18] Ibid, p.82.
[19] Ibid, p.82.
[20] Ibid, p.82.
[21] Susanna Akerman, Rose Cross over the Baltic: The Spread of Rosicrucianism in Northern Europe, (Leiden: Brill, 1990), p. 2.
[22] Åkerman, p.2.
[23] Roland Edighoffer, ‘Rosicrucianism II: 18th Century’, in Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism, ed. Wouter J. Hanegraaff with Antoine Faivre, Roelof van den Broek and Jean-Pierre Brach (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005), p. 1014.
[24] Antoine Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1994), p. 65. For an extensive account of the bibliographical history of Rosicrucian writings see Carlos Gilly, Cimelia Rhodostaurotica: Die Rosencreutzer im Spiegel der zwischen 1610 und 1660 enstandenen Handschrifte und Drucke, (Amsterdam; Pelikkan, 1995)
[25] Confessio Fraternitatis in Frances Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (London: Routledge, 1972), p. 312.
[26] Åkerman, p.2.
[27] Ibid, p. 8.
[28] Donald R. Dickson, The Tessera of Antila: Utopian Brotherhoods and Secret Societies in the Early Seventeenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 1998), p.17.
[29] Dickson, p.17.
[30] Yates, p.xiii.
[31] Åkerman, p. 8.
[32] Fama Fraternitatis in Yates, p. 300.
[33] J.J. Bode, Starke Erweise (‘Rom, 5555,’ i.e., Leipzig: Göschen, 1788). Contains the Gold-und Rosenkreuz ‘Eingang zur ersten Classe des preisswürdigsten Ordens vom Goldenen Rosen Creutze nach der letzten Haupt- und Reformations-Convention’, p.25. in Christopher McIntosh The Rosicrucians: The History, Mythology and Rituals of an Esoteric Order (San Francisco: Weiser, 1998), p. 75.
[34] Åkerman, p. 18.
[35] Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 118.
[36] Åkerman, p.2.
[37] Ibid, pp. 2-3.
[38] Åkerman, p.3.
[39] MacGann, p.82.
[40] Christopher McIntosh The Rosicruicans: The History, Mythology and Rituals of an Esoteric Order (San Francisco: Weiser, 1998), p. 65.
[41] Edighoffer, Rosicrucianism II, p.1015.
[42] McIntosh, p.69.
