The Rosicrucians

The teaching

As the Fama Fraternitatis with its two sister books teaches it.

Brother C. R. and his journey

The Fama tells of Brother C. R., born in Germany of noble but poor parents and placed in a cloister at five, where he learned Greek and Latin. As a young man he set out for the Holy Sepulchre with another brother, who died on Cyprus. C. R. went on alone to Damascus and then to Damcar in Arabia, where the wise men received him as one long expected, called him by name and told him secrets of his own cloister. There he learned Arabic, physic and mathematics, and translated into Latin a book the Fama calls the Book M.

By way of Egypt he went to Fez, where he learned of the elemental inhabitants of nature and of the magic and Kabbalah of the people there. He found both mixed with error, yet used what was good in them, and found a firmer ground for his faith: the harmony of the whole world. As a whole tree lies in every kernel, the Fama says, so the great world lies in the little body of a human being, whose religion, health, nature, language and works answer in one tune to God, heaven and earth. He crossed to Spain to show the learned their errors, and they laughed, fearing for their reputations; so he went home to Germany and lived quietly in study.

The first brothers

After five years he called three brothers from his first cloister, G. V., I. A. and I. O., and bound them to be faithful, diligent and secret, and to write down all he taught. So the Fraternity of the Rose Cross began, with four. They made a magical language and writing with a large dictionary, and the first part of the Book M. When the work and the crowds of the sick grew too great, and his new house, the House of the Holy Spirit, was finished, they took four more: R. C., his cousin; B., a skilled painter; G. G.; and P. D., their secretary. The eight were unmarried and vowed to chastity.

The six articles

Before they went out into the world the eight agreed on six articles. First, that none of them should profess anything but to cure the sick, and that without payment. Second, that none should be bound to wear a particular habit, but each should follow the custom of his country. Third, that every year on the day C. they should meet in the House of the Holy Spirit, or write the cause of their absence. Fourth, that each should look for a worthy person to succeed him. Fifth, that the letters C. R. should be their seal, mark and character. Sixth, that the brotherhood should stay hidden for a hundred years.

The vault of Christian Rosenkreutz

The brothers died one by one, and the founder's grave was forgotten. A brother of the third generation, altering the house, found a brass tablet bearing their names and behind it a hidden door inscribed Post CXX annos patebo: after a hundred and twenty years I shall open. Inside was a vault of seven sides, each five feet wide and eight feet high, where no sun ever shone, yet it was lit by another sun set in the centre of the ceiling.

In the middle stood a round altar covered with brass, saying that the founder had made this compendium of the universe his tomb. Around its edge ran Jesus mihi omnia, Jesus is all things to me, and at its centre four figures bore the words Nowhere a void, The yoke of the law, The liberty of the gospel and The glory of God untouched. In the walls were chests of books, mirrors, little bells, burning lamps and songs made by art. Under the altar lay the founder's body, whole and uncorrupted, holding a parchment book called T, after the Bible the brothers' greatest treasure. The Confessio adds that he was born in 1378 and lived a hundred and six years. The eulogy in the book ends: Ex Deo nascimur, in Jesu morimur, per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus. Of God we are born, in Jesus we die, through the Holy Spirit we live again.

The call to the learned

The Fama calls for a general reformation of divine and human things. Learning, it says, is broken into pieces and held captive by old authorities. The brothers hold that there is one truth, and that philosophy, medicine and mathematics, rightly understood, agree with one another and with scripture, as the little world of the human being agrees with the great. They invite the learned of Europe to declare their minds in print, in any language: whoever comes sincerely will be helped in goods, body and soul, and whoever is false or greedy for riches will harm only himself. Their house will stay hidden from the wicked world, sub umbra alarum tuarum, Jehova: under the shadow of your wings, Jehovah.

Gold, and the better things

The books are hard on the gold-makers. The true philosophers, the Fama says, think little of making gold, a by-work beside the thousand better things they have, and the Confessio condemns the false alchemists as a disgrace to the art. What the brothers prize is the book of nature, in which God has written His characters in the heavens, the earth and every creature, and which they read as their magic writing; and above it the Bible, which they urge every reader to study without ceasing. The Confessio reads the new stars lately seen in Serpentarius and Cygnus as signs that the time of reform had come.

The Chymical Wedding: the first three days

The third book is a story in seven days. On the evening before Easter, as Christian Rosenkreutz prays, a storm rises and a woman appears in a sky-blue gown spangled with golden stars, with great wings full of eyes and a golden trumpet. She gives him a letter sealed with a cross and the words In hoc signo vinces, in this sign you will conquer, inviting him to a royal wedding on a mountain where three temples stand, if he is born for it and chosen by God, and warning that whoever is found too light will come to harm. That night he dreams of a dark tower full of prisoners in chains, and a cord let down seven times to draw a few into the light.

In the morning he puts on a white linen coat with a blood-red ribbon crossed over his shoulders, sets four red roses in his hat, and takes bread, salt and water. Where the ways divide he follows a white dove chased by a raven, and so takes his road without choosing it, reaching the castle as its gates close. Within, the guests boast of their learning. Told that all will be weighed next day, he and a few others who doubt their own worth choose to spend the night bound in the hall rather than go to bed with the proud.

On the third day each guest is weighed on golden scales against seven weights. Many, emperors and kings among them, are found too light and sent away in shame, and the few who outweigh all seven, Christian among them, are given the Golden Fleece with a flying lion.

The Chymical Wedding: the last four days

On the fourth day the guests come before six royal persons, three kings and three queens, and watch a play in seven acts. Then an executioner beheads the six, their blood is caught in a golden goblet, the executioner is beheaded in turn, and the bodies are laid in coffins; that night Christian sees ships bearing lights sail away over the water.

On the fifth day his page shows him Venus asleep in a vault, a sight forbidden to the guests, with a tablet saying she will wake when the fruit of her tree has melted, and be the mother of a king. Then the company sails to the Tower of Olympus, an island tower of seven floors.

On the sixth day the work is done floor by floor. The bodies are dissolved and distilled, and from the heated liquor comes an egg; the bird hatched from it is fed with the royal blood, beheaded and burned to ash, and from the moistened ash two small figures are formed, which grow into the king and queen and are given life again. Most of the company, set to work below, are content to make gold, while Christian and a chosen few are taken up to the true work.

On the seventh day the chosen are made Knights of the Golden Stone, and swear to ascribe their order only to God and His handmaid nature, to keep clean of vice, to help the worthy, not to use the gift for worldly pride, and not to wish to live longer than God wills. Christian confesses that he saw Venus and is sentenced to keep the castle gate, freeing the old porter who had once done the same. There the book breaks off, two leaves missing, and its hero goes home.

The path the three books teach

Read together, the three books teach one path. The founder's journey is the search for one truth through the learning of every land; the vault, with its compendium of the universe and its inner sun, is the human being made a little world; and the wedding is the alchemy of the soul, the royal pair dying, purified and raised again, with gold-making left to those content with it. The books never explain their emblem; later Rosicrucians read the cross as the body and its trials and the rose as the soul unfolding upon it. What the brothers ask of a reader is in their first article: to heal, and freely.