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THIS 7 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE BOOK: American Rosae Crucis 1916: A Magazine of Life's Mysteries, by H. Spencer Lewis. To purchase the entire book, please order ISBN 0766106977.Download Description
THIS 7 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE BOOK: American Rosae Crucis 1916: A Magazine of Life's Mysteries, by H. Spencer Lewis. To purchase the entire book, please order ISBN 0766106977. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Fascinating!
What a wonderful book! Recommended not only for scholars, but also for the layperson interested in alchemy and the Western esoteric tradition. The reader learns not only about the adventurous life and fascinating writings of the famous German alchemist Michael Maier, but also gets insight into the facts and myths concerning the origins of Rosicrucianism. Tilton has opened a fascinating world to the reader in this book.

Quest for the Phoenix
Table of Contents

Foreword
I Introduction: Jung and Early Modern Alchemy
1 The alchemical chimera 1
2 The reception of Jung amongst historians of alchemy 2
3 The arguments of Principe and Newman 9
4 The origins of Jung's alchemy and the work of Richard Noll 18
5 'Secret threads': the seventeenth century 'Carl Jung of Mainz' and Count Michael Maier 22
6 Spiritual alchemy, Rosicrucianism and the work of Count Michael Maier 30

II Maier's Formative Years
1 The context of Maier's life and thought 35
2 Auguries of fortune: Maier's childhood and parentage 38
3 The influence of Governor Heinrich Rantzau 45
4 Galenism and Maier's studies at Frankfurt an der Oder 48
5 'First love and grief': Maier's peregrinatio academica 54
6 The theses on epilepsy 59
7 Contact with the arcana 61
8 Maier's first alchemical experiment 65

III Bohemia and England
1 Maier at the court of Emperor Rudolf II 69
2 The Hymnosophia 71
3 The reversal of fortune 77
4 The most secret of secrets 80
5 A 'Rosicrucian mission' to England? 87
6 The seventeenth rung of the alchemical ladder and the art of gold-making 91
7 A journey to England 99
8 Francis Anthony and the 'drinkable gold' 102
9 The Golden Tripod: "Truth is concealed under the cover of shadows" 107

IV The Rosicrucian 'Imposture'
1 Illness and a chance encounter 113
2 The origins of Rosicrucianism and the Leipzig Manuscript of Michael Maier 116
3 Johann Valentin Andreae and the nature of the Order 127
4 The serious jest 131
5 An invitation to Rosicrucians, wherever they may lie hidden 139
6 Uncovering the true Brethren 150
7 Defining Rosicrucianism: Silentium post Clamores and the Themis Aurea 160
8 Regni Christi frater: Maier's 'entrance into the Order' 173

V The Completion of the Work
1 The squaring of the natural circle 181
2 Maier and the Calvinist court of Moritz of Hessen-Kassel 189
3 Millennialism, nationalism and the descent into war 192
4 The Civitas Corporis Humani - procuring a medicine of piety 202
5 Ulysses and the death of Maier 208
6 The phoenix and the return of the long-absent traveller 215

VI Conclusion: Maier and the Historiography of Alchemy
1 Piety and the coniunctio oppositorum 233
2 Chymia and alchemia 235
3 The 'Tradition' and the fate of Maier's thought 237
4 Alchemy and the re-emergence of Rosicrucianism 249
5 The historiography of alchemy 253

Bibliography 257
Index 278
Illustrations 289 ... Read more

Book Description
THIS 28 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE BOOK: Real History of the Rosicrucians, by Arthur Edward Waite. To purchase the entire book, please order ISBN 0766101037. ... Read more

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THIS 7 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE BOOK: Hermetic Masonry, by Frank C. Higgins. To purchase the entire book, please order ISBN 0922802122.Download Description
THIS 7 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE BOOK: Hermetic Masonry, by Frank C. Higgins. To purchase the entire book, please order ISBN 0922802122. ... Read more

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THIS 15 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE BOOK: Our Ancient Brethren The Originators of Freemasonry, by F. de P. Castells. To purchase the entire book, please order ISBN 0766136515.Download Description
THIS 15 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE BOOK: Our Ancient Brethren The Originators of Freemasonry, by F. de P. Castells. To purchase the entire book, please order ISBN 0766136515. ... Read more

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THIS 26 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE BOOK: New and Authentic History of the Rosicrucians, by Frank Wittemans. To purchase the entire book, please order ISBN 1564599728. ... Read more

Book Description
THIS 6 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE BOOK: American Rosae Crucis 1916: A Magazine of Life's Mysteries, by H. Spencer Lewis. To purchase the entire book, please order ISBN 0766106977. ... Read more

Book Description
THIS 20 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE BOOK: Real History of the Rosicrucians, by Arthur Edward Waite. To purchase the entire book, please order ISBN 0766101037. ... Read more

Book Description
THIS 12 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE BOOK: New and Authentic History of the Rosicrucians, by Frank Wittemans. To purchase the entire book, please order ISBN 1564599728. ... Read more

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THIS 12 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE BOOK: Regeneration: Being Part Two of the Temple of the Rosy Cross, by Freeman B. Dowd. To purchase the entire book, please order ISBN 1564595544. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Out of print; out of date
This two-volume set is a peculiar piece of scholarship.It's main purpose seems to be to "save" Andreae from claims that he was anything other than an orthodox Lutheran (in Montgomery's conservative, 20th-century understanding of the terms).Of course, he was instead very much a man of his time (as is Montgomery).

[Vol. II reproduces an old translation of the "Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz" with footnotes comparing it to "The Lord of the Rings"!]

Readers are well advised to refer to the newer translation of the "Chemical Wedding" by Joscelyn Godwin.It has the advantage of being both superior and readily available.Works cited in that volume will also provide more authoritative context to both Andreae and his work than Montgomery's apologetic showpiece.

A scholarly study on Andreae and the occult tradition
This two volume work is based on Montgomery's ThD thesis at the University of Strasbourg. It was first issued in 1973 and is scheduled for reissue by Kluwer Publishers. In a series of interrelated essays Montgomery explores the life, labour and thought of the German Lutheran minister Johann Valentin Andreae. He sets Andreae in the context of the Lutheran influences on the rise of modern science and shows, contrary to popular impressions, that from the outset Lutheranism was friendly to scientific research. Then Montgomery seeks to sketch the life and world-view of Andreae and reappraises the long-repeated claim that he was the founder of Rosicrucianism. Montgomery documents from many unpublished primary source materials how Andreae was an orthodox Lutheran theologian and pastor. He shows the intense labour of Andreae to achieve a fusion of thought between faith, science and scholarship in general. He documents Andreae's relationships with various scholars of his day. He also is at pains to show that via Andreae, Lutheran orthodoxy in the 17th century was not ossified. In Andreae we see a fusion between piety and learning. Montgomery thus uses Andreae as an illustration to expose the specious post-Enlightenment interpretations of Lutheran orthodoxy as dry, dull and dead. Furthermore, Montgomery re-opens the case concerning The Chymical Wedding as a document of Rosicrucianism. From primary sources Montgomery demonstrates that Rosicrucianism predated this book and that Andreae's text was an apologia to woo the Rosicrucians back to Christianity. This is a very learned text that has helped stimulate further research in various directions. Although dated in many respects, especially bibliographically, the book is a scholarly gem. It should be of interest to scholars of 17th century intellectual thought, Lutheran theology, and the hermetic traditions of the occult. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Rose Cross over the Baltic
Publisher's info:

This volume is a study of Rosicrucianism in the early period of the seventeenth century with emphasis both on the local reception of the Rosicrucian pamphlets in the Baltic area and on the original group of Rosicrucian authors in Tübingen.

In the first part of the book the Runic theosophy of the Swedish Rosicrucian Johannes Bureus is studied in its millenarian context, beginning with his Adulruna Rediviva of 1616. The Paracelsian prophecy of the Lion of the North is also shown to be a Rosicrucian theme.

The general millenarian background to the Rosicrucian publications is then explored and implications are drawn from the Rosicrucian doctrine of the great conjunctions, from the emergence of new stars, and from their comet research.

Readership: All those interested in intellectual history, seventeenth-century studies, and the history of western esotericism. ... Read more

Book Description
The Rose Cross deals with the interaction between two movementsofthought in eighteenth-century Germany: the philosophy of theEnlightenment,and the complex of ideas known as Rosicrucian. Datingfrom the earlyseventeenth century and drawing on Pietism,Freemasonry, Kabbalah and alchemy,the Rosicrucianism movement enjoyeda revival in Germany during the eighteenthcentury.Historians haveoften depicted this neo-Rosicrucianism as aCounter-Enlightenmentforce. Dr. McIntosh argues rather that it was part of a"third force",which allied itself sometimes with the Enlightenment, sometimeswiththe Counter-Enlightenment.This book is the first in-depth,comprehensive study of the GermanRosicrucian revival and inparticular of the order known as the Golden andRosy Cross (Gold undRosenkreuz). Drawing on hitherto unpublished material,Dr. McIntoshshows how the order exerted a significant influence on thecultural,political and religious life of its age. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Occult and Secret Societies in 18th-Century Politics
Publications about Freemasonry and its history tend to fall into two classes - the first written by and for Freemasons and of little interest to anyone else; the second sensational and denunciatory, portraying the Craft as a diabolic conspiracy against God and man. Academic historians have mostly paid little attention to Freemasonry, perhaps because it has seemed the province of dabblers and fanatics. Christopher McIntosh is neither, and has treated an interesting period in history during which offshoots of the Craft had significant social and political importance, in a sensible and factual way, and with impeccable scholarship.

Much has been made by conspiracy theorists of Adam Weishaupt's Illuminati, attributing to it all manner of sinister influence. Yet, as McIntosh shows, a system of hautes-grades Freemasonry called the Gold- und Rosenkreuz both had a longer life and achieved actual political influence the Illuminati never did. Two cabinet ministers of the Prussian King Frederick William II, Johann Christof Wöllner and Johann Rudolf von Bischoffswerder, were the chiefs of this order, and the king was a member. Under the ministry of Wöllner and Bischoffswerder, the Prussian government sought to enforce a rigorous Lutheran orthodoxy against the rising tide of "enlightened" scepticism and scientism. Wöllner and Bischoffswerder have been described as "the first self-consciously conservative politicians in German history." Throughout the Holy Roman Empire, Gold- und Rosenkreuz circles found themselves in rivalry with Illuminati groups, as McIntosh describes in his chapter on "The Polemical Stance of the Gold- und Rosenkreuz."

While this episode of Masonic history has understandably been neglected by the conspiracy theorists, because it does not fit their preconceptions, some German historians have represented the Gold- und Rosenkreuz as a completely reactionary, anti-Aufklärung force. McIntosh shows that this was really not true, and that the Gold- und Rosenkreuz represented a different size of the phenomenon we refer to as the Enlightenment. The philosophical ferment of the eighteenth century incorporated Adam Smith, Samuel Johnson, and Edmund Burke as well as Voltaire, Helvétius, LaMettrie and Rousseau. It is facile to equate the Enlightenment with the views of a few French philosophes.

Although the political influence of the Gold- und Rosenkreuz petered out with the death of Frederick William II, its cultural influence lasted well into the nineteenth century and extended as far east as Russia, and as far west as Great Britain, where the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia was founded using the ritual and grade structure of the Gold- und Rosenkreuz. This, in turn, gave rise to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which attracted a curious blend of literary and artistic figures, wealthy dilettantes, and a few charlatans like Mathers and Crowley.

What I wish McIntosh had pointed out more explicitly is that the importance of secret and semi-secret groups in politics is inversely proportional to the degree of freedom in the body politic. In Great Britain, the wellspring of speculative Freemasonry, the Craft never developed a political character, because the country was a constitutional monarchy. Representative government (if not complete democracy) and substantial latitude in public discourse (if not perfect freedom of speech) already existed there by the eighteenth century. Prussia, in contrast, was an absolute monarchy. Public dissent from the policies of government was suppressed as thoroughly as possible. In such a climate, masonic lodges became hospitable refuges for those having political aims,which were facilitated by members' pledges of secrecy and mutual assistance. Everywhere "political" freemasonry continues to exist in continental Europe and Latin America similarly had or has a comparable pattern of repressing open political dialogue.

Furthermore, as Eric Voegelin has pointed out in his "New Science of Politics," there is an affinity between gnosticism and totalitarianism. The latter has philosophical roots in the former. On the continent of Europe there are two streams of gnosticism that arguably have led to competing totalitarian systems. One, flowing from French philosophes like d'Alembert and Rousseau, through Weishaupt, to early nineteenth-century German rationalist philosophers, ultimately ends in the swamp of Marxism. The other, represented by the occultism of the Gold- und Rosenkreuz, flows through German romanticism, antiquarianism, and pseudo-scientific philology, among others to Nietzsche, Lanz "von Liebenfels," Glauer "von Sebottendorf," as well as through Blavatsky, Guénon, Evola, and empties into Fascism and Nazism. However different these systems may seem, both propose to build utopian societies in which men will be "as gods." It should be no surprise that they have come a-cropper even more disastrously than did the efforts of Wöllner and Bischoffswerder.

Occult and Secret Societies in 18th-Century Politics
Publications about Freemasonry and its history tend to fall into two classes - the first written by and for Freemasons and of little interest to anyone else; the second sensational and denunciatory, portraying the Craft as a diabolic conspiracy against God and man. Academic historians have mostly paid little attention to Freemasonry, perhaps because it has seemed the province of dabblers and fanatics. Christopher McIntosh is neither, and has treated an interesting period in history during which offshoots of the Craft had significant social and political importance, in a sensible and factual way, and with impeccable scholarship.

Much has been made by conspiracy theorists of Adam Weishaupt's Illuminati, attributing to it all manner of sinister influence. Yet, as McIntosh shows, a system of hautes-grades Freemasonry called the Gold- und Rosenkreuz both had a longer life and achieved actual political influence the Illuminati never did. Two cabinet ministers of the Prussian King Frederick William II, Johann Christof Wöllner and Johann Rudolf von Bischoffswerder, were the chiefs of this order, and the king was a member. Under the ministry of Wöllner and Bischoffswerder, the Prussian government sought to enforce a rigorous Lutheran orthodoxy against the rising tide of "enlightened" scepticism and scientism. Wöllner and Bischoffswerder have been described as "the first self-consciously conservative politicians in German history." Throughout the Holy Roman Empire, Gold- und Rosenkreuz circles found themselves in rivalry with Illuminati groups, as McIntosh describes in his chapter on "The Polemical Stance of the Gold- und Rosenkreuz."

While this episode of Masonic history has understandably been neglected by the conspiracy theorists, because it does not fit their preconceptions, some German historians have represented the Gold- und Rosenkreuz as a completely reactionary, anti-Aufklärung force. McIntosh shows that this was really not true, and that the Gold- und Rosenkreuz represented a different size of the phenomenon we refer to as the Enlightenment. The philosophical ferment of the eighteenth century incorporated Adam Smith, Samuel Johnson, and Edmund Burke as well as Voltaire, Helvétius, LaMettrie and Rousseau. It is facile to equate the Enlightenment with the views of a few French philosophes.

While the political influence of the Gold- und Rosenkreuz petered out with the death of Frederick William II, its cultural influence lasted well into the nineteenth century and extended as far east as Russia, and as far west as Great Britain, where the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia was founded using the ritual and grade structure of the Gold- und Rosenkreuz. This, in turn, gave rise to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which attracted a curious blend of literary and artistic figures, wealthy dilettantes, and a few charlatans like Mathers and Crowley.

What I wish McIntosh had pointed out more explicitly is that the importance of secret and semi-secret groups in politics is inversely proportional to the degree of freedom in the body politic. In Great Britain, the wellspring of speculative Freemasonry, the Craft never developed a political character, because the country was a constitutional monarchy. Representative government (if not complete democracy) and substantial latitude in public discourse (if not perfect freedom of speech) already existed there by the eighteenth century. Prussia, in contrast, was an absolute monarchy. Public dissent from the policies of government was suppressed as thoroughly as possible. In such a climate, masonic lodges became hospitable refuges for those having political aims,which were facilitated by members' pledges of secrecy and mutual assistance. Everywhere "political" freemasonry continues to exist in continental Europe and Latin America similarly had or has a comparable pattern of repressing open political dialogue.

Furthermore, as Eric Voegelin has pointed out in his "New Science of Politics," there is an affinity between gnosticism and totalitarianism. The latter has philosophical roots in the former. On the continent of Europe there are two streams of gnosticism that arguably have led to competing totalitarian systems. One, flowing from French philosophes like d'Alembert and Rousseau, through Weishaupt, to early nineteenth-century German rationalist philosophers, ultimately ends in the swamp of Marxism. The other, represented by the occultism of the Gold- und Rosenkreuz, flows through German romanticism, antiquarianism, and pseudo-scientific philology, among others to Nietzsche, Lanz "von Liebenfels," Glauer "von Sebottendorf," as well as through Blavatsky, Guénon, Evola, and empties into Fascism and Nazism. However different these systems may seem, both propose to build utopian societies in which men will be "as gods." It should be no surprise that they have come a-cropper even more disastrously than did the efforts of Wöllner and Bischoffswerder.

Best Study of 18th Century German occultism out there.
If you're here because you're looking for it--then you've found it. "The Rose Cross and the Age of Reason" provides a much needed re-evaluation of 18th century esoteric movements in Continential Europe,especially in Germany. The study is an evaluation of the structure,rituals, and doctrine of the Gold und Rosencreutz, an esoteric butpolitically powerful Rosicrucian order in Germany from about 1760 to theend of the 18th century. Many governent officials, as well as merchants andother professionals, were members of this order, which practiced an austereChristianity, but one powerfully symbolic as well. Alchemy and masonry also came to the fore in this study.

McIntosh's judgment is that theevaluate literature so far has painted occultism, especially Germanesotericism, as anti-Enlightenment in structure, doctrine, and function.This is commonly explained by the pietism of its members, who wereresistant tor openly hostile to Cartesian science and metaphysics. The"G und R" also became involved in a conservative, perhaps evenreactionary monarchy in Prussia (King Frederick William II). As thisRosicrucian movement gained power, it drew the ire of a number ofEnlightnment critics, and a secret society, the Bavarian Illuminati, wasformed in part to oppose it.

McIntosh demonstrates conclusively thatsimply judging the G und R as anti-Enlightenment is not the case, and hesuggests a more nuanced view. To do this, McIntosh identifies threemodalities of thought that were operative at the time in 18th centuryGermany, an Enlightenment mode, represented byKant and others, theOrthodox churches (Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed) and a variety ofHermetic Neoplatonism, informed by Kabbalistic (both Jewish and Christian)discourse and alchemy, both theorectical and practical. Between theOrthodox religious views (the Counter-Enlightenment) and the Aufklarer, theNeoplatonic intellectual mode argued for a metaphysics illuminated bydivine quintessance at every level. Drawing on classic Gnosticism andGerman Protestant Pietism, this Hermetic strain that gave birth to the Gund R shared some characteristics with each of the other two movements.Like orthodox Christianity, the G und R held to a mostly world-negativecosmology and pessimistic epistemology, and taught that before all else menmust fear and rever Jesus Christ. However, Pietism, Kabbalah and otherinfluences gave it a strong emphasis on self-development towards theKingdom of the Paraclete, and as such nationalistic development toward thisidea as well. Reason and Science were encouraged so long as they took placewithin this religious telos, and many of the G und R and associatedoccultists found themselves on this list of prohibited books in Rome.Relations with the clergy were sometimes tense, and the G und R at timesmade moves to silence Counter-Enlightment clergy when they felt theirinterests threatened.

What this text adds to a dicussion ofesotericism and intellectual culture is a better framework of understandingthe relationship of these metaphysical and religious movements and theirinfluence on culture. In much of the scholarly literature and popularimagination, such religious and magical movements represent a return to"irrationality" and as such can easily be dismissed byEnlightenment discourse as unworthy cultural productions. McIntosh's textrecontextualizes occultism and shows that it can (and has) had a pervasivecultural impact at crucial times and places. ... Read more

Book Description
Plummer writes: The object of this article is to answer many questions which have arisen among Masons regarding the Rosicrucian fraternity, which has no connection whatever with the Rose Croix degrees of the Scottish Rite; to correct false impressions created by clandestine bodies and many misconceptions which have arisen otherwise. Let us hope that a better understanding may develop between the two fraternities-neither of which encroaches whatsoever upon the work of the other, but instead, should cooperate to the fullest extent. ... Read more

Book Description
An Indispensable Reference Text . . .

Extensive biographical and bibliographical descriptions of 164 books and 245 manuscripts from the PRS Library, assembled over a period of sixty-five years and the repository for many rare and scarce esoteric items. Related material on Rosicrucianism and Jacob Boehme's writings are included, as well as the Bacstrom manuscripts in eighteen volumes with English translations of early alchemical books, a volume of manuscripts from Count Cagliostro's library, Comte de St. Germain's triangular manuscript on vellum, a portion of Ripley's Scroll in full color, the William Law edition of Jacob Boehme with manikin plates attributed to Rubens, and more. Printed in a limited edition of one thousand copies, folio volume, 9" x 12", library binding, 314 pages handsomely illustrated with eight full-color plates and facsimiles of title pages and frontispieces. ... Read more