So who ARE the Rosicrucians?

[Magical Realist]

I remember when I was growing up in Corpus Christi Tx we would often pass a mysterious building on a corner with the sign Rosicrucians on it and a picture of a rose. I was just a kid, but I never understood what these people were. Here's a little summary into what may arguably be the first New Age movement in recorded history.
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"If I were to summarize the modern Rosicrucian organization, I'd compare it to a low-pressure, less expensive version of Scientology, based on New Age beliefs instead of L. Ron Hubbard's science fiction. You send them a few hundred dollars a year for your membership, and they send you printed lessons for self study that teach you all about their mystical belief system, the "keys to universal wisdom", as they put it. Like Scientology and Freemasonry, Rosicrucians reach various levels, or degrees, based on how much of the self-study material you've purchased and read. You can even perform your own initiation
ceremonies into each new degree at home. In your first five years as a Rosicrucian, you'll cover the three "neophyte" degrees from First Atrium through Third Atrium, and then the "temple" section from First Temple Degree through Ninth Temple Degree. By this time your teaching will include topics such as:

Mental Alchemy
Telepathy, Telekinesis, Vibroturgy, and Radiesthesia
Cosmic Protection, Mystical Regeneration
Attunement with the Cosmic Consciousness

One of the benefits available to modern Rosicrucians is magical assistance to those in need of actual assistance, which they provide to successful petitioners via their "Council of Solace". Their web site describes how this works:

'The Council does this by putting certain spiritual energies into motion and directing them in accordance with mystical law and natural principles. Metaphysical aid is thus directed to individuals ...with health, domestic, economic, or other problems, and aid is also directed to those who are attuned with the Council. The aid of the Council of Solace operates on the cosmic plane. Its activity is solely metaphysical and in no way interferes with any professional or health-care assistance being received on the physical plane.'

So at this point you're probably yawning at this yet-another "spin the wheel and invent a New Age philosophy". So it's a good time to introduce William Walker Atkinson, an author who wrote about 100 books in the early 20th century under many pseudonyms. He is credited with being one of the principal architects of the New Thought movement, which evolved into today's New Age movement. His book The Law of Attraction in the Thought World is one of the primary influences of Rhonda Byrne's book and movie The Secret, and in fact the word "Rosicrucian" appears subtly on screen throughout the movie's title transitions. Many of the principal writings of the Dharmic movement of the 1960's, so popular with the Beatles and attributed to various swamis and yogis, were in fact written by Atkinson. But one of Atkinson's books broke the pattern and was written not to promote the New Thought mysticism, but rather to expose it. Published under the name Magus Incognito, its title was The Secret Doctrine of the Rosicrucians. In it, Atkinson claims that the true Rosicrucian order does not accept fees, has no formal organization, and is in fact secret. He then gives away all the contents of the Rosicrucian degrees. Why would he write this book?

AMORC, the modern formal Rosicrucian group, was launched in New York in 1915. The original founder, Harvey Spencer Lewis, and its first leader (or "Imperator" as they call it), is said to have borrowed quite heavily from the works of Yogi Ramacharaka in developing the Atrium and Temple Degree series. Who was the real author behind the name Yogi Ramacharaka? You guessed it, William Walker Atkinson. Apparently annoyed that his work had been so broadly and obviously "borrowed from" (to put it politely) without attribution, Atkinson quickly produced The Secret Doctrine of the Rosicrucians by retitling some of his own earlier works that contained the material used in the Rosicrucian lessons, and adding a few jabs like "real Rosicrucians would never take your money the way AMORC does".

Atkinson also reminded us that the term Rosicrucian and the rosy cross symbol have both been in the public domain for centuries, so nobody has any exclusive right to use them; and in fact that there are many competing Rosicrucian groups out there. Although AMORC has clearly won in the marketplace with its expansive San Jose headquarters, you might also choose to join the Ancient Order of the Rosicrucians, the Fraternitas Rosicruciana Antiqua, the Lectorium Rosicrucianum, or any of a dozen others, all based on essentially the same occult New Age mystical traditions."

Ever since the original manifestos were published by the first in this long line of clever authors, it seems everyone's been trying to get in on the Rosicrucian action; either directly by name or by rebranding it the way Rhonda Byrne, and in fact William Atkinson himself, have done. It's even been borrowed by whole nations in search of a defining philosophy. In his book The Occult Roots of Nazism, author Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke found that Nazi symbology was inspired by an 18th century German Rosicrucian order called Gold und Rosenkreuzer."===http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4164

[Image: 2000px-Rose_Cross_Lamen.svg.png]

[Yazata]

I like the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose. I've spent lots of time in there. It's a serious archaeological museum, said to be the largest collection of Egyptian antiquities in California.

http://www.egyptianmuseum.org/virtualgallery

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosicrucian...ian_Museum

They don't make museums like this any more. In modern display terms, it's probably considered totally outmoded. (Like me!) It's old-fashioned display cases, each with a long piece of text, type-written on a typewriter, slightly yellowed and curling at the corners. The text is extremely scholarly, but quite accessable to laypeople. I don't know who wrote it, maybe some retired Stanford professor back in the 60's or something.

I particularly remember one display case because it was so sad and unassuming, just some scraps of faded fabric. Nothing that a contemporary cell-phone kid would have any interest in. But if you read the text, you get a whole education in Egyptian clothing and textiles. How they were made, how they were distributed, who wore what and and when they wore it, what different colors and decorations meant. It would probably take half an hour to read it, then you would want to stare at the scraps of cloth and relate it to what you just read, and maybe read it over again. When you were done, you could stand there and expound for half an hour on those scraps of fabric and what they tell us about the people who wore the clothes they were once part of.

The way to progress through that museum is to attack each display case that way. It would be a huge job and it would take weeks, every day, from opening to closing. But it would be worth it, you would get a priceless education in Egyptian archaeology.

Here's some other stuff at Rosicrucian park.

https://www.rosicrucian.org/rosicrucian-park

The research library has a noteworthy collection of rare occultist manuscripts.

http://www.rosicrucianpark.org/research-library

Their small planetarium has a changing lineup of shows. I remember one about new theories about the possible astrological symbolism of ancient Mithraism.

http://www.rosicrucianpark.org/planetarium

They are currently putting together an alchemy museum, due to open next year.

http://www.rosicrucianpark.org/alchemy-museum

[Yazata]

I remember when I was growing up in Corpus Christi Tx we would often pass a mysterious building on a corner with the sign Rosicrucians on it and a picture of a rose. I was just a kid, but I never understood what these people were.

I'm not sure that anyone was ever sure what they are or even whether they really existed. They were kind of a mystery from the very beginning, back in Renaissance Europe, which is a big part of their centuries-long appeal, I guess. The story spread the idea of a mysterious brotherhood, including many of the big names of the scientific revolution, initiated into the secrets of the ancients and only releasing their knowledge bit by bit, as people became ready to receive it.

Wikipedia has a pretty good history of Rosicrucianism:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosicrucianism

Here's a little summary into what may arguably be the first New Age movement in recorded history.

I prefer to think of them as occultists. ('Occult' in the sense of hidden, possessors of secrets.)

"If I were to summarize the modern Rosicrucian organization, I'd compare it to a low-pressure, less expensive version of Scientology, based on New Age beliefs instead of L. Ron Hubbard's science fiction.

The 'New Age' movement is recent, dating from the 60's and 70's. The Rosicrucians appeared in the 17th century at the latest, and probably earlier than that in the 15th century.

AMORC isn't really a direct continuation of the Renaissance and Early Modern European Rosicrucians. It identified with those mysterious Rosicrucians and adopted their name and history as its own.

AMORC isn't precisely 'new age' either, its roots go back to the kind of late 19th century occultist counterculture that also produced the Theosophical Society. California was a hotbed of that stuff in the late 1800s and early 1900's, hence the San Jose conncetion.

So at this point you're probably yawning at this yet-another "spin the wheel and invent a New Age philosophy".

Most people maybe. But I'm very interested in the permutations of the Western Occult Tradition, the constantly evolving religious underground that has persisted inside Christiandom since late antiquity, when Paganism was driven underground. We see signs of it in ritual magic, astrology, hermeticism, alchemy, divination, witchcraft, and all kinds of things. Rosicrucianism was an eruption of those hidden (occult) currents, back in the day, around the same time of the Scientific Revolution, which Rosicrucianism may indeed have influenced. (I'm influenced by Francis Yates' The Rosicrucian Enlightenment on that.)

But all in all, I guess that I'm inclined to doubt whether a coherent early Rosicrucian organization ever existed. Rosicrucianism appears to have always been more of a myth. It was something that people wanted to be true. People wanted to believe that a hugely influential secret order of initiates into the cosmic mysteries exists out there, that is guiding human progress from the shadows.