booknetsaWebster-secretSocietiesAndSubversiveMovements

aims, their doctrines, are said to have been kept a profound secret from the world. Indeed it is said that no
real Rosicrucian ever allowed himself to be known as such. As a result of this systematic method of concealment,
sceptics on the one hand have declared the Rosicrucians to have been charlatans and impostors or
have denied their very existence, whilst on the other hand romancers have exalted them as depositaries of
supernatural wisdom. The question is further obscured by the fact that most accounts of the Fraternity-as,
for example, those of Eliphas Lévi, Hargrave Jennings, Kenneth Mackenzie, Mr. A.E. Waite Dr. Wynn
Westcott, and Mr. Cadbury Jones-are the work of men claiming or believing themselves to be initiated into
Rosicrucianism or other occult systems of a kindred nature and as such in possession of peculiar and exclusive
knowledge. This pretension may at once be dismissed as an absurdity; nothing is easier than for anyone
to make a compound out of Jewish Cabalism and Eastern theosophy and to label it Rosicrucianism, but no
proof whatever exists of any affiliation between the self-styled Rosicrucians of to-day and the seventeenthcentury
" Brothers of the Rosy Cross."(48)
In spite of Mr. Waite's claim, " The Real History of the Rosicrucians " still remains to be written, at any
rate in the English language. The book he has published under this name is merely a superficial study of the
question largely composed of reprints of Rosicrucian pamphlets accessible to any student. Mr. Wigston and
Mrs. Pott merely echo Mr. Waite. Thus everything that has been published hitherto consists in the repetition
of Rosicrucian legends or in unsubstantiated theorizings on their doctrines. What we need are facts. We
want to know who were the early Rosicrucians, when the Fraternity originated, and what were its real aims.
These researches must be made, not by an occultist weaving his own theories into the subject, but by a historian
free from any prejudices for or against the Order, capable of weighing evidence and of bringing a judicial
mind to bear on the material to be found in the libraries of the Continent-notably the Bibliothque de
l'Arsenal in Paris. Such a work wold be a valuable contribution to the history of secret societies in our country.
But if the Continental Brethren of the Rose-Croix form but a shadowy group of " Invisibles" whose identity
yet remains a mystery, the English adepts of the Order stand forth in the light of day as philosophers
well known to their age and country. That Francis Bacon was initiated into Rosicrucianism is now recognized
by Freemasons, but a more definite link with the Rosicrucians of the Continent was Robert Fludd, who
after travelling for six years in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain-where he formed connexions with Jewish
Cabalists(49)-was visited by the German Jew Rosicrucian Michel Maier-doctor to the Emperor Rudolf-by
whom he appears to have been initiated into further mysteries.
In 1616 Fludd published his Tractatus Apologeticus, defending the Rosicrucians against the charges of "
detestable magic and diabolical superstition " brought against them by Libavius. Twelve years later Fludd
was attacked by Father Mersenne, to whom a reply was made " by Fludd or a friend of Fludd's " containing a
further defence of the Order. " The Book," says Mr. Waite, " treats of the noble art of magic, the foundation
and nature of the Cabala, the essence of veritable alchemy, and of the Causa Fratrum Rosae Crucis. It identifies
the palace or home of the Rosicrucians with the Scriptural House of Wisdom."
In further works by English writers the Eastern origin of the Fraternity is insisted on. Thus Thomas
Vaughan, known as Eugenius Philalethes, writing in praise of the Rosicrucians in 1652, says that " their
knowledge at first was not purchased by their own disquisitions, for they received it from the Arabians,
amongst whom it remained as the monument and legacy of the Children of the East. Nor is this at all improbable,
for the Eastern countries have been always famous for magical and secret societies."
Another apologist of the Rosicrucians, John Heydon, who travelled in Egypt, Persia, and Arabia, is described
by a contemporary as having been in " many strange places among the Rosie Crucians and at their
castles, holy hoses, temples, sepulchres, sacrifices." Heydon himself, whilst declaring that he is not a
Rosicrucian, says that he knows members of the Fraternity and its secrets, that they are sons of Moses, and
that " this Rosie Crucian Physick or Medicine, I happily and unexpectedly alight upon in Arabia." These references
to castles, temples, sacrifices, encountered in Egypt, Persia, and Arabia inevitably recall memories
of both Templars and Ismailis. Is there no connexion between " the Invisible Mountains of the Brethren "
referred to elsewhere by Heydon and the Mountains of the Assassins and the Freemasons? between the
Scriptural " House of Wisdom " and the Dar-ul-Hikmat or Grand Lodge of Cairo, the model for Western masonic
lodges?
It is as the precursors of the crisis that arose in 1717 that the English Rosicrucians of the seventeenth
century are of supreme importance. No longer need we concern ourselves with shadowy Brethren laying dubious
claim to supernatural wisdom, but with a concrete association of professed Initiates proclaiming their
Nesta H. Webster — Secret Societies and Subversive Movements — Part I
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