In Southern France there are certain districts covered with pine
groves that are periodically ravaged by fires. Often the pines grow
again, and where before there was nothing but calcined dust, you may
see, some years later, a new forest of resinous trees. But
sometimes, as though the violence of the fire had reached the very
seeds themselves, the hill that was once covered with trees remains
bald and barren for many years. Then suddenly, on the top of the
hill, there springs up a single tree, which, strangely full of life,
rises solitary as though to attest the lost presence of a dead
forest that flourished there at one time.
Likewise, out of the great Albigensian forest region, which was cut
down, burned and reduced to ashes, there survived but one man, who
was to perpetuate the perennial philosophy of all men by
transforming it. Like the solitary pine on the hill, he plunged his
vigorous thought deep into the human soil of his time and saw it
rise high into the blue heaven of the centuries with its foliage of
books. From the Albigenses, there sprang in the middle of the
thirteenth century, the wise man known today under the symbolic name
of Christian Rosenkreutz, who was the last descendant of
the German family of Germelshausen.
So intense was the desire to suppress the heresy that grew up around
this peaceful man that not only were the bodies of his followers
destroyed but also the stones of the houses that had sheltered them,
and the documents that might have enshrined their thought. Besides,
these Hermeticists very soon realized that their only chance
of survival lay in wrapping themselves in obscurity, hiding under
false names, corresponding in cipher. Today, their history can no
longer be traced except under the disguise of legend. But a man who
has left so deep a mark after a life so obscure and so lacking in
wonders and miracles cannot have been created by legend. Discretion,
modesty, unostentatious goodness, knowledge without parade -- these
are not the attributes of a legend. Christian Rosenkreutz is
as real a figure as Jesus or Buddha; their attributes may be
considered more glorious, but their historical foundation is
scarcely more secure.
The original Albigensian doctrines had spread fragmentarily
to the north of France, the Low Countries and Germany. Families of
refugees had found their way there. Solitary men had escaped,
begging their way, from the sunny land in which they were
thenceforward outlaws and accursed. Many of them died. But some
reached the distant countries where the vine does not grow, where
the rivers are more rapid and the sun less hot. And some of them
gave an account of what they had heard in their low houses under the
shelter of the ramparts of Toulouse or in the shadow of Montsegur;
they imparted to others what was still a flaming truth in their
hearts. A few of them were understood. Little nuclei of Albigenses
formed round a preacher, a spare, brown-faced man, who looked like a
Saracen. The seed carried by the wind was thus to germinate in the
country to which chance had brought it.
Under the influence of wandering Albigensians, the doctrine
crossed the fir-grown mountains and flowered in the Rheon district,
on the border of Hesse and Thuringia. In the middle of the
Thuringian forest stood the castle of Germelshausen. The
men who inhabited it were a grim, sullen family, half-brigands,
whose Christianity was mixed with pagan superstitions. They spent
their time fighting their neighbors, and they did not disdain to
ambush and rob travelers. They venerated an idol of worn stone, the
origin of which was unknown to them. It was probably the fruit of
some long-past pillaging expedition. It might have been a Greek
statue of Athena. It stood in the courtyard of the castle beside
the chapel door.
The period was the middle of the thirteenth century. Germany had
just been devastated by a fanatical Dominican, Conrad of Marburg,
envoy of Pope Gregory IX. Another Dominican, Tors,
carried on his work. He was accompanied by a one-eyed layman called
Jean, who claimed that his single eye had been given the
divine faculty of distinguishing at first glance a heretic from a
good Christian. Almost all who came within the field of view of
this terrible eye were marked with the sign of heresy. It was no
doubt enough for him to catch a glimpse, through the rocks and firs,
of the towers of the castle of Germelshausen to discover from
the color of its stone that it sheltered a brood of heretics.
Perhaps something of the power of the eternal spirit was given off
from the ancient statue that stood in the courtyard. Count Conrad
of Thuringia, who had razed to the ground the little town of
Willinsdorf, decided on the destruction of the castle. He besieged
it several times, at intervals of some years. The castle fell at
last, and the whole family of Germelshausen (which now
adhered to the mystical doctrine of the Albigenses, practiced
its austerities, and believed in reincarnation and in the
Coagulated Body that delivers from reincarnation) was put to
death at the final assault.
The youngest son, who was then five years old, was carried from the
burning castle by a monk, who had taken up his quarters in the
chapel and was struck by the amazing intelligence shown by the
child. This monk, this ascetic dweller in the chapel of the
Germelshausens, was an Albigensian adept from Languedoc, and
it was he who had instructed the family in the Hermetic disciplines.
After the siege, he took refuge in a monastery nearby, into which
the breath of heresy had already penetrated. It was in this
monastery that the last of the Germelshausens, who was to be
known by the name of Christian Rosenkreutz, was brought up
and educated. He learned Greek and Latin and, with four other monks
of the community, formed a fraternal group determined to devote
themselves to the search for truth. They made a plan to seek this
truth at the source whence it had always sprung, the East.
The Travels of
Rosenkreutz
Two of them started out, Christian Rosenkreutz, who was then
fifteen, and one of the four monks whom the
Fama Fraternitatis calls
"Brother P.A.L." (The Fama Fraternitatis was published
anonymously in the seventeenth century and is a crude summary of all
that was known at that time of the original Rosicrucians.) The
pretense for their journey was a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre.
Their real aim was to reach a center of initiation, and they no
doubt had precise knowledge as to where it was to be found. However,
"Brother P.A.L." died in Cyprus, where the hazards of travel had led
the two companions.
Christian soon continued his journey alone and, no doubt as a result
of directions he had received, made for Damascus. He did so because
the tie with the East, which was about to be broken in the West,
still existed there. Just as Apollonius had learned from the
Pythagorean groups among whom he lived the exact whereabouts of the
abode of the earth’s wise men, so Christian Rosenkreutz knew,
probably from the adept who had instructed the Germelshausens, that
Damascus lay on the path to initiation.
It cannot have been easy to leave the Christian kingdom of Cyrus for
the country of the infidels. But to him who sincerely seeks truth
all religions are alike; and when he left Christian territory,
Rosenkreutz assumed the dress and appearance of a Muslim
pilgrim. At that time Damascus was under the dominion of the
Mamelukes. All the learned men and poets of Persia had taken
refuge there from the invading Mongols under Hulagu. The
destruction of Baghdad and Nichapur and the annihilation of their
universities and libraries convinced the intellectuals of the East
that thought was dying. There were rumors of the end of the world.
There had been great earthquakes in Syria and a rain of scorpions in
Mesopotamia. The Mongols occupied Persia and watchers on the
ramparts of Damascus searched the horizon anxiously for the
appearance of their advance guards. The city and its people were
uneasy to say the least.
How great must have been Christian’s astonishment in the city of the
three hundred mosques to converse among men learned in the
literature of the East! What discoveries for a young man so greedy
for knowledge! He read the Guide of the Erring by
Maimonides, the Alchemy of Happiness by Gazali,
the Golden Meadows by Mazoudi. He heard Omar Khayam’s
poetry recited and made every effort to understand his books on
algebra and Euclid. He discussed astronomy with the disciples of
Nazir Eddin. He meditated on the Masnavi, the sacred book
of the Sufis, and was amazed to find in it the same mystical
pantheism of his spiritual fathers the Albigenses. How barbarous
Germany must have seemed to him amid the intellectual effervescence
that surrounded him. In the presence of the great Arab civilization,
now drawing to its close, he understood still more clearly the
necessity for his mission, which was to preserve the truth of spirit
and transmit it to the men of his race.
After several years’ study at Damascus, when he had acquired the
greatest sum of knowledge possible to a man whose sole aim is to
learn, he thought to obtain a higher knowledge, for which he was
then ripe. The enigmatic name of the place to which he directed his
steps has been preserved by tradition. It was Damcar, in
Arabia. At Damcar, a word that probably designates a "monastery
in the sand," there was at that time, and possibly there still is, a
center of initiates. Damcar was for him what the abode of wise men
was for Apollonius. He remained there some years, then went to
Egypt, crossed the Mediterranean, and visited Fez.
In the reign of Abou-Said-Othman there was in Fez (city of
the "six hundred playing fountains"), a school of astrology and
magic. It had become secret since the persecutions of Abou Yusuf. It
was there that Rosenkreutz learned divination by the stars
and certain laws that govern the hidden forces of Nature. But he was
eager now to return to his own country. He soon left Fez and took
ship for Spain. It was probably at this time that he took the name
of Rosenkreutz, a symbolic word that embodied the essence of his
beliefs. In Spain, he entered into relations with the Alumbrados,
a secret society that had come into being under the influence of the
Arabs and which studied the sciences and practiced a mystical
philosophy derived from that of the Hermeticists and Neo-Platonists.
They were engaged also in the search for the Philosopher’s Stone in
accordance with the writings of Artephius. Not long afterwards, this
secret society would be wiped out by the Inquisition.
His Mission
The Fama Fraternitatis recounts an echo of the disappointment
experienced by Christian Rosenkreutz. He was anxious to
communicate to others the new truths that he was bringing in the
domain of science and philosophy. He hoped to set right mistakes, to
transmit with love that which he had learned. But he was received
with scorn and laughter. In every century, half-knowledge has
enveloped pseudo-scholars in an illusion of certainty that prevents
them receiving any new ideas. Before a mediocre mind can grasp an
unfamiliar truth, habituation is necessary, even though the truth be
radiant as the sun. It was then that Christian Rosenkreutz
realized that only slowly can wisdom enter the human heart. He had
to remember the persecutions that had struck down too eager
possessors of the truth. And, though he wondered at the time
necessary for the spirit to develop, whereas a flower opens in a
single day and a tree reaches its full height in a single century,
he reconciled himself to leaving the acorns to the pigs and keeping
the pearls for the elect few. He considered the fine filters through
which thought must trickle to the men of his race in rare,
microscopic drops, so that they might not be consumed by it. He
counted up how many he would be able to initiate and saw that their
number could not be more than eight. He laid the foundations of an
occult group that was so secret and the members bound together by an
oath that was so terrible, that the group was able subsequently to
act as he had ordered, to pursue and attain its aims, for nearly
three centuries without its existence being known, except by vague
whisperings.
The curiosity of superficial men who find pleasure in anecdotal
history may have been disappointed by this secrecy. But who could
maintain that it is due to the egoism of a superior minority
scorning to enlighten their fellows and share their knowledge with
them? How many men are there in the world in the present day who are
sufficiently free from intellectual pride to entertain an absolutely
new idea? Is not this pride a barrier that precludes even the
approach of a new idea? If Christian Rosenkreutz disembarked
today from Fez and tried to explain that the problem of the unity of
matter is linked with the development of love in man -- would he not
appear ridiculous to every academician in the world? If he tried to
teach, would he not find, on the part of those who wish to learn,
this incapacity to receive? To help him without hope of reward,
would he find now, as he found then, even eight faithful followers?
Christian Rosenkreutz passed through France without leaving
any trace. It must have been about the time when the mystic
Marguerite Porete was burned in Paris, and Christian was
probably anxious to get back to Germany. Long years had passed since
he had been there. Germany was affected by all sorts of mystical
currents that sprang from the Albigensian heresy. There were the
Brothers of the Free Spirit, who affirmed the vanity of external
cults and sacraments, denied purgatory and hell, said that man was a
fragment of God, which must, after a long series of lives, return at
last to the divine essence. There were the Friends of God, who aimed
at emancipation from desire, and were addicted to practices
analogous to those of the Yoga system, while their philosophy was
modeled closely on Eastern Hermetic philosophy.
But the Church organized its persecution more intensely than these
sects propagated themselves. Christian Rosenkreutz, seeing
the number of imprisonments and burnings, was compelled to weigh the
danger into which the spiritual light brought those among whom it
spread. He went back to Thuringia to find the three monks, who had
been the companions of his early studies. They formed a brotherhood
of four members, and the number was increased a little later to
eight. It was at this time that the brotherhood of the Rosicrucians
had its greatest efflorescence and contained a greater number of
true initiates than was ever again reached. All, the members of the
brotherhood were Germans, except the brother designated by the
Fama Fraternitatis under the initials "Brother I.A.," who
came from another country, probably Languedoc.
His Teachings
Christian Rosenkreutz taught his disciples the secret writing
and the symbols by which adepts corresponded with one another. He
wrote for their use a book that was the synthesis of his philosophy
and contained a summary of his scientific and medical knowledge. The
role played by the brotherhood seems to have been to influence the
few men in the West who were at that time interested in science, so
that science might be turned in the direction of objectivity
(alchemical Distillation). It is possible that this was the great
crossroad of our civilization. If the aim of the Rosicrucians
had been attained, science, instead of being organized for material
ends only, might have been the source of a boundless development of
the spirit. We have seen that it has not been so.
Rosenkreutz made rules for his disciples’ life. The first of these
rules was unselfishness, which will always be the most difficult
virtue to put into practice. The men who have a reputation for
unselfishness and live among us with a vague halo of generosity, are
only men who are less greedy than others. Nobody is unselfish. There
is not a single example in our modern society of a man big enough to
break the terrible bond of riches and pass readily and
unostentatiously from wealth to poverty, or even from poverty to
greater poverty. As soon as the mind has reached a certain level, it
understands that it is in this direction that the first step must be
taken. Yet it does not take that step. One of the bravest men of
all, and one most deeply convinced of the virtue of poverty --
Tolstoy -- made up his mind only a few hours before his death to
become a wandering beggar. But he was too late, like most of us.
Another essential rule was absence of pride. The Rosicrucian
had to pass unnoticed, might not pride himself on his knowledge, had
to remain so far as possible anonymous. For the ordinary man,
modesty is as impossible to practice as poverty. It is even a matter
of common observation that great intellectual faculties are almost
always accompanied by a form of stupid, boastful vanity. And this
very vanity is regarded with favor as the sign of genius.
The third rule of the Rosicrucians was chastity. Wise men
have always attached great importance to chastity, though neither
Pythagoras nor Socrates nor Plato nor the Alexandrine philosophers
practiced it rigorously. Possibly it is nothing more than a
preventive measure against excess and against the violence generated
by such desires. Logically, if pleasure in eating is not forbidden
there is no reason why the pleasure of sex should be forbidden. And
these two orders of physical pleasures are in some degree
comparable. In the ordinary man they are both equally indispensable
to life. Yet while eating involves only the physical pleasure
arising out of a good digestion, the other, if practiced with a
person who is loved, contains marvelous possibilities of pleasure
and may even be a path to perfection in itself. Only, at present,
nothing is commonly known of this path. The laws that teach how a
high spiritual level may be attained through community of desire and
its mutual satisfaction have not yet been written by any modern
master. I have never heard even of there being any oral teaching on
that subject. A prudishness that is as old as the world has cut
short with a command of silence the forward impulse that humanity
might have received through the flesh.
The men, designated by the symbol of the rose and cross, traveled
all over the world, each one with a mission to fulfill. But with one
exception nothing was ever heard of them again. "Brother I.A.,"
according to the Fama, returned to Southern France, where it may
have been his task to rekindle the old Albigensian flame. But he
must by that time have been very old. Did he succeed in
resuscitating the ancient sect with the same secrecy that surrounded
the Rosicrucians? Tradition reports only that he died near
Narbonne.
Historically, nothing is known of the activities of Rosenkreutz
himself during the last part of his life, that is to say, at the
beginning of the fourteenth century. It may, however, be supposed,
without great fear of error, that he inspired Jean de Mechlin,
who preached in Northern Germany, and that at Brussels he was the
source of truth from which the mystic Bloemert drew. This
inspired woman performed miraculous cures and published writings in
which she taught the liberation of one’s inner being through love.
Her disciples asserted that on either side of her they saw a seraph,
or angel who advised her.
It was in all probability Christian Rosenkreutz who was the
mysterious visitor (as to whose identity so much has been written)
of Johann Tauler. Johann Tauler was the most celebrated
doctor of theology of his time. The learned world of Europe came to
Strasbourg to hear his sermons. One day he was visited by a layman
whose name he never divulged and who converted him to a mystical
philosophy, the ideal of which was absorption into the divine
essence. For two years, he kept silence and became a member of the
Friends of God. This sect possessed the same characteristics as the
Albigenses: It rejected as the expression of evil the cruel god of
the Old Testament; it condemned marriage and taught poverty as a
practical means of divine realization.
The Death of
Rosenkreutz
Of the death of Christian Rosenkreutz nothing is known. As in
the case of Apollonius of Tyana, no burial place can be
determined. It was a rule among the adepts to maintain secrecy with
regard both to their birth and to their death. Was it merely to
avoid the violation of the grave and the profanation of the body to
which the Church condemned heretics? Or could it be to permit the
transference of their spirit into another human body and thus
prevent even the suspicion of a secret so astounding to ordinary
men?
There has come down to us nothing more than an unsubstantiated
legend regarding the burial place of Christian Rosenkreutz.
Two and a half centuries after his death, at the time when the story
of his life was beginning to become known, his disciples, or rather
men who would have wished to be his disciples, asserted that they
had found a geometrically proportioned cave, in which rested, bathed
in artificial sunlight, the still intact body of the master.
In all times men have wished that those whom they considered greater
than themselves should not die in the flesh. They attach less
importance to the permanence of their spirit, although of course
that is the only possible form of eternity for them. Thus, when the
bodies of Catholic or Muslim saints are found, they are said to emit
a pleasant odor. But the true fragrance given off by the bodies of
wise men in the silence of the earth and in corruption is made of no
material quintessential atom, no perfumed volatilization. The subtle
radiations of their soul float over the places where they lie and
impregnate them long after the bodies have ceased even to be dust.
But you must yourself be a wise man to establish connection with
this posthumous life; and if your perception allows you to catch a
glimpse of the fact that the best cannot escape the law, it will
also make you feel more deeply the sadness inherent in the changes
of life and death.
The Rise of
the Rosicrucians
At the beginning of the seventeenth century there arose a sort of
Rosicrucian mania. The
Fama Fraternitas
and the
Confessio Fraternitatis
published, in a naive form, what ordinary men knew of the
sect of Rosicrucians -- which indeed was extremely little. A
great many philosophers and scholars, as well as many impostors,
attracted by the sublime philosophy of the Rosicrucians, claimed to
be their followers. Secret societies were formed, which very soon
ceased to be secret owing to the vanity of their members, who
boasted of their membership. Most of these groups, when they were
not Lutheran, bowed to the authority of the Church. Most alchemists
considered themselves Rosicrucians, owing to the philosophy’s
Hermetic viewpoint. Descartes tried to establish contact with the
genuine brotherhood of Rosicrucians, and he searched for them
in the Low Countries and in Germany, but on his return to France
said he had not been able to find out anything definite about the
group.
It has been asserted that Paracelsus, Francis Bacon
and Spinoza were all Rosicrucians; but there seems to be
little proof of this. In the eighteenth century, a new grade, that
of the Rosicrucian Degree, was introduced into Freemasonry by the
Jesuits, who had made their way inside the movement and everywhere
formed groups within it. The hardy independence of the heresies of
the thirteenth century had completely disappeared. The so-called
Rosicrucians recognized the sacraments, studied the Old Testament as
the source of all truth, acknowledged the power of the Church and
the infallibility of the pope. Is this not the line of development
that all spiritual currents follow? The tree produces a beautiful
flower, a perfect fruit, and falls victim to an obscure force that
poisons the sap and kills the living tree.
Nonetheless, the true Rosicrucians carried on their work. Their
brotherhood has never ceased to remain secret. Through the
self-sought obscurity of each member, no one ever knew the identity
of those who belonged to the brotherhood. From the assertion of
certain men that they were Rosicrucians, the one sure inference was
that they were not members of the sect founded by Christian
Rosenkreutz. The influence of this free spirit was felt in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by all who struggled against
the tyranny of Calvinism and Lutheranism, which were as intolerant
as the Inquisition, and against the intransigence of the
universities, which tried to submit all thought to the intellectual
discipline of Aristotle. But the messengers remained faithful to
their vow not to make themselves known. The message reached its
destination, but it was not known who had brought it to light.
Certain characteristics in the lives of certain men may, however,
give rise to the supposition that they were the true possessors of
the Rosicrucian tradition. Paracelsus practiced medicine
gratuitously; his philosophy was Neo-Platonic and Hermetic; he wore
only very unpretending clothes and exalted poverty; upon his
appointment as professor of surgery by the senate of Bile, he burned
in the amphitheater before the students the old medical books, which
were believed in blindly but which, owing to the respect in which
they were held, were actually an obstacle to the search for truth.
Philalethes, who possessed the secret of the Philosopher’s
Stone, traveled all over the world to heal the sick; his continual
preoccupation was to escape the fame that his cures brought him.
Although the Comte de Saint-Germain had a fondness for
precious stones, he may, for other reasons, be numbered among the
true Rosicrucians. Yet the same conclusion cannot be drawn in
the case of Spinoza from the simple facts that his seal was in the
form of a rose and that he did not sign his work. Too zealous
writers have assigned to the Rosicrucians every remarkable figure of
the last few centuries.
In 1888, Stanislas de Guaita and Papus founded the
cabalistic Order of the Rosy Cross, with a ceremonial, grades
and, possibly, special dress. These facts, together with the stir
that they made over this foundation, were sufficient indication that
the new order was not inspired by the tradition of its original
founder. The same may be said of the Catholic Order of the Rosy
Cross founded by Josephin Peladan at the same time. These
orders had only an ephemeral life. At the present day there can
still be found various groups, almost all of them Christian, calling
themselves Rosicrucians, but they do not correspond to any
reality based on initiation.
The only true Rosicrucians -- the eight heirs who have
followed one another in unbroken succession of the Albigensian
Christian von Germelshausen -- have carried on their secret
work uninterruptedly. Perhaps those who first breathed in the
perfume of the spiritual rose and savored its delicate truth,
considered the game lost, they abandoned the races that strove only
for material well-being and retired into the inaccessible solitude
of the Himalayas and elsewhere. But a game in which the stake is
divine can never be lost. Possibly the true Rosicrucians left
Europe at one time and have since returned. The legend of them,
after providing one of the chief topics of conversation among
European intellectuals, died down after the French Revolution. At
the present day it interests only a small number of seekers after
knowledge. The eight wise men have returned to their task, though
this task has become excessive. By what means are they seeking to
accomplish it now?
Sometimes it needs very little to turn a human soul in a new and
better direction. It may happen that the reading of a book is
enough, or a chance word that you hear, or even the face of a kind
man that you catch a glimpse of one evening that reminds you that
good exists. Each one of us, when the moment has come or when he or
she asks with sufficient intensity, may meet one of the eight
wandering wise men. Let him not be in a bad temper that day, or
inattentive, or tired. Wisdom is not capricious, as luck is; but it
visits us much less often. He who sees the branches of the cross
Open towards the four cardinal points of the spirit, may take the
wrong road, may go backwards, may be for the time overwhelmed by
ignorance. But he who holds his anchorage in the storm, he sees the
light on the hilltop; sooner or later he will once more find the
right way. All glory to the messenger who found this safety-giving
signal and fixed it in wood or stone that it might be transmitted to
others! All glory to the messenger who, through the virtue of the
symbol, created the possibility that the truth should be preserved.
He has added name and number to the milestone; he has been the
comfort of the traveler, the safety of the lost wanderer.
The Rosicrucians took the union of the rose and the
cross for their symbol because this union embodies the meaning
of their effort and emphasizes the fact that that effort must be
made by all men. For immemorial ages, the wisest among us have
discovered that the aim of humanity on earth is to attain divine
wisdom. Only two ways lead to this divine wisdom: knowledge and
love. The cross is the oldest symbol in the world. Ever since the
appearance of the earliest civilizations, it has denoted mind or
spirit moving towards perfection since it divides reality into the
Below and the Above. The rose symbolizes love because by its
perfume, color, and delicacy; it is Nature’s masterpiece of beauty,
and beauty excites love, just as love transforms into beauty the
elements on which it is bestowed. By the rose blooming in the middle
of the cross, the whole meaning of the universe is explained. The
truth shines out with splendor for all with a deeper sense of
knowing. In order to realize his possibilities and become perfect,
mankind must develop his capacity for love to the point of loving
all creatures and all forms perceptible to his senses; he must
enlarge his capacity for knowledge and understanding to the point of
comprehending the laws that govern the worlds, and of being able to
proceed, through his intuition and the loving intelligence of his
heart, from every effect to every cause.
The Symbol of
the Rosy Cross
He who reaches higher knowledge through an enlarged intelligence and
intuition will be able to love only those persons and things whose
machinery he understands, whose movements he truly sees, whose
passions he comprehends as though they were his own. He who reaches
the state of perfect love through the emotional impetus of the heart
will see the barriers of ignorance fall before him and will conquer
knowledge by the bestowal of himself on that which he loves. For the
two ways meet and at a certain level become one.
The symbol of the Rosy Cross is well-founded and eternal, and
there will be no need of any other for thousands of human
evolutions. Every man can weigh himself up by reference to the rose
and cross and can find in it a provisional touchstone of good and
evil. It is the interrogation point which is formed in many
consciences, though they may not confess it to themselves. What is
good and what is evil? Am I right to do something that seems good
from my point of view and evil from that of others? Naturally the
rose and cross cannot serve as a key to every riddle, for there are
too many doors in the darkness of the soul. The agonizing question
that every man asks himself at least once in his lifetime and most
men ask themselves a thousand times, the question whether it is more
important to develop oneself or to help others, whether it is better
to sacrifice oneself or to progress by study, remains unsettled. But
the two ever-present symbols give man the framework of an answer, if
he is sincere with himself.
Whenever a man becomes identified through love with that totality of
universes that we call God, or with a landscape, or with some
creature, though it be only a dog, he is on the way of the rose,
protected by it and enriched by its substance. Whenever he emerges
from his ignorance, learns a fact or a law, allows his mind to go a
little farther in knowledge of reality, he is progressing towards
that super-terrestrial and super-celestial point at which the cross
stretches forth its four spiritual branches.
That is the message that Christian Rosenkreutz brought to the
West. It is a message that may seem very modest to professional
skeptics (who are convinced that they possess all knowledge and
consider hatefulness more important than love). But it was brought
very humbly by a messenger who gloried in concealing his name and
who, after journeying for more than a century to transmit his little
truth, has left no other trace of his passing than the design of the
open flower at the center of the cross.