“I was once engaged in discourse with a Rosicrucian about the ‘great secret.’ As this kind of men, I mean those of them who are not professed cheats, are over-run with enthusiasm and philosophy, it was very amusing to hear this religious adept descanting on his pretended discovery. He talked of the secret as of a spirit which lived within an emerald, and converted everything that was near it to the highest perfection it is capable of. ‘It gives a lustre,’ says he, ‘to the sun, and water to the diamond. It irradiates every metal, and enriches lead with all the properties of gold. It heightens smoke into flame, flame into light, and light into glory.’ He further added, that a single ray of it dissipates pain, and care, and melancholy, from the person on whom it falls. In short, says he, ‘its presence naturally changes every place into a kind of heaven.’
“After he had gone on for some time in this unintelligible cant, I found that he jumbled natural and moral ideas together in the same discourse, and that his great secret was nothing else but content.”
CHAPTER II.
Historical Notices of the Rosicrucians.
So mysterious a sect were the Rosicrucians, and so involved in doubt and obscurity are most of their movements, practices and opinions, that nearly everything connected with them has been denied or doubted at one time or another by those who have written about them. Dr. Mackay says: “Many have denied the existence of such a personage as Rosencreutz, and have fixed the origin of this sect at a much later epoch. The first dawning of it, they say, is to be found in the theories of Paracelsus and the dreams of Dr. Dee, who, without intending it, became the actual, though never the recognised founders of the Rosicrucian philosophy. It is now difficult, and indeed impossible to determine whether Dee and Paracelsus obtained their ideas from the then obscure and unknown Rosicrucians, or whether the Rosicrucians did but follow and improve upon them. Certain it is, that their existence was never suspected till the year 1605, when they began to excite attention in Germany. No sooner were their doctrines promulgated, than all the visionaries, Paracelsists, and alchymists, flocked around their standard, and vaunted Rosencreutz as the new regenerator of the human race.” According to Mayer, a celebrated physician of the times, who published a report of the tenets and ordinances of the new fraternity at Cologne in the year 1615, they asserted in the first place that the meditations of their founders surpassed everything that had ever been imagined since the creation of the world, without even excepting the revelations of the Deity; that they were destined to accomplish the general peace and regeneration of man before the end of the world arrived; that they possessed all wisdom and piety in a supreme degree; that they possessed all the graces of nature, and could distribute them among the rest of mankind according to their pleasure; that they were subject to neither hunger, nor thirst, nor disease, nor old age, nor to any other inconvenience of nature; that they knew by inspiration, and at the first glance, every one who was worthy to be admitted into their society; that they had the same knowledge then which they would have possessed if they had lived from the beginning of the world, and had been always acquiring it; that they had a volume in which they could read all that ever was or ever would be written in other books till the end of time; that they could force to, and retain in their service the most powerful spirits and demons; that by the virtue of their songs, they could attract pearls and precious stones from the depths of the sea or the bowels of the earth; that God had covered them with a thick cloud, by means of which they could shelter themselves from the malignity of their enemies, and that they could thus render themselves invisible from all eyes; that the first eight brethren of the Rosie-Cross had power to cure all maladies; that by means of the fraternity, the triple diadem of the Pope would be reduced into dust; that they only admitted two sacraments, with the ceremonies of the Primitive Church, renewed by them: that they recognised the Fourth Monarchy and the Emperor of the Romans as their Chief, and the Chief of all Christians; that they would provide him with more gold, their treasures being inexhaustible, than the King of Spain had ever drawn from the golden regions of Eastern and Western India.
Things went on pretty quietly for some time, converts being made with ease in Germany, but only with difficulty in other parts. In 1623, however, the brethren suddenly made their appearance in Paris, and the inhabitants of the city were surprised on the 3rd of March to find placarded on the walls a manifesto to this effect:—“We, the deputies of the principal college of the brethren of the Rosie Cross, have taken up our abode, visible and invisible, in this city, by the grace of the Most High, towards whom are turned the hearts of the just. We show and teach without any books or symbols whatever, and we speak all sorts of languages in the countries wherein we deign to dwell, to draw mankind, our fellows, from error and to save them from death.”
Whether this was a mere joke on the part of some of the wits of the day, it is certain that it created a very wide-spread sensation, and no little wonder and alarm, particularly amongst the clergy. Very soon pamphlets in opposition, and intended to warn the faithful, began to make their appearance. The earliest was called “A History of the Frightful Compacts entered into between the Devil and the Pretended Invisibles, with their Damnable Instructions, the Deplorable Ruin of their Disciples, and their Miserable End.” This was followed by another of a far more ambitious character, pretending to ability to explain all the peculiarities and mysteries of the strange intruders. It was called “An examination of the New Cabala of the Brethren of the Rosie-Cross, who have lately come to reside in the city of Paris, with the History of their Manners, the Wonders worked by them, and many other particulars.”
As the books sold and circulated the sensation and alarm in the breasts of the people largely increased, approaching almost to a kind of panic. Ridicule and laugh as some would, it was impossible to disguise the fact that a vast number of the population went in bodily fear of this mysterious sect, whose members they had never seen. It was believed that the Rosicrucians could transport themselves from place to place with the rapidity almost of thought, and that they took delight in cheating and tormenting unhappy citizens, especially such as had sinned against the laws of morality. Then very naturally came the wildest and most unlikely stories, which, as is usual with such things, in spite of all their folly, were soon propagated far and wide, and increased the general alarm.