An innkeeper declared that a mysterious stranger entered his inn, regaled himself on the best of everything, and suddenly vanished in a cloud when the reckoning was presented. Another was patronised by a similar stranger, who lived upon the choicest fare and drank the best wines of the house for a week, and paid him with a handful of new gold coins, which turned into slates the following morning. It was also reported that several persons on awakening in the middle of the night found individuals in their bedchambers, who suddenly became invisible, though still palpable when the alarm was raised. Such was the consternation in Paris, that every man who could not give a satisfactory account of himself was in danger of being pelted to death; and quiet citizens slept with loaded guns at their bedside, to take vengeance upon any Rosicrucian who might violate the sanctity of their chambers. No man or woman was considered safe; the female sex especially were supposed to be in danger, for it was implicitly believed that no bolts, locks or bars could keep out would be intruders, and it was frequently being reported that young women in the middle of the night found strange men of surpassing beauty in their bedrooms, who vanished the instant any attempt was made to arouse the inmates of the house. In other quarters it was reported that people most unexpectedly found heaps of gold in their houses, not having the slightest idea from whence they came; the feelings and emotions thus excited were consequently most conflicting, no man knowing whether his ghostly visitant might be the harbinger of good or evil.
While the general alarm was at its height, another mysterious placard appeared, which said:—“If any one desires to see the brethren of the Rose-Cross from curiosity only, he will never communicate with us. But if his will really induces him to inscribe his name in the register of our brotherhood, we, who can judge of the thoughts of all men, will convince him of the truth of our promises. For this reason we do not publish to the world the place of our abode. Thought alone, in unison with the sincere will of those who desire to know us, is sufficient to make us known to them, and them to us.”
The imposition thus perpetrated upon the credulity of the people had but a comparatively short life in Paris, a deal of controversy was engendered between those who regarded the whole affair as a stupid hoax, and those whose superstitious fears made them think there was truth in it, and the efforts made by its disciples to defend their theories overshot the mark, and exposed the fallacies of that which they were intended to support. The police were called upon the scene to try and trace out and arrest the authors of the troublesome placards, and the Church took up the moral and theological aspect of the sensation, and issued pamphlets which professed to explain the whole as the production of some disciples of Luther, who were sent out to promulgate enmity and opposition to the Pope. The Abbé Gaultier, a Jesuit, distinguished himself in this direction, and informed the public that the very name of the disciples of the sect proved they were heretics; a cross surmounted by a rose being the heraldic device of the arch-heretic Luther. Another writer named Garasse, declared they were nothing but a set of drunken impostors; and that their name was derived from the garland of roses, in the form of a cross, hung over the tables of taverns in Germany as the emblem of secrecy, and from whence was derived the common saying, when one man communicated a secret to another, that it was said, “under the rose.” Other explanations were also freely offered, which we have not space to describe, but which may be reached by the aid of the learned works given in our list of authorities.
The charges of evil connections brought against the Rosicrucians were repudiated by those people with energy and determination; they affirmed in the most positive manner that they had nothing to do with magic, and that they held no intercourse whatever with the devil. They declared, on the contrary, that they were faithful followers of the true God, that they had already lived more than a hundred years, and expected to live many hundred more, and that God conferred upon them perfect happiness, and as a reward for their piety and service gave them the wonderful knowledge they were possessed of. They declared that they did not get their name from a cross of roses, but from Christian Rosencreutz, their founder. When charged with drunkenness, they said that they did not know what thirst was, and that they were altogether proof against the temptations of the most attractive food. They professed the greatest indignation perhaps at the charge of interfering with the honour of virtuous women, and maintained most positively that the very first vow they took was one of chastity, and that any of them violating that oath, would be deprived at once of all the advantages he possessed, and be subject to hunger, thirst, sorrow, disease and death like other men. Witchcraft and sorcery they also most warmly repudiated; the existence of incubi and succubi they said was a pure invention of their enemies, that man “was not surrounded by enemies like these, but by myriads of beautiful and beneficent beings, all anxious to do him service. The sylphs of the air, the undines of the water, the gnomes of the earth, and the salamanders of the fire were man’s friends, and desired nothing so much as that men should purge themselves of all uncleanness, and thus be enabled to see and converse with them. They possessed great power, and were unrestrained by the barriers of space, or the obstructions of matter. But man was in one respect their superior. He had an immortal soul, and they had not. They might, however, become sharers in man’s immortality if they could inspire one of that race with the passion of love towards them. Hence it was the constant endeavour of the female spirits to captivate the admiration of men, and of the male gnomes, sylphs, salamanders, and undines to be beloved by a woman. The object of this passion, in returning their love, imparted a portion of that celestial fire, the soul; and from that time forth the beloved became equal to the lover, and both, when their allotted course was run, entered together into the mansions of felicity. These spirits, they said, watched constantly over mankind by night and day. Dreams, omens, and presentiments were all their work, and the means by which they gave warning of the approach of danger. But though so well inclined to befriend man for their own sake, the want of a soul rendered them at times capricious and revengeful; they took offence at slight causes, and heaped injuries instead of benefits on the heads of those who extinguished the light of reason that was in them by gluttony, debauchery, and other appetites of the body.”[3] Great as was the excitement produced in the French capital by these placards, pamphlets and reports, it lasted after all but a very few months. The accumulating absurdities became too much, even for the most superstitious, and their fears were overcome by that sense of the ridiculous which speedily manifested itself. Instead of trembling as before, men laughed and derided, and the detection, arrest and summary punishment of a number of swindlers who tried to pass off lumps of gilded brass as pure gold made by the processes of alchemy, aided by a smartly written exposure of the follies of the sect by Gabriel Naudé, soon drove the whole thing clean off the French territory.
CHAPTER III.
Early Leaders—Literature—Romantic Stories.
We now proceed to speak of some of the more prominent of the Rosicrucian leaders and teachers, and to call attention to the literature from which we obtain our only reliable information.
In the sixteenth century lived that extraordinary man Theophrastus Paracelsus, whose writings exercised a greater influence, perhaps, over the minds of his fellow creatures than any other author of his time. No man it is certain had contributed so much as he, to the diffusion of the Cabbalism, Theosophy and Alchemy which had flooded Germany and flowed over a greater part of Western Europe. Now it was generally believed that in the seventeenth century a great and general reformation amongst the human race would take place, as a necessary fore-runner to the day of judgment. In connection with this, Paracelsus made several prophecies which took a very firm hold of the public mind. He declared that the comet which made its appearance in 1572 was the sign and harbinger of the coming revolution, and he prophesied that soon after the death of the Emperor Rudolph, there would be found three treasures that had never been revealed before that time. In the year 1610 there were published at the same time three books which led to the foundation of the Rosicrucian order as a district society. One was called “Universal Reformation of the Whole Wide World.” De Quincey summarises its contents thus: “The Seven Wise Men of Greece, together with M. Cato and Seneca, and a secretary named Mazzonius, are summoned to Delphi by Apollo, at the desire of the Emperor Justinian, and there deliberate, on the best mode of redressing human misery. All sorts of strange schemes are proposed. Thales advised to cut a hole in every man’s breast, and place a little window in it, by which means it would become possible to look into the heart, to detect hypocrisy and vice, and thus to extinguish it. Solon proposes an equal partition of all possessions and wealth. Chilo’s opinion is that the readiest way to the end in view would be to banish out of the world the two infamous and rascally metals gold and silver. Kleolinlus steps forward as the apologist of gold and silver, but thinks that iron ought to be prohibited, because in that case no more wars could be carried on amongst men. Pittacus insists upon more rigorous laws, which should make virtue and merit the sole passports to honour; to which, however, Periander objects that there had never been any scarcity of such laws, nor of princes to execute them, but scarcity enough of subjects conformable to good laws. The conceit of Bias, is that nations should be kept apart from each other, and each confined to its own home; and for this purpose, that all bridges should be demolished, mountains rendered insurmountable, and navigation totally forbidden. Cato, who seems to be the wisest of the party, wishes that God in his mercy would be pleased to wash away all women from the face of the earth by a new deluge, and at the same time to introduce some new arrangement for the continuation of the excellent male sex without female help. Upon this pleasing and sensible proposal the whole company manifest the greatest displeasure, and deem it so abominable that they unanimously prostrate themselves on the ground, and devoutly pray to God “that He would graciously vouchsafe to preserve the lovely race of women” (what absurdity) “and to save the world from a second deluge!” At length after a long debate, the counsel of Seneca prevails; which counsel is this—that out of all ranks a society should be composed having for its object the general welfare of mankind, and pursuing it in secret. This counsel is adopted: though without much hope on the part of the deputation, on account of the desperate condition of ‘the Age,’ who appears before them in person, and describes his own wretched state of health.”