Why Those Rejecting These Reviews
are Probably JUST Stuck in One Approach
Dear friends,
We are winding up to the final installment of the Golden Dawn Review, but first a post with some considerations on where we are in terms of Reviewing the Rosicrucian Orders in general.
Something quite interesting has happened on this blog. It has to do with folks feeling attacked.
Quite a few folks rated the Pansophy score for the G.D badly, as if to say it somehow should have scored better in that area, or perhaps they just don’t like seeing something as ‘all powerful’ in their eyes rated badly at anything. I don’t know. What I do know is that if you don’t like the results of any of these pages, don’t just kick up dust, actually PROVE otherwise with evidence based arguments.
This goes equally for Amorc students who aren’t happy with my Amorc Review. A few did come forwards and try to show that Amorc has supplementary monographs on Qabalah and Hermeticism. I did take a look and found those materials to be extremely bland, the point being that even the Theosophical Society of Blavatsky wrote better articles, and they aren’t even Rosicrucian.
The scoring system for these reviews is based on seven key documents. For proving evidence to strengthen or weaken my reviews please put forwards hard based evidence to help shift the scores. It is after all a community effort, as many have helped formulate the reviews, and the reviews themselves really are a SERVICE to new students and hopefully the entire R.C community.
I’m all ears and will consider any valuable points towards building a greater picture.
Pansophy itself seems to be the new kid on the block because so few have heard of it, and most already knew that Trinosophia (magic, Cabala, alchemy) and Christosophia were essential.
On my part, I have tried my best to argue that Pansophy was essential to the Rosicrucian Tradition. This series has gone over its utopian quest, the vision for reformation of the Rosicrucians, and the fact that Pansophy wasn’t just about education after all, it actually meant Hermetic-Theosophy, covering very specific symbols, such as the goddess restoring the broken sword or phallus.
Unfortunately, for occult groups, that only want to be occulty, Pansophy isn’t going away.
Pansophy is an integral part of the Rosicrucian Tradition and only a fool would brush it off when dealing with things Rosicrucian. Unfortunately for the Golden Dawn there is a ‘lobby’ of so called ‘thought leaders’ have their own agenda, which has two aims:
- Pretend that Pansophy is just utopianism so they don’t have to deal with it, or even pretend that the manifestos had nothing to do with the City of the Sun utopias.
- Unfortunately; the three ‘ Pansophic Manifestos’ being the Mirror of Wisdom, Pandora and Pegasus clarify that Pansophy is an alchemical Sophianic mysticism. Even Jacob Boehme did a Pansophic Tree of Life diagram for his Sophianic mysticism.
- Pretend that the Golden Dawn wasn’t Rosicrucian really, and did not ultimately lead to an inner Rosicrucian Order, but instead is meant to be a ‘magical Order’ only.
- Unfortunately; having a giant Rosicrucian tomb is quite a serious thing. The name of your inner order is the RR et AC. The cipher manuscripts were said to be transmitted from German Rosicrucian Adepts, and your symbol is the Rose Cross.
- Amorc students on the other hand want to deny the manifestos and the work there outlined, totally ignoring magic, Cabalah, and alchemy and Christian mysticism, instead replacing the manifesto tradition with Egyptian symbols and a supposed Egyptian pharaoh origin story.
- Unfortunately; There were no Egyptian histories to the Rosicrucians before Amorc came on the scene. Some refer to the legend of the Egyptian sage Ormus, but it was actually used by Orders, like the GuRC and Memphis Rite, in order to Christianize occult workings that they felt were too Hermetic and not Biblical enough. There was no history of any Rosicrucians prior to Amorc linking back to Akhenaton, but it did make for great marketing for attracting new students. The lessons written by Harvey Spencer Lewis largely drew from William Walker Atkinson, who was into eastern mysticism and ‘vibration and breath’ teachings, calling it universal
I dare say many are just afraid of hard work and going beyond their comfort zone.
Rosicrucianism is more than the Golden Dawn. It is definitely more than Amorc. It is YES more than Rudolf Steiner. Shock horror as all that may sound. Rosicrucianism is just BRILLIANT as it is.
Rosicrucianism is magic, and therefore everything the Golden Dawn has.
Rosicrucianism is mysticism, and therefore all that Amorc has.
Rosicrucianism is Christian mysticism, and therefore all that Steiner and Martinism has.
Rosicrucianism is Pansophic, alchemical, therapeutic…
And will blow your brains out if you’re not careful and try to grab hold of it all at once.
It is THE BROAD AND GREAT Tradition of the West.
Given that Rosicrucianism is all these things, it is likely beyond the SCOPE of any single Order, and each Order shows just one angle of approach. This goes to show the vastness of the R.C current.
Would that I could be all these things. But who the hell can. 🙂
This is exactly why Amorc did badly in the magic score. And why the Golden Dawn did badly in the Pansophy score. It takes maturity to realize bad ratings are not an attack but point to something greater, something I hope all of us will start to embrace as brothers and sisters of this one Great and Broad Path of Rosicrucian Wisdom.
Anyhow, it’s not like you’re a child and I’m saying you’re missing a toy crane in your sand pit.
If you do find yourself becoming annoyed at a review, is it because you feel I’m attacking your Order? Does that mean YOU are your Order? Or that you associate yourself with it? If you are attached to the Order, does that mean you prefer the actual Order rather than the greater Rosicrucian tradition?
Is it even good to be attached to an Order? I imagine that every person is so unique that the path is far more individual and each person must draw from a wider range of inspiration…
Or are you still annoyed at my Rosicrucian Reviews? If so, DO something about it. Help our community improve the reviews by adding more knowledge and insights. I don’t mean here just complaining without justification. If you do know better, if you have some important evidence to share, then by all means, let’s make sure that new students get the best reviews possible.
Have your say, get involved and let’s shape the greater picture together.
Samuel Robinson
Love it!
Several modern societies, which date the beginning of the Order to earlier centuries, have been formed for the study of Rosicrucianism and allied subjects. However, many researchers on the history of Rosicrucianism argue that modern Rosicrucianists are in no sense directly linked to any real society of the early h century.
Excellent, and extremely helpful, and I say this as an AMORC member. I agree with you that, for some students, as wonderfully helpful as the AMORC monographs are, they do require substantial “supplementation.”
In any case, my writing is to ask one small question:
You may have written this, or it may have been another contributor to the website, but the writer states that the use of an Egyptian mythos/context is “dangerous”. Why do you feel it so?
Many thanks!
Great Job Sam,
I believe that the Rosicrucian order did exist and that people from different parts of Europe diffused it.
The issue for me is filiation and lineage: One’s lineage is important and one’s filiation shows one’s stance.
If people feel “hurt” it might be that they never objectively looked at what their order taught versus what the first Rosicrucian documents stated. Furthermore, I can only know what the later Rosicrucians actually taught by referring to supposedly Rosicrucian order: The Gold and Rose order based, centrally I assume, in Germany and the text “The Secret Symbols” which talks about material based in the 16th & 17th centuries….I know nothing of true French or Italian Rosicrucian orders.
If one were at least to use the first Rosicrucian documents & “The Secret Symbols” one would discover:
Boehmian elements, Astrology, Alchemy, Cabalah and Pansophy. No magic.
Boehme never taught magic or the Trinisophia. He did discuss the world being reconciled to God by Christ.
Beyond this, we should be mute unless we know a living member of an actual Rosicrucian order whose claims are proven beyond doubt.
Roses are red
I don’t reject the reviews in general — I think you’re doing an important service — but I was left scratching my head at your dismissive attitude toward George Winslow Plummer and the Societas Rosicruciana in America (SRIA). I’m a member of that order among others — in the Rosicrucian end of things, I’m a VII° in the SRICF, a Golden Dawn member, and a longtime student of occultism generally — and my experience is that the SRIA lessons don’t deserve the blanket rejection you give them. Plummer and the SRIA were strongly influenced by Steiner and Heindel, as well as by the New Thought teachings of their time, especially as formulated by William Walker Atkinson; Plummer’s style is pompous and somewhat fruity — but the same was true of quite a number of writers of his time, including the early work of Manly P. Hall! I’d encourage you to reread the lessons and consider whether you might be mistaken in what reads very much like a casual and insufficiently thoughtful dismissal of them.
Dear John,
Thanks for your words. I am reminded to be humble and always take a second look, which I shall do.
The more I study these figures the more surprises I find.
I’ve found something in Plummer around two years ago, which was probably after my initial assessment. This was related to Heindel’s version of the Process Documents that Steiner also gave to Felkin for the Stella Matutina, and indeed Plummer did a fine job in extrapolating those to a few ideas which imho are actually more original to the system that Steiner received in the first place, before he tinkered with it and gave it to Heindel.
By the way, I enjoy your books very much and often recommend them, especially Circles of Power. I think your works are an important service too.
in LVX, Sam
Dear Sam, many thanks for your response! Plummer was an odd duck but he had some useful insights; I recommend his little book on Rosicrucian symbology (available for free download these days from https://archive.org/details/rosicrvciansymbo00plum/page/n8 ) to students as a meditation text, and more generally as a guide to subtle anatomy — it should be read along with Manly P. Hall’s fine little book _The Occult Anatomy of Man_. There’s also a poster-sized chart done by one of Plummer’s associates, Cecil Adams, that correlates the cosmologies of Steiner, Heindel, and the Theosophical writers — I ended up with a copy, and will see if I can get it scanned sometime and made available to other students, because it’s helpful in making sense of the cosmic process as those authors present it.
Thank you also for your comments about my books. I’m glad to hear you and others find them of use.
Thanks John,
This one you’ve mentioned, “Rosicrucian Symbology” by Plummer is the one I am currently writing about in my book.
It’s related to Alois Mailander and his Rosicrucian group which Franz Hartmann encountered and said changed his life. What is so interesting about Plummer’s book is that it contains the triangles on the body, and those are only mentioned by Steiner once, in relation to Mailander’s group. Plummer’s version of the Process Documents, as presented in that book, is one of the most complete versions and also contains the sexual part that Steiner drew out of the OTO. What is so important about Plummer’s R.C Symbology is that the diagrams and figures he uses throughout the book to explain the geometry of the new temple actually come from Buck’s Esoteric Masonry. And Buck was running a masonic order that was the first body to carry the teachings of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor (Richardson’s HBL branch) in a masonic framework. They wrote that they had a sister order in Germany, and this order is that of Percifal Braun’s Grail Order, which predates the OTO by six years and had sex teachings in Germany before Ruess and all that lot ever got it.
The thing is, the HBL side of the Process Documents, come from Braun’s order. It does make Plummer’s version therefore look like one of the most original versions. The Process Documents were also known out in N.Z at Whare Ra temple, also given from Steiner to Felkin. I’m just finishing a book on this now and this series of diagrams and documents and their historical line, along with all its various versions shows a distinct R.C international-interconnection between various brotherhoods. All of them, like Plummer, taught an awakening of the Word through the internally redirected sex force. It does also suggest that Felkin did have a sexual teaching, which is largely thought to have never been properly introduced into the G.D in any form, but evidence from a few S.M members regarding these documents shows Felkin had the sexual part too.
It’s a favourite topic of mine so hope I’m not waffling on 🙂 Also Michael, if you’d ever like to do an interview or post with us, that would be most welcome. You’ve obviously had a few interesting projects going on and I’m sure folks would love to hear more some day too.
All the best bro, in LVX Sam
Please can you do a review on the Builders of the Adytum, it is also a Rosicrucian Order but why no reviews on it.
I will appreciate it if you can review the B. O. T. A
Hi there,
Thanks for reading the blog.
I’ll have to stop writing the reviews for a while in order to focus on other things.
It’s now up to the community to add their own opinion and send in articles to help build up the site they want to see.
Therefore, we would welcome your review of BOTA if you would like to help get it started.
In LVX, Sam