The Rosicrucians were a myth written into reality. They were an early example of what contemporary writer and magician Grant Morrison calls a “hyper-sigil.” A new social reality can be made by crafting a narrative that would attract certain people’s imaginations.
As John Dee was spending his last days at Mortlake amongst his looted library and estate, his ideas were finding a new outlet on the Continent of Europe. Beginning in 1607 CE, a series of pamphlets were circulated detailing the story of one Christian Rosenkreuz, who was said to have created a society for collecting and preserving the ancients’ esoteric wisdom revealing this information now. Rosenkreuz’s story would have him traveling to the East to learn the Ancient Wisdom traditions preserved there. He would bring these traditions back to Europe and would found his Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross to disseminate this wisdom.
Dee’s influence upon these documents can be seen in the Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz. The invitation for the allegorical wedding of this manifesto is marked with Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica. His influence had likely come from Heinrich Khunrath (1560 CE – 1605 CE), an admirer of Dee’s work and a writer on Alchemy. Another influence upon the emergence of the group had been Rudolf II (1552 CE– 1612 CE), the Holy Roman Emperor who ruled from Prague and had collected many of the best thinkers of the day from a wide variety of fields to his court and who has a firm devotion to the development of Alchemy.
On the Continent, Rosicrucianism was most closely associated with Germany and opposition to the Roman Catholic Church in alliance with Lutheranism. It would also come to cohabit with Speculative Freemasonry, a fraternal system derived partly from the Stone Masons of Medieval Europe. Because of the secrecy that such fraternal systems allowed, Freemasonry and groups modeled on Freemasonry would flourish, as would claims to Rosicrucian wisdom throughout the 17th Century.
At the beginning of the 18th Century, a lineage of particular importance began in Germany. With a claimed date of founding in 1710 CE (though it is suggested that 1750 CE was more likely), the Orden des Gold- und Rosenkreutz (Order of the Gold and Rosy Cross) was founded in Germany by Hermann Fichtuld. The group was open to Master Masons and focused its work on Alchemy. The group used a tired degree or grade system like most Masonic-inspired groups, with the format for this group being: Juniores, Theoreticus, Oracticus, Philosophus, Minor, Major, Adeptus, Magestus, and Magus. Here we see the reason for our detour over the last few posts. At the top of this structure, we find a Magus Degree taking its name from the Zoroastrian tradition.
Not much is available regarding the practical Work of the Orden des Gold- und Rosenkreutz. However, its structural titles would lay a foundation for other groups. The Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (S.R.I.A.), a British Rosicrucian group founded in 1865 CE, would use it as the basis for their structure. Similarly open to Master Masons, its Degree system was spread across three “Orders”:
First Order
Grade I – Zelator
Grade II – Theoricus
Grade III – Practicus
Grade IV – Philosophus
Second Order
Grade V – Adeptus Minor
Grade VI – Adeptus Major
Grade VII – Adeptus Exemptus
Third Order
Grade VIII – Magister
Grade IX – Magus
Within the S.R.I.A. was Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie (1833 CE– 1886 CE). In his youth, he traveled to Vienna as a tutor. He may have been exposed to ideas from the Asiatic Brethren, a group of Frankish Kabbalists. A linguist and translator by profession, he would work in the office of Benjamin Disraeli when Disraeli was still a publisher. Mackenzie made a name for himself mainly through translations of and writing on the Classics. Still, he became interested in Rosicrucianism and the Occult in his spare time.
In 1854 he met Paschal Beverly Randolph (1825 CE – 1875 CE), an American who had founded the Fraternitas Rosae Crucis in 1858. In 1861 CE, Mackenzie traveled to France, where it is thought that he made contact with Eliphas Levi (Alphonse Louis Constant). When Robert Wentworth Little discovered some German rituals he believed to be of Rosicrucian origin, he recruited Mackenzie to help with the translation. This material would be used to found the S.R.I.A.
When Mackenzie died in 1886 CE, a manuscript was found among his papers in code. It would come into the possession of William Wynn Westcott (1848 CE– 1925 C.E.), a coroner and leading member of the S.R.I.A. Westcott would recruit Samuel Liddell Mathers (1854 CE – 1918 C.E.) o decipher the text. Mathers discovered that the text contained the outline for a magical Order based upon the symbolism of the Four Elements of Earth, Water, Fire, and Air with images drawn from the Kabbalah and Egyptian myth. Westcott and Mathers, along with Robert Wentworth Little, who was then Grand Magus of the S.R.I.A., would use this document to found the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn using a Degree System based on the S.R.I.A. in 1888 CE. As with the S.R.I.A., it would be spread across three Order:
First Order
Neophyte 0=0
Zelator 1=10
Theoricus 2=9
Practicus 3=8
Philosophus 4=7
Portal Grade
Second Order
Adeptus Minor 5=6
Adeptus Major 6=5
Adeptus Exemptus 7=4
Third Order
Magister Templi 8=3
Magus 9=2
Ipsissimus 10=1
Westcott and Mathers claimed that the Cipher manuscript originated within a German Rosicrucian group that had attempted, and failed, to create a Lodge in England some decades before. They contacted this group via a representative, Anna Sprengel, who does not appear to have gone through the formality of actually existing. As the manuscript appears to be in Mackenzie’s hand, it seems more likely that it was the plan for an unfulfilled Order of his design to be created within the S.R.I.A.
The First Order of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn focused primarily upon a Kabbalistic approach to Magic for its lessons and Dramatic Rituals of the Freemasonic style for its Initiation Rites. Like much of the Rosicrucian Kabbalah, there seems to be a trace of Frankish, and therefore Sabbatean, elements to this, including the free pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton. In a radical departure from Freemasonry and the S.R.I.A., the Golden Dawn was open to female applicants and, as such, did not demand that its members be Masons.
The Second Order, for those who had completed the Kabbalistic Training of the First Order, focused instead largely upon practical magic and upon the Enochian Materials of John Dee, which Mathers had elaborated upon extensively from Dee’s original accounts. Into this mix, Mathers would fold the newly discovered wisdom of the Egyptians being translated thanks to the decipherment of the Rosetta Stone in 1822 CE and the practical Hermetic magic of Late Antiquity restored by the discovery of the Greek Magical Papyri in 1827 by Giovanni Anastasi (1780 CE –1860 CE).
No materials associated with the Third Order exist. It is widely believed that this Order was more theoretical, with little administrative function beyond potential Temple Roles in the Order’s Rituals. The titles for this Order, however, will prove to be important. The most novel addition to the Degrees by the Golden Dawn was the addition of “Ipsissimus.” This Latin word meaning “My Very-most Self” likely entered their design via Friedrick Nietzsche’s Human, All Too Human, published in 1878 CE.
The great streams of thought we have been discussing between these two Orders would come together. An authentic connection to the magical traditions of the Hermetica would be established. The Apocalypticism embodied in the Works of John Dee would be explored and expanded. The Messianic Kabbalah would be integrated as a foundation of the Order’s Work, a quirk enabled by a policy of Philosemiticism under Oliver Cromwell after the Civil War (If you are going to be the New Jerusalem, you are going to need Jews).
Although many people think of the Golden Dawn as a group of “old mustaches” due to its founders, its actual popularity was mainly with England’s literary and theatrical scene, with its early membership being mostly in their 20s. Early on, much of the operations of the group would pass from its founding triad to Mathers’ wife, Moina (Bergson) Mathers (865 CE – 1928 C.E.) and then to Florence Farr (1860 CE – 1917 C.E.) when the Mathers would move to Paris and appointed her Chief Adept in Anglia circa 1987 C.E.
Although not nearly as well known as other members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, it is Florence Farr whose Work this series on Aeons truly pivots upon. She would provide a Key for a much more well-known Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn member, who once saw himself as her suitor, Edward Alexander “Aleister” Crowley (1875 CE– 1947 C.E.).
Setemheb 