And Europe had at last given birth to the child of Enlightenment.
*
SUB UMBRA ALARUM TUARUM JEHOVA
‘Hide me under the shadow of Thy wings, Jehova’
ONE MORNING in 1623, Parisians were hailed by mysterious placards on the streets of the city:
‘We, the deputies of the Higher College of the Rose Croix, do make our stay, visibly and invisibly in this place, by the grace of the Most High, to whom turn the hearts of the just.
We demonstrate and instruct without books and distinctions, the ability to speak all manner of tongues of the countries we choose to be, in order to draw our fellow creatures from the error of death…’
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During the middle ages, the Church’s stranglehold kept the masses in a twilight realm between the practical realities of survival, the hope of heaven and the threat of hell.
At a time when most of humanity was beaten down by misery and suffering, interminable wars were being fought in the name of religion and the rich held the power of life and death over the common people, social reform, the healing of the sick and religious freedom seemed unattainable.
Yet, from the mystery schools of Egypt, Chaldea, Persia and India, there has been carried through the ages, a gnosis, grounded in nature and informed by the highest ideals of service to humanity.
It was brought to Europe with the traders from the East, the alchemists, by the crusader knights in their contact with the Arabs, with the troubadours in their love songs, hidden in the monasteries and religious orders.
This knowledge had always been proclaimed heretical and brutally suppressed.
With Europe mired in this bigotry and ignorance, it is the tenacity and courage of the few who fought to disseminate the truth that shines through the centuries…men like Copernicus, Galileo, Paracelsus and Giordano Bruno.
The great Dominican, Bruno was burnt at the stake for holding to the infinity of the universe, the possibility that there could be life on other worlds.
Copernicus was so terrified of the Church’s reaction to his discoveries that his works were only published after his death. And Paracelsus wandered from one land to another, healing the sick, taking no fee, showing ordinary people the power inherent in nature… because the learned would not listen.
Christian Rosencreutz was expounded as a myth by his supposed creator, the brilliant theologian Johannes Andreae, one time abbot of Bebenhausen, who years later blamed it on the depravity of his sixteen year old imagination. At a time when the stake and the rack were very real possibilities, denial was the only form of defence. He said he was a ludibrium, a joke, and it kept him away from the prying eyes of the inquisition.
Two strange documents were published in Germany in the early seventeenth century, the ‘Fama Fraternitatis’ published at Kassel in 1614 and a year later the ‘Confessio Fraternitatis,’ elaborating on the former, together with the “Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz,’ they were regarded as the “Rosicrucian Manifestos.’
And they caused a sensation throughout Europe.
They told the story of an august fraternity, the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross, and one erstwhile wanderer Frater CRC, whose search for knowledge brought him into contact with the wise men of Damcar, in Arabia.
His attempt to share the knowledge he’d acquired with the learned of Europe in the hope of a humanistic reform was unsuccessful, so he gathered together this gnosis and founded a fraternity, based on the ideals of tolerance, the welfare of humanity and the right of every man to find his true place in the great wonder of nature.
It survives to this day.
Authors note:
I owe a great debt to the manuscript ‘Fama Fraternitatis.’
It is for the spirit and love of humanity embodied in its simple allegory that this work was written.
M.G.
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