problematical, it was quite evident that somebody or other was concerned
in the promulgation of these placards, which were stuck up on every wall
in Paris. The police endeavoured in vain to find out the offenders, and
their want of success only served to increase the perplexity of the
public. The Church very soon took up the question; and the Abbé Gaultier,
a Jesuit, wrote a book to prove that, by their enmity to the pope, they
could be no other than disciples of Luther, sent to promulgate his heresy.
Their very name, he added, proved that they were heretics; a _cross_
surmounted by a _rose_ being the heraldic device of the arch-heretic
Luther. One Garasse said they were a confraternity of drunken impostors;
and that their name was derived from the garland of roses, in the form of
a cross, hung over the tables of taverns in Germany as the emblem of
secrecy, and from whence was derived the common saying, when one man
communicated a secret to another, that it was said "under the rose."
Others interpreted the letters F.R.C. to mean, not Brethren of the
Rose-cross, but _Fratres Roris Cocti_, or Brothers of Boiled Dew; and
explained this appellation by alleging that they collected large
quantities of morning dew, and boiled it, in order to extract a very
valuable ingredient in the composition of the philosopher's stone and the
water of life.
The fraternity thus attacked defended themselves as well as they were
able. They denied that they used magic of any kind, or that they consulted
the devil. They said they were all happy; that they had lived more than a
century, and expected to live many centuries more; and that the intimate
knowledge which they possessed of all nature was communicated to them by
God himself as a reward for their piety and utter devotion to his service.
Those were in error who derived their name from a cross of roses, or
called them drunkards. To set the world right on the first point, they
reiterated that they derived their name from Christian Rosencreutz, their
founder; and to answer the latter charge, they repeated that they knew not
what thirst was, and had higher pleasures than those of the palate. They
did not desire to meddle with the politics or religion of any man or set
of men, although they could not help denying the supremacy of the pope,
and looking upon him as a tyrant. Many slanders, they said, had been
repeated respecting them, the most unjust of which was, that they indulged
in carnal appetites, and, under the cloak of their invisibility, crept
into the chambers of beautiful maidens. They asserted, on the contrary,
that the first vow they took on entering the society was a vow of
chastity, and that any one among them who transgressed in that particular
would immediately lose all the advantages he enjoyed, and be exposed once
more to hunger, woe, disease, and death, like other men. So strongly did
they feel on the subject of chastity, that they attributed the fall of
Adam solely to his want of this virtue. Besides defending themselves in
this manner, they entered into a further confession of their faith. They
discarded for ever all the old tales of sorcery and witchcraft, and
communion with the devil. They said there were no such horrid, unnatural,
and disgusting beings as the incubi and succubi, and the innumerable
grotesque imps that men had believed in for so many ages. Man was not
surrounded with enemies like these, but with myriads of beautiful and
beneficent beings, all anxious to do him service. The air was peopled with
sylphs, the water with undines or naiads, the bowels of the earth with
gnomes, and the fire with salamanders. All these beings were the friends
of man, and desired nothing so much as that men should purge themselves of
all uncleanness, and thus be enabled to see and converse with them. They
possessed great power, and were unrestrained by the barriers of space or
the obstructions of matter. But man was in one particular their superior.
He had an immortal soul, and they had not. They might, however, become
sharers in man's immortality if they could inspire one of that race with
the passion of love towards them. Hence it was the constant endeavour of
the female spirits to captivate the admiration of men, and of the male
gnomes, sylphs, salamanders, and undines to be beloved by a woman. The
object of this passion, in returning their love, imparted a portion of
that celestial fire, the soul; and from that time forth the beloved became
equal to the lover, and both, when their allotted course was run, entered
together into the mansions of felicity. These spirits, they said, watched
constantly over mankind by night and day. Dreams, omens, and presentiments
were all their works, and the means by which they gave warning of the
approach of danger. But though so well inclined to befriend man for their
own sakes, the want of a soul rendered them at times capricious and
revengeful; they took offence on slight causes, and heaped injuries
instead of benefits on the heads of those who extinguished the light of
reason that was in them by gluttony, debauchery, and other appetites of
the body.
The excitement produced in Paris by the placards of the brotherhood and
the attacks of the clergy wore itself away after a few months. The stories
circulated about them became at last too absurd even for that age of
absurdity, and men began to laugh once more at those invisible gentlemen
and their fantastic doctrines. Gabriel Naudé at that conjuncture brought
out his _Avis à la France sur les Frères de la Rose-croix_, in which he
very successfully exposed the folly of the new sect. This work, though not
well written, was well timed. It quite extinguished the Rosicrucians of
France; and after that year little more was heard of them. Swindlers in
different parts of the country assumed the name at times to cloak their
depredations; and now and then one of them was caught and hanged for his
too great ingenuity in enticing pearls and precious stones from the
pockets of other people into his own, or for passing off lumps of gilded
brass for pure gold, made by the agency of the philosopher's stone. With
these exceptions, oblivion shrouded them.
The doctrine was not confined to a sphere so narrow as France alone; it
still nourished in Germany, and drew many converts in England. The latter
countries produced two great masters in the persons of Jacob Böhmen and
Robert Fludd--pretended philosophers, of whom it is difficult to say which
was the more absurd and extravagant. It would appear that the sect was
divided into two classes--the brothers _Roseæ Crucis_, who devoted
themselves to the wonders of this sublunary sphere, and the brothers
_Aureæ Crucis_, who were wholly occupied in the contemplation of things
divine. Fludd belonged to the first class, and Böhmen to the second. Fludd
may be called the father of the English Rosicrucians, and as such merits a
conspicuous niche in the temple of Folly.
He was born in the year 1574 at Milgate, in Kent, and was the son of Sir
Thomas Fludd, Treasurer of War to Queen Elizabeth. He was originally
intended for the army; but he was too fond of study, and of a disposition
too quiet and retiring, to shine in that sphere. His father would not
therefore press him to adopt a course of life for which he was unsuited,
and encouraged him in the study of medicine, for which he early manifested
a partiality. At the age of twenty-five he proceeded to the continent; and
being fond of the abstruse, the marvellous, and the incomprehensible, he
became an ardent disciple of the school of Paracelsus, whom he looked upon
as the regenerator not only of medicine, but of philosophy. He remained
six years in Italy, France, and Germany, storing his mind with fantastic
notions, and seeking the society of enthusiasts and visionaries. On his
return to England in 1605, he received the degree of Doctor of Medicine
from the University of Oxford, and began to practise as a physician in
London.
He soon made himself conspicuous. He latinised his name from Robert Fludd
into Robertus à Fluctibus, and began the promulgation of many strange
doctrines. He avowed his belief in the philosopher's stone, the water of
life, and the universal alkahest; and maintained that there were but two
principles of all things,--which were, condensation, the boreal or
northern virtue; and rarefaction, the southern or austral virtue. A number
of demons, he said, ruled over the human frame, whom he arranged in their
places in a rhomboid. Every disease had its peculiar demon who produced
it, which demon could only be combated by the aid of the demon whose place
was directly opposite to his in the rhomboidal figure. Of his medical
notions we shall have further occasion to speak in another part of this
book, when we consider him in his character as one of the first founders
of the magnetic delusion, and its offshoot, animal magnetism, which has
created so much sensation in our own day.
As if the doctrines already mentioned were not wild enough, he joined the
Rosicrucians as soon as they began to make a sensation in Europe, and
succeeded in raising himself to high consideration among them. The
fraternity having been violently attacked by several German authors, and
among others by Libavius, Fludd volunteered a reply, and published, in
1616, his defence of the Rosicrucian philosophy, under the title of the
_Apologia compendiaria Fraternitatem de Rosea-cruce suspicionis et infamiæ
maculis aspersam abluens_. This work immediately procured him great renown
upon the Continent, and he was henceforth looked upon as one of the
high-priests of the sect. Of so much importance was he considered, that
Keppler and Gassendi thought it necessary to refute him; and the latter
wrote a complete examination of his doctrine. Mersenne also, the friend of
Descartes, and who had defended that philosopher when accused of having
joined the Rosicrucians, attacked Dr. à Fluctibus, as he preferred to be
called, and shewed the absurdity of the brothers of the Rose-cross in
general, and of Dr. à Fluctibus in particular. Fluctibus wrote a long
reply, in which he called Mersenne an ignorant calumniator, and reiterated
that alchymy was a profitable science, and the Rosicrucians worthy to be
the regenerators of the world. This book was published at Frankfort, and
was entitled _Summum Bonum, quod est Magiæ, Cabalæ, Alchimiæ, Fratrum,
Roseæ-Crucis verorum, et adversus Mersenium Calumniatorem_. Besides this,
he wrote several other works upon alchymy, a second answer to Libavius
upon the Rosicrucians, and many medical works. He died in London in 1637.
After his time there was some diminution of the sect in England. They
excited but little attention, and made no effort to bring themselves into
notice. Occasionally some obscure and almost incomprehensible work made
its appearance, to shew the world that the folly was not extinguished.
Eugenius Philalethes, a noted alchymist, who has veiled his real name
under this assumed one, translated _The Fame and Confession of the
Brethren of the Rosie Cross_, which was published in London in 1652. A few
years afterwards, another enthusiast, named John Heydon, wrote two works
on the subject: the one entitled _The Wise Man's Crown, or the Glory of
the Rosie Cross_; and the other, _The Holy Guide, leading the way to unite
Art and Nature with the Rosie Crosse uncovered_. Neither of these
attracted much notice. A third book was somewhat more successful; it was
called _A new Method of Rosicrucian Physic; by John Heydon, the servant of
God and the Secretary of Nature_. A few extracts will shew the ideas of
the English Rosicrucians about this period. Its author was an attorney,
"practising (to use his own words) at Westminster Hall all term times as
long as he lived, and in the vacations devoting himself to alchymical and
Rosicrucian meditation." In his preface, called by him an Apologue for an
Epilogue, he enlightens the public upon the true history and tenets of his
sect. Moses, Elias, and Ezekiel were, he says, the most ancient masters of
the Rosicrucian philosophy. Those few then existing in England and the
rest of Europe, were as the eyes and ears of the great king of the
universe, seeing and hearing all things; seraphically illuminated;
companions of the holy company of unbodied souls and immortal angels;
turning themselves, Proteus-like, into any shape, and having the power of
working miracles. The most pious and abstracted brethren could slack the
plague in cities, silence the violent winds and tempests, calm the rage of
the sea and rivers, walk in the air, frustrate the malicious aspect of
witches, cure all diseases, and turn all metals into gold. He had known in
his time two famous brethren of the Rosie Cross, named Walfourd and
Williams, who had worked miracles in his sight, and taught him many
excellent predictions of astrology and earthquakes. "I desired one of
these to tell me," says he, "whether my complexion were capable of the
society of my good genius. 'When I see you again,' said he (which was when
he pleased to come to me, for I knew not where to go to him), 'I will tell
you.' When I saw him afterwards, he said, 'You should pray to God; for a
good and holy man can offer no greater or more acceptable service to God
than the oblation of himself--his soul.' He said also, that the good genii
were the benign eyes of God, running to and fro in the world, and with
love and pity beholding the innocent endeavours of harmless and
single-hearted men, ever ready to do them good and to help them."
Heydon held devoutly true that dogma of the Rosicrucians which said that
neither eating nor drinking was necessary to men. He maintained that any
one might exist in the same manner as that singular people dwelling near
the source of the Ganges, of whom mention was made in the travels of his
namesake, Sir Christopher Heydon, who had no mouths, and therefore could
not eat, but lived by the breath of their nostrils; except when they took
a far journey, and then they mended their diet with the smell of flowers.
He said that in really pure air "there was a fine foreign fatness," with
which it was sprinkled by the sunbeams, and which was quite sufficient for
the nourishment of the generality of mankind. Those who had enormous
appetites, he had no objection to see take animal food, since they could
not do without it; but he obstinately insisted that there was no necessity
why they should _eat_ it. If they put a plaster of nicely-cooked meat upon
their epigastrium, it would be sufficient for the wants of the most robust
and voracious! They would by that means let in no diseases, as they did at
the broad and common gate, the mouth, as any one might see by example of
drink; for all the while a man sat in water, he was never athirst. He had
known, he said, many Rosicrucians, who by applying wine in this manner,
had fasted for years together. In fact, quoth Heydon, we may easily fast
all our life, though it be three hundred years, without any kind of meat,
and so cut off all danger of disease.
This "sage philosopher" further informed his wondering contemporaries that
the chiefs of the doctrine always carried about with them to their place
of meeting their symbol, called the R.C. which was an ebony cross,
flourished and decked with roses of gold; the cross typifying Christ's
sufferings upon the cross for our sins, and the roses of gold the glory
and beauty of his Resurrection. This symbol was carried alternately to
Mecca, Mount Calvary, Mount Sinai, Haran, and to three other places, which
must have been in mid-air, called _Cascle_, _Apamia_ and _Chaulateau
Virissa Caunuch_, where the Rosicrucian brethren met when they pleased,
and made resolution of all their actions. They always took their pleasures
in one of these places, where they resolved all questions of whatsoever
had been done, was done, or should be done in the world, from the
beginning to the end thereof. "And these," he concludes, "are the men
called Rosicrucians!"
Towards the end of the seventeenth century, more rational ideas took
possession of the sect, which still continued to boast of a few members.
They appear to have considered that contentment was the true philosopher's
stone, and to have abandoned the insane search for a mere phantom of the
imagination. Addison, in _The Spectator_,[45] gives an account of his
conversation with a Rosicrucian; from which it may be inferred that the
sect had grown wiser in their deeds, though in their talk they were as
foolish as ever. "I was once," says he, "engaged in discourse with a
Rosicrucian about the great secret. He talked of the secret as of a spirit
which lived within an emerald, and converted every thing that was near it
to the highest perfection that it was capable of. 'It gives a lustre,'
says he, 'to the sun, and water to the diamond. It irradiates every metal,
and enriches lead with all the properties of gold. It heightens smoke into
flame, flame into light, and light into glory.' He further added, 'that a
single ray of it dissipates pain and care and melancholy from the person
on whom it falls. In short,' says he, 'its presence naturally changes
every place into a kind of heaven.' After he had gone on for some time in
this unintelligible cant, I found that he jumbled natural and moral ideas
together into the same discourse, and that his great secret was nothing
else but content."
[45] No. 574. Friday, July 30th, 1714.
JACOB BÖHMEN.
It is now time to speak of Jacob Böhmen, who thought he could discover the
secret of the transmutation of metals in the Bible, and who invented a
strange heterogeneous doctrine of mingled alchymy and religion, and
founded upon it the sect of the Aurea-crucians. He was born at Görlitz, in
Upper Lusatia, in 1575, and followed till his thirtieth year the
occupation of a shoemaker. In this obscurity he remained, with the
character of a visionary and a man of unsettled mind, until the
promulgation of the Rosicrucian philosophy in his part of Germany, toward
the year 1607 or 1608. From that time he began to neglect his leather, and
buried his brain under the rubbish of metaphysics. The works of Paracelsus
fell into his hands; and these, with the reveries of the Rosicrucians, so
completely engrossed his attention, that he abandoned his trade
altogether, sinking, at the same time, from a state of comparative
independence into poverty and destitution. But he was nothing daunted by
the miseries and privations of the flesh; his mind was fixed upon the
beings of another sphere, and in thought he was already the new apostle of
the human race. In the year 1612, after a meditation of four years, he
published his first work, entitled _Aurora, or the Rising of the Sun_;
embodying the ridiculous notions of Paracelsus, and worse confounding the
confusion of that writer. The philosopher's stone might, he contended, be
discovered by a diligent search of the Old and New Testaments, and more
especially of the Apocalypse, which alone contained all the secrets of
alchymy. He contended that the divine grace operated by the same rules,
and followed the same methods, that the divine providence observed in the
natural world; and that the minds of men were purged from their vices and
corruptions in the very same manner that metals were purified from their
dross, namely, by fire.
Besides the sylphs, gnomes, undines, and salamanders, he acknowledged
various ranks and orders of demons. He pretended to invisibility and
absolute chastity. He also said that, if it pleased him, he could abstain
for years from meat and drink, and all the necessities of the body. It is
needless, however, to pursue his follies any further. He was reprimanded
for writing this work by the magistrates of Görlitz, and commanded to
leave the pen alone and stick to his wax, that his family might not become
chargeable to the parish. He neglected this good advice, and continued his
studies; burning minerals and purifying metals one day, and mystifying the
Word of God on the next. He afterwards wrote three other works, as
sublimely ridiculous as the first. The one was entitled _Metallurgia_, and
has the slight merit of being the least obscure of his compositions.
Another was called _The Temporal Mirror of Eternity_; and the last his
_Theosophy revealed_, full of allegories and metaphors,
"All strange and geason,
Devoid of sense and ordinary reason."
Böhmen died in 1624, leaving behind him a considerable number of admiring
disciples. Many of them became, during the seventeenth century, as
distinguished for absurdity as their master; amongst whom may be mentioned
Gifftheil, Wendenhagen, John Jacob Zimmermann, and Abraham Frankenberg.
Their heresy rendered them obnoxious to the Church of Rome; and many of
them suffered long imprisonment and torture for their faith. One, named
Kuhlmann, was burned alive at Moscow, in 1684, on a charge of sorcery.
Böhmen's works were translated into English, and published, many years
afterwards, by an enthusiast named William Law.
MORMIUS.
Peter Mormius, a notorious alchymist and contemporary of Böhmen,
endeavoured, in 1630, to introduce the Rosicrucian philosophy into
Holland. He applied to the States-General to grant him a public audience,
that he might explain the tenets of the sect, and disclose a plan for
rendering Holland the happiest and richest country on the earth, by means
of the philosopher's stone and the service of the elementary spirits. The
States-General wisely resolved to have nothing to do with him. He
thereupon determined to shame them by printing his book, which he did at
Leyden the same year. It was entitled _The Book of the most Hidden Secrets
of Nature_, and was divided into three parts; the first treating of
"perpetual motion;" the second of the "transmutation of metals;" and the
third of the "universal medicine." He also published some German works
upon the Rosicrucian philosophy, at Frankfort, in 1617.
Poetry and romance are deeply indebted to the Rosicrucians for many a
graceful creation. The literature of England, France, and Germany contains
hundreds of sweet fictions, whose machinery has been borrowed from their
day-dreams. The "delicate Ariel" of Shakspeare stands pre-eminent among
the number. From the same source Pope drew the airy tenants of Belinda's
dressing-room, in his charming _Rape of the Lock_; and La Motte Fouqué,
the beautiful and capricious water-nymph Undine, around whom he has thrown
more grace and loveliness, and for whose imaginary woes he has excited
more sympathy, than ever were bestowed on a supernatural being. Sir Walter
Scott also endowed the White Lady of Avenel with many of the attributes of
the undines or water-sprites. German romance and lyrical poetry teem with
allusions to sylphs, gnomes, undines, and salamanders; and the French have
not been behind in substituting them, in works of fiction, for the more
cumbrous mythology of Greece and Rome. The sylphs, more especially, have
been the favourites of the bards, and have become so familiar to the
popular mind as to be, in a manner, confounded with that other race of
ideal beings, the fairies, who can boast of an antiquity much more
venerable in the annals of superstition. Having these obligations to the
Rosicrucians, no lover of poetry can wish, however absurd they were, that
such a sect of philosophers had never existed.
BORRI.