WYNN WESTCOTT, M.B., Magister Templi.”
In September of the previous year a correspondent asked if any one could inform him if there were still any members of the society of the Rosy Cross (or Rosicrucians); and if there were, how could one communicate with them? Also if there were still any alchemists searching for the philosopher’s stone and the transmutation of metals? This evoked the following reply:—
“Some say the modern Rosicrucians are the same as the Freemasons; but as in the main they lived isolated, they could have been but slightly connected with the masons. The range of celebrated men included in the society is large:—Avicenna, Roger Bacon, Cardan, down to Mr. Peter Woulfe, F.R.S., who lived at No. 2, Barnard’s Inn, and was, according to Mr. Brand, the last true believer in alchemy. But no doubt some few still dabble in these occult things.” Notes and Queries, Series 6, vol 8, 317.
On the same page of the same volume we have:—“The Rosicrucians are now (how I know not) incorporate with, and form one of the highest ranks, if not the highest rank, of English Freemasons.” Also:—“In reply to Charles D. Sunderland, allow me to say there are yet living both Rosicrucians and Alchemists.”
De Quincey does not hesitate for a moment in deciding as to the identity between Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry. He says:—“I shall now undertake to prove that Rosicrucianism was transplanted to England, where it flourished under a new name, under which name it has been since re-exported to us in common with other countries of Christendom. For I affirm as the main thesis of my concluding labours, that Freemasonry is neither more nor less than Rosicrucianism as modified by those who transplanted it to England.” He then proceeds with an argument to shew this identity between the two, an argument to which our limited space forbids us to do more than briefly allude. He says:—“In 1633 we have seen that the old name was abolished; but as yet no new name was substituted; in default of such a name they were styled ad interim by the general term, wise men. This, however, being too vague an appellation for men who wished to form themselves into a separate and exclusive society, a new one had to be devised bearing a more special allusion to their characteristic objects. Now the immediate hint for the Masons was derived from the legend contained in the Fama Fraternitatis, of the “House of the Holy Ghost.” This had been a subject of much speculation in Germany; and many had been simple enough to understand the expression of a literal house, and had inquired after it up and down the empire. But Andrea had made it impossible to understand it in any other than an allegoric sense, by describing it as a building that would remain invisible to the godless world for ever.” Theophilus Schweighart also had spoken of it thus: “It is a building,” says he, “a great building, carens fenestris et foribus, a princely, nay an imperial palace, everywhere visible, and yet not seen by the eyes of man.” This building in fact, represented the purpose or object of the Rosicrucians. And what was that? It was the secret wisdom, or, in their language, magic—viz., 1. Philosophy of nature, or occult knowledge of the works of God; 2. Theology, or the occult knowledge of God himself; 3. Religion, or God’s occult intercourse with the spirit of man, which they imagined to have been transmitted from Adam through the Cabbalists to themselves. But they distinguished between a carnal and a spiritual knowledge of this magic. The spiritual knowledge is the business of Christianity, and is symbolised by Christ himself as a rock, and a building of human nature, in which men are the stones and Christ the corner stone. But how shall stones move and arrange themselves into a building? “They must become living stones.” But what is a living stone? “A living stone is a mason who builds himself up into the wall as a part of the temple of human nature.” In these passages we see the use of the allegoric name masons upon the extinction of the former name. In other places Fludd expresses this still more distinctly. The society was therefore to be a masonic society, in order to represent typically that temple of the Holy Spirit which it was their business to erect in the spirit of man. This temple was the abstract of the doctrine of Christ, who was the Grand-master: hence the light from the East, of which so much is said in Rosicrucian and Masonic books. After pursuing the matter in a similar strain somewhat further, De Quincey sums up the results of his inquiry into the origin and nature of Freemasonry as follows:—
1. The original Freemasons were a society that arose out of the Rosicrucian mania, certainly within the thirteen years from 1633 to 1646, and probably between 1633 and 1640. Their object was magic in the cabbalistic sense—i.e., the occult wisdom transmitted from the beginning of the world, and matured by Christ; to communicate this when they had it, to search for it when they had it not: and both under an oath of secrecy.
2. The object of Freemasonry was represented under the form of Solomon’s Temple, as a type of the true Church, whose cornerstone is Christ. This Temple is to be built of men, or living stones: and the true method and art of building with men it is the province of magic to teach. Hence it is that all the masonic symbols either refer to Solomon’s Temple, or are figurative modes of expressing the ideas and doctrines of magic in the sense of the Rosicrucians, and their mystical predecessors in general.
3. The Freemasons having once adopted symbols, &c., from the art of masonry, to which they were led by the language of Scripture, went on to connect themselves in a certain degree with the order itself of handicraft masons, and adopted their distribution of members into apprentices, journeymen, and masters. Christ is the Grand-Master, and was put to death whilst laying the foundation of the temple of human nature.
4. The Jews, Mahomedans and Roman Catholics were all excluded from the early lodges of Freemasons. The Roman Catholics were excluded on account of their intolerance: for it was a distinguishing feature of the Rosicrucians that they first conceived the idea of a society which should act on the principle of religious toleration, wishing that nothing should interfere with the most extensive co-operation in their plans except such differences about the essentials of religion as make all co-operation impossible.
5. Freemasonry, as it honoured all forms of Christianity, deeming them approximations more or less remote to the ideal truth, so it abstracted from all forms of civil polity as alien from its own objects, which, according to their briefest expressions, are (1) The Glory of God; (2) The service of men.