6. There is nothing in the imagery, mythi, ritual, or purposes of the elder Freemasonry, which may not be traced to the romances of Father Rosycross, as given in the Fama Fraternitatis.
De Quincey is not the only writer who has expressed himself to the effect that the systems of Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism are virtually identical; others have said so as well, and in stating their views have not scrupled to write most severely respecting what they believed to be the tricks and impositions of both. Mr. George Soane in his “New Curiosities of Literature,” says of the Freemasons, that he can shew their society sprang out of decayed Rosicrucianism just as the beetle is engendered from a muck-heap. And further he says, “not a few of the old nursery tales still maintain their ground amongst us; and of these Freemasonry is the most disseminated and the most ridiculous.” “Of course,” he continues “such an opinion will shock many gentlemen, who wear aprons, leather or silk as the case may be, and who amuse themselves with talking of light from the east, and the building of Solomon’s Temple, and with many other childish pranks, which if played off in the broad daylight would be ridiculous.”
He goes on to say:—“In wading through a mass of alchemical trash for very different purposes, I was struck by the great similarity both of the doctrine and symbols existing between the Rosicrucians and the Freemasons. With more haste than judgment I at first imagined that the brethren of the Rosy Cross were only imitators of the Freemasons, but after a long and patient enquiry, pursued through more volumes than I should like to venture upon again for such an object, I was forced to abandon my position. The Freemasons did indeed, like the Rosicrucians, lay claim to great antiquity, but while some of them modestly dated the origin of their order from Adam, I could by no means trace it back farther than the first half of the seventeenth century. Their historical assertions, when fairly tested and examined, crumbled into dust; the negative proofs were as strong against them as they well could be; and at length the conclusion was to my mind inevitable.”
Soane then proceeds to say:—“I feel not the slightest hesitation in saying that the Freemasons have no secret beyond a few trumpery legends and the attaching of certain religious and moral meanings to a set of emblems, principally borrowed from the mechanical art of the builder. I affirm too that all such symbols, with their interpretations, are of Rosicrucian origin, and that the Freemasons never belonged to the working guilds, their objects being totally different.”
Professor Buhle in his last chapter maintains that “Freemasonry is neither more nor less than Rosicrucianism as modified by those who transplanted it into England.” Dr. Mackey, however, takes a contrary view, and in the Synoptical Index to his “Symbolism of Freemasonry, and Rosicrucians,” says:—“A sect of hermetical philosophers, founded in the fifteenth century, who were engaged in the study of abstruse sciences. It was a secret society much resembling the masonic in its organization and in some of the subjects of its investigation, but it was no other way connected with Freemasonry.”
Fifty years ago a writer in the Penny Cyclopædia said:—“Some say that the order of Rosicrucians is identical with that of Freemasons, one of whose degrees or dignities is called in some countries the degree of the Red Cross. The Rosicrucians have not been heard of as a separate order for nearly a century past, but some have thought that they continued to exist under the name of the Illuminati, who were much talked of in Germany and France in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Barruel, after describing the ceremonies with which candidates were admitted to the degree of Red Cross in some Freemasons’ Lodges, which however, he says, vary in different countries, observes that these ceremonies which were apparently allusive to the Passion of Jesus Christ, were differently interpreted, according to the dispositions of the candidates; that some saw in it a memento of the Passion, others an introduction to the arcana of alchemy and magic, and others at last a blasphenous invective against the founder of Christianity which the Rosicrucians had derived from the Templars of old.”
THE ROSIE CRUCIAN PRAYER TO GOD.
Jesus Mihi Omnia.
ᐃ