Signum Praetiosissimum Rosea et Aureae Crucis
“The Most Precious Sign of the Rosy and Golden Cross”
In the fourth grade of the Gold- und Rosenkreuzer—the Philosophicus grade—known to themselves as the Class of the Philosphie, there is an emblem that appears in my translation of Bernhard Beyer’s “Teaching System of the Golden and Rosy Cross.”
The emblem is two-sided and appears in a section of the grade containing a “Mystical Analysis” of the symbolism of the cross, the number 4, and the number 40.
To offer a summary, the number 40 is compared through both biblical literature and alchemical symbolism:
40 days and nights it rained as the flood came to earth.
40 days after the deluge passed, Noah opened the Ark.
40 days and nights Moses spent on Mount Sinai.
40 years the Israelites were in the desert.
40 days and nights Elijah fasted.
40 days the city of Nineveh repented.
In the New Testament:
40 weeks Christ & all people are formed within the womb.
40 months the Lord preached on earth.
40 days and nights Christ fasted in the Desert.
40 hours Christ the Lord lay in the grave.
40 days the Lord walked the earth after his glorious resurrection.
40 years after the ascension of Christ was Jerusalem laid to waste.
-and then-
40 days and nights Chaos takes for the first solution or dissolution.
40 days and nights the Materia remains fluid.
40 days and nights for generating or revealing the prima Materia.
40 days and nights that many miracles can be seen in the vessel.
40 days and nights the Matter blackens.
40 days and nights is required for the Resolution or second dissolution.
40 days and nights the whitening persists.
40 days and nights the yellow-blackening lasts.
40 days and nights the blackest blackening continues.
40 days and nights for the Material needs for coagulation and Whiteness.
40 days and nights the Yellowing lasts.
40 days and nights the highest Redness appears.
The comparisons between biblical narrative and practical alchemical practice are quite clear. This is also a common event throughout the literature and practice of the GuRC—where they consistently theologized alchemy. (Or, we could say they were alchemetizing theology!) Either way, the point stands that they viewed the events described and taking place in biblical literature to be allegories of specific cosmological and practical operations of alchemy.
In the same section, the symbolism of the number 4 is also analyzed:
This mysterious number represents, in particular:
1. The four rivers that flow out of Paradise around the world, and effectively flow into all natural things for their preservation and destruction, but also:
2. The four active properties of the elements in a physical sense,
and as well, the:
3. Four Evangelists of the new Covenant of grace. The significance of four is also expressed by four Hebrew Daleths, which with their angles together add to 16. Consequently, 1 and 6 result in the number of wisdom, 7, which in turn contains the difference of 3 and 4 within itself. This shows, in the theosophical and moral sense, fallen man in his main components—spirit, soul and body—as well as:
4. Through the Cross—previously proclaimed by the prophet and taught, presented, and glorified by the Mediator between God and men in His Gospel through His own teaching, passion, and death, yet also in the number 4 as:
5. One’s knowledge of themselves, and of:
6. Self-denial, and consequently:
7. The separation from all creation, with:
8. The subsequent death of his animal self. That is, of his animal passions and through the subversion of this self-hood, i.e., one’s desires, will, and senses becoming united in the sole will of God, and thus brought to divine wisdom, as the number 7, through rebirth. And by means of this very wisdom he must return to the supersensible, paradisiacal life of his original state of creation, and thus to its tinctural and incorruptible perfection. Similarly, in a physical sense, and aligning with that initial symbolic harmony, natural bodies—which, due to the Fall of Man and as their immediate center, have been formed and burdened with dross and slag under a curse by the four active properties of the elements—must undergo a visible reaction involving all four elements.
This process transforms them into three: Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury. These three, in turn, are refined by the four effective properties, leading to the number 7, or the highest clarity within the purest essence of light. Through this progressive purification, these elements can then be inseparably reunited and transformed into the nature of the number 5, which is that tinctural Quintessence they originally received from the Creative Word.
Meaning of the Philosophical Understanding
To approach the meaning behind both biblical revelation and the alchemical process, one must recognize that behind each lies a reality of principial, universal, and living essences. These are not mere symbols or poetic conceits, but meant to be understaood as active truths concealed within creation itself.
When the alchemists speak of philosophical substances—philosophical mercury, philosophical sulfur, philosophical gold—they are not referring to ordinary materials. The term philosophical (and also, the name of this Fourth Grade of the Philosophie) denotes the inner, essential, and metaphysical principle of a substance—we might say its living archetype—rather than its common or chemical form.
In this Grade, as indicated in its practical instructions (which Beyer regrettably omitted, but which I will present in my forthcoming companion volume), the initiate seeks the universal sensible qualities of the elements: to perceive how they act and interact within the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms. Without this intuitive grasp of the philosophical nature, the practitioner loses the inner compass that gives direction and meaning to the Work.
As the unpublished Fourth Grade teaches concerning the element of Water discusses:
That without water no earthly creature can exist, nor any natural mingling of seed, nor any fermentation, nor any wholesome cleansing or tempering of the other elements can take place, is a truth so plain and well known that further explanation would be needless. Yet there are some (as the Apostle testifies) who will not acknowledge that the heavens were of old, and that the earth was formed out of water and through water, by the Word of God (2 Peter 3:5). This is a sacred truth which we hold with unshakable faith; but the secret working of divine providence we must not seek to pry into, rather leaving all to the all-wise governance and righteous judgments of Almighty God.
It is worth contemplating the universal and interpenetraing nature of water as an entry into the Mystical Analysis of the 4 and 40 above, as well as this following emblem.
The Emblem
In the Beyer book, the aforementioned emblem was left untranslated for the reader to discern its meaning for themselves. Here, however, we present a translation of the front and back side of this emblem for the curious to contemplate its meaning, particularly in light of the above. (With gratitude to Christine Eike for working together on these)
Front Side:
Reverse Side:
Translation:
Front (in the four corners): God, Eternity, Man, Time
No. 1 (Front side):
Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit —
Is one single God and
is so called. He has begotten for us Jesus
Christ, from His own essence and eternal Light.
He descended into this world, and His corporeal birth
He Himself has ordained.
Fire
(in hexagram) God
See more on the reverse under N. 1
—
No. 1 (Reverse side):
God dwells
in a light into which
no one can come, whom
no human being has seen, nor
can see. (1 Timothy 6)
No one has ever seen God,
except for the Son; he has
declared to us that God is Light
and Spirit. (John 4 and John 1:6)
No one knows the Son except the Father,
and no one knows the
Father except the Son, and those [to whom]
the Son chooses to reveal Him. (Matthew 11)
—
No. 2 (Front side):
Son,
together with Father and with Spirit,
He is called a single God and Man,
because the Word
was made flesh, and is triune
in time, and also in eternity;
He remains one single God and Man. (Colossians 2; John 10, 12, 14, 17)
Water
(in hexagram) Word
See more on the reverse under N. 2
—
No. 2 (Reverse side):
God, in Christ, reconciled
the world to Himself. (2 Cor. 5)
God has bought His church through
His own blood. (Acts 20)
God was put to death according to the flesh,
but made alive according to the Spirit. (1 Peter 3 and 4)
The Lord of Glory
was crucified. (1 Cor. 2)
The Prince of Life
was killed. (Acts 3)
—
No. 3 (Front side):
God is an eternal Spirit,
from whom all things flow;
He gives His Son to the world in the flesh,
and yet remains God for eternity,
and rules over the heavenly and earthly
kingdoms.
Quintessence
(in hexagram) Tincture.
See more on the reverse under N. 3
—
No. 3 (Reverse side):
He preserved what already existed,
and took up what did not exist. (John, Matthew, and Luke 1)
—
No. 4 (Front side):
Holy Spirit,
[together] with Father and Son, [both] here
and on the throne of Heaven,
proceeds from the Father and Son,
and is yet one Spirit, one
God, one Father, one Christ, and
the Son of Man, in time and
in the eternal dwelling of Heaven. (John 14)
Air
(in hexagram) Nature
See more on the reverse under N. 4
No. 4 (Reverse side):
No one
ascends to Heaven,
except the Son of Man,
who has come down from Heaven. (John 5) [actually John 3]
He who was also conceived
by the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 2; Luke 1)
For what is born of the Spirit remains Spirit. (John 3)
All sins and blasphemies will be forgiven to
men, but blasphemy against the Holy
Spirit will never be forgiven. (Matthew 12)
—
No. 5 (Front side):
A and O.
Jesus Christ, God
and Man, has come into the
world from Heaven as Spirit, and
in time became flesh, a new
creature, as St. Paul says, through whom
all is made new again, and who feeds
us and our souls with His flesh
for eternity.
Earth
(in hexagram) Creature
See more on the reverse under N. 4
—
No. 5 (Reverse side):
All authority
has been given to me
in heaven and on earth. (Matthew 28)
In Christ
dwells the whole fullness of
the Godhead bodily. (Col. 2)
This is my beloved Son; in
whom I am well pleased;
Listen to him. (Matthew 3)
