questions rasied by who ran what

THE REFORMATION:

ROSICRUCIAN CONNECTIONS

PART 3

ROSICRUCIANS & PROTESTANTS TOGETHER

• The Rosicrucians infiltrated the Protestant Reformation and labeled their movement “Evangelical,” after the medieval heresy of the “Eternal Evangel.”

“In some way...there was a connection the Cathars, who were tied with the Bogomils and the older Manichaeans, or followers of Mani. It was from here at the close of the Cathar influence in the Albigensian Crusades that a young boy of the German nobel house of Germel was prepared for training in Persia when he was to come of age. The legend of C.R.C. [Christian Rosencreutz] that was the focus of the first Rosicrucian manifesto published in 1614 was an allegorical vehicle based upon his life and work. Geoffrey de St. Adhémar had also been originally from a town in the Albigensian lands of the Cathars. He later was tutored in the tradition, and co-founded the first Militae Evangelicae in 1089.” (Rosicrucian Library)

“A Society allied to the Rosicrucians and incorporating much of their philosophy was founded at Lunenberg in 1571, under the name Militia Crucifera Evangelica. The MSS of this Society refers to the Rose and Cross. This organization cooperated with another in Holland, known as the ‘Friends of the Cross.’” - “Christian Rosencreutz” (S.R.I.A.)

“...it was only with Schelling that the medieval heresy of the Eternal Evangel reappeared. When in 1831 he began to deliver his famous lectures on The Philosophy of Revelation in Munich, he felt himself to be invested with a great mission to announce the universal religion to come, the Church of St John... It has been said that ‘Many a listener...had the impression that he was watching the rise of new stage of consciousness and the birth of a new religion.’... Like others, Schelling saw St John as the apostle of the future in concord with Moses, Elijah, and John the Baptist in the Old Dispensation, he placed Peter, Paul, and John in the New, representing the three stages in the Christian Church. Peter was the Apostle of the Father, Paul of the Son, while John was the Apostle of the Spirit who was leading mankind into the full truth of the future. The first stage was that of Catholicism, the second of Protestantism, but the third will be the perfect religion of mankind.” - 256:62  

See: Heeding Bible Prophecy: New Scripture: New Gospel

• Protestantism was infested with Rosicrucians by the 17th century.

    “. . . the Fraternity (of the Rosy Cross) has taken on a new significance through the finding of the vault in which Brother Rosencreutz is buried.  The door into this vault was miraculously discovered, and it typifies the opening of a door in Europe which is greatly desired by many. 

    “The description of this vault is a central feature of the Rosencreutz legend. . . . The tomb of Rosencreutz was under the altar in the vault. . .

    “The discovery of the vault is the signal for the general reformation; it is the dawn preceding a sunrise. ‘We know. . . that there will now be a general reformation, both of divine and human things, according to our desire and the expectation of others; for it is fitting that before the rising of the Sun there should break forth Aurora, or some clearness or divine light, in the sky.’ The date at which the vault was discovered is indirectly indicated as 1604.

    “This very peculiar document, the Fama Fraternitatis, thus seems to recount, through the allegory of the vault, the discovery of a new, or rather new-old, philosophy, primarily alchemical and related to medicine and healing, but also concerned with number and geometry and with the production of mechanical marvels.  It represents, not only an advancement of learning, but above all an illumination of a religious and spiritual nature. This new philosophy is about to be revealed to the world and will bring about a general reformation.  The mythical agents of its spread are the R. C. Brothers.  These are said to be reformed German Christians, devoutly evangelical.  Their religious faith seems closely connected with their alchemical philosophy, which has nothing to do with ‘ungodly and accursed gold making’, for the riches which Father Rosencreutz offers are spiritual; ‘he doth not rejoice that he can make gold but is glad that he seeth the Heavens open, and the angels of God ascending and descending, and his name written in the Book of Life.’” 46:45-6

    “Apart from (Johann Valentin) Andreae. . .there are two writers who are generally recognized as the chief exponents of Rosicrucian philosophy.  These are Robert Fludd and Michael Maier.  Though both Fludd and Maier denied that they were Rosicrucians, they both spoke with interest and approval of the Rosicrucian manifestos, and their philosophies are, roughly speaking, in line with the attitudes expressed in the manifestos. But the modes of thought which are veiled in the fictions of the Fama, Confessio, and Wedding are developed by Fludd and Maier into whole libraries of weighty books which were published in the years following the appearance of those three exciting works...

    “It is thus with a sense of satisfaction, as of a confirmation from another quarter of the correctness of the historical line of approach followed in the preceding chapters, that one notes that the major works of Fludd and Maier were published in the Palatinate during the reign of Frederick V. . . Maier was a Lutheran. . .” 46:70, 73

“Fludd. . .approves the manifestos.  The Brothers, he maintains, are true Christians.  They are not wickedly magical or seditious.  They would not have trumpeted their message aloud had they been wicked people.  Like Lutherans and Calvinists they are against the Pope but are not therefore heretical.  Perhaps these Brothers are truly illuminated by God. . .” 46:75

   

    “When later defending himself from the charge made against him in England that he had had his books printed ‘beyond the seas’ because the magic in them forbade their publication in England, Fludd quotes a letter from a German scholar stating that the printer (that is De Bry) had shown his volume before printing to learned men, including some Jesuits, who had all admired it and recommended publication, though the Jesuits disapproved of his sections on geomancy and wished them omitted.  They were, however, evidently not omitted.  Fludd is convinced that his volumes are not distasteful to the Calvinists, amongst whom his printer lives, nor to the Lutherans ‘which are his bordering neighbours’, nor even to the Papists, who have approved them, but he ignores the fact that, according to himself, the Jesuits had not wholly approved.

    “The first of Fludd’s Oppenheim volumes, the ‘History of the Macrocosm’ of 1617, is dedicated to James I, a most impressive dedication in which James is saluted as ‘Ter Maximus’, the epithet sacred to Hermes Trismegestus, and as the most potent and wise prince in the world.  The significance of this dedication stands out now that we more fully understand the significance of the publication of Fludd’s books at Oppenheim. Fludd and his Palatinate publisher were assuming the interest of James in a work published in his son-in-law’s dominions.  They were drawing this most potent prince into their philosophy, assigning to him a Hermetic role.  If this book circulated much in Germany, or in Bohemia, it would have confirmed their impression, or illusion, that thought movements in the Palatinate had the approval of James.

    “We can also now begin to see the situation more clearly from James’s point of view.  His son-in-law, and that son-in-law’s advisers and friends, were not only trying to involve James in a political line of action of which he disapproved--the activist polity which was leading towards the Bohemian enterprise. They were also trying to involve him in a philosophy of which he disapproved.  James was desperately afraid of anything magic; this was his most deep-seated neurosis.  He had disapproved, of (John) Dee, would not receive him, and relegated him to a kind of banishment.  And now, in his son-in-law’s domains, there is published an immense work on the Dee type of Hermetic philosophy, dedicated to him, and attempting by that dedication to draw him into that point of view, or to give the impression that he is favourable to it. . .” 46:77-78

“Maier, (was) a devout Lutheran Christian (Fludd was a devout Anglican). . .  Whatever else they may represent, Fludd and Maier are most certainly Hermetic philosophers, representing a kind of Hermetic Renaissance at a time when the original Hermetic impulses of the earlier Renaissance were waning in some quarters.”  46:82

“Maier may have been influenced by a (Giordano) Bruno tradition as well as by the Dee tradition.  We know that Bruno claimed to have founded a sect of ‘Giordanisti’ among the Lutherans. (See Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, pp. 312-13) Maier was a Lutheran; his intensively Hermetic religious movement might therefore have included some Bruno influence, might be an attempt at the Hermetic reform of religion, the infusion of greater life into religion through the Hermetic influences, such as Bruno had so passionately advocated.  On the other hand the strongly alchemical aspect of Maier’s movement points to Dee as the major influence.  Perhaps in the Palatinate type of Hermetic reform, currents descending from the Dee type of Hermetic tradition mingle with a Bruno type.” 46:85

“Maier is activated by a very strong religious Hermetic impulse, as strong, in its way, as that which had moved Giordano Bruno in the late sixteenth century, though combined in Maier with Lutheran piety---the sort of combination one might expect if Bruno’s influence took root in Lutheran circles in Germany.” 46:88

    “The criticism of the R. C. Brothers. . .rests on the following points.  It is suspected that their activities may be subversive of established government;. . . There is a frequently made general accusation of magical practices. (ff. Defenders maintain that their magic is good and godly.) Finally--and this is one of the most important points--their enemies complain that the religious position of the R. C. Brothers is not clear.  Some call them Lutherans, some Calvinists, and some Socinians or Deists.  They are even suspected of being Jesuits.

    “This is suggestive of what may have been one of the most important aspects of the Rosicrucian movement, that it could include different religious denominations.  As we have seen, Fludd claimed that his work found favour with truly religious persons of all denominations. Fludd was a devout Anglican, friend of Anglican bishops; so was Elizabeth Stuart, the wife of the Elector Palatine.  The Elector was a devout Calvinist, as was Christian of Anhalt, his chief adviser.  Maier was a devout Lutheran, as was also Andreae and many of the other Rosicrucian writers.  The common denominator which would draw all of them together would be the macro-microcosmic musical philosophy, the mystical alchemy, of which Fludd and Meier were the two chief exponents. . .” 46:97-98

“The R. C. movement collapsed when the Palatinate movement collapsed, when those inspiring vistas opened up behind the Elector Palatine and his brilliant alliances failed utterly with the flight of the King and Queen of Bohemia from Prague after the Battle of White Mountain, when it was realized that neither the King of Great Britain nor their German Protestant allies would help them, when the Hapsburg troops moved into the Palatinate and the Thirty Years War began its dreadful course.” 46:100

“Giordano Bruno as he wandered through Europe had preached an approaching general reformation of the world, based on return to the ‘Egyptian’ religion taught in the Hermetic treatises, a religion which was to transcend religious differences through love and magic, which was to be based on a new vision of nature achieved through Hermetic contemplative exercises.  He had preached this religion, enveloped in mythological forms, in France, England, and Germany.  According to himself, he had formed a sect in Germany, called the ‘Giordanisti’, which had much influence among the Lutherans.” 46:136

   “Johann Amos Komensky, or Comenius, born in 1592, was six years younger than Johann Valentin Andreae, whose works and outlook influenced him enormously.  Comenius was one of the Bohemian Brethren, the mystical branch of the oldest reformation tradition in Europe, that stemming from John Huss.  Comenius and Andreae had much in common. Both were devout, reformed clerics; both were interested in new intellectual movements which they grafted on to their native piety, the German Lutheran tradition in one case, in the other, the Hussite tradition.

    “Comenius received his first schooling in his native Moravia and afterwards attended the Calvinist university of Herborn, in Nassau. In the spring of 1613, Comenius left Herborn and made fro Heidelberg to continue his studies at the university. . .

    “Comenius was attending the lectures of the Heidelberg professor David Paraeus . . .(who) was interested in uniting Lutherans and Calvinists; both he and the other professors who lectured to Comenius were closely associated with the Elector Frederick. 46:156

“The face (of Frederick V) is not one’s idea of a Calvinist face, but Calvinism, in the Palatinate, was the carrier of mystical traditions, of the Renaissance Hermetic-Cabalist tradition which had moved over to that side.  Frederick’s spiritual advisor was an ‘orientalist’; perhaps, like Rudolph II, he sought an esoteric way through the religious situation.” 46:172

THE ROSICRUCIAN ENLIGHTENMENT

• The Rosicrucians planned another Reformation which would come through Evangelical Christianity.

    “(Francis) Bacon died in 1626. In 1627 there was published from his papers an unfinished and undated work in which he set forth his Utopia, his dream of an ideal religious and scientific society.  It takes the form of an allegory, about the discovery by storm-tossed mariners of a new land, the New Atlantis.  The inhabitants of the New Atlantis had built there the perfect society, though remaining entirely unknown to the rest of the world.  They were Christians; Christianity had been brought to them in early times, an evangelical Christianity which emphasized brotherly love.  They were also in an advanced state of scientific knowledge.  In their great college, called Salomon’s House, an order of priest-scientists pursued researches in all the arts and sciences, the results of which they knew how to apply for the benefit of men.

    “...The religion of the New Atlantis has much in common with that of the Rosicrucian manifestos.  It is intensely Christian in spirit, though not doctrinal, interpreting the Christian spirit in terms of practical benevolence, like the R. C. Brothers. It is profoundly influenced by Hebraic-Christian mysticism, as in Christian Cabala.  The inhabitants of New Atlantis respect the Jews; they call their college after Solomon and seek for God in nature.”  46:125-9

“We need a reconstruction of our theology on the basis, not of God’s sovereignty, but of God’s holy love to all mankind, which he has made in his own image, and redeemed with the blood of his own son. Every age must produce its own theology.” - 208:476-7

“. . .a message which is closely parallel to that of the Fama, the need for a new reformation since former attempts at reformation have failed, for a movement which should emphasized Christian love and charity as its main inspiration. . .” - 46:135

“The Rosicrucian manifesto may now take on a somewhat wider meaning.  It calls for a general reformation because other reformations have failed.  The Protestant Reformation is losing strength and is divided.  The Catholic Counter-Reformation has taken a wrong turning.  A new general reformation of the whole wide world is called for, and this third reformation is to find its strength in Evangelical Christianity with its emphasis on brotherly love, in the esoteric Hermetic-Cabalist tradition, and in an accompanying turning towards the works of God in nature in a scientific spirit of exploration, using science or magic, magical science or scientific magic, in the service of man.” - 46:139

“At some time around 1617. . . (Johann Valentin Andreae) urged the formation of ‘Christian Unions’, or ‘Christian Societies’.  These societies or unions were to be inspired by aims very similar to those expressed in the Rosicrucian manifestos.  They were to give expression to a renewal in religion, or a new reformation, to encourage by precept and example the spread of Christian charity and brotherly love, and to engage earnestly in intellectual and scientific activities for the good of mankind.” 46:140

“Andreae’s most important work, the description of the ideal or utopian city of Christianopolis. . .begins by deploring the oppression of the church of Christ by Antichrist, which has aroused the determination to restore light and dispel darkness.  Luther’s reformation is now to be succeeded by a new reformation.  The drama of Luther’s days ‘may be played out in our own day’, for ‘the light of a purer religion has dawned on us.’ Men of fervent spirit. . .have called for a time of meditation and spiritual renewal and for the spread of a new outpouring of the Christian spirit in these times.” 46:145

“The intense Christian piety of Dee-inspired Christianopolis would perhaps be nearer to Hartlib’s strong evangelical pietism and mysticism than Bacon’s cooler temperament.” -  46:181

THE PURITAN PROTECTORATE (1653-1658)

• The term “Puritan” comes from the same root word as the heretical “Cathari” who believed themselves to be “pure”.

“The word ‘Cathar’ probably comes from the Greek ‘pure,’ and the Cathar doctrines show the sect to have been Gnostic of the ascetic type. They believed that the world had been created by an evil being—that there were a series of spheres of being between God and the material world-that procreation was evil because it introduced another spark of the divine into matter. These are familiar tenets. In the Languedoc the Cathars flourished, until in 1207 Pope Innocent III solicited help from the magnates of the North to crush the dangerous heresy. Strictly speaking it was not a heresy, but a rival religion; and as such it was ruthlessly wiped out.” (Webb 207)

• Oliver Cromwell, the Puritan “Lord Protector” of England, Scotland and Ireland, was financed by Jewish elites.

“When King Charles I was brought into disagreement with his Parliament a Jewish Money-Baron in Holland named Manasseh Ben Israel had his agents contact Oliver Cromwell. They offered him large sums of money if he would carry out their plan to overthrow the British Throne. Manasseh Ben Israel, and other German and French money-lenders financed Cromwell. Fernandez Carvajal of Portugal, often referred to in history as ‘The Great Jew,’ became Cromwell’s Chief Military Contractor. He re-organized the Round Heads into a model army. He provided them with the best arms and equipment money could buy. 

“