PREHISTORIC MASONRY

CHAPTER XXXVI

THE ROSICRUCIANISM OF THE HIGH DEGREES

The history of the High Degrees of Masonry begins with the inventions of the Chevalier Michael Ramsay, who about the year 1728 fabricated three which he called Ecossais, Novice, and Knight Templar. But the inventions of Ramsay had nothing in them of a Rosicrucian character. They were intended by him to support his hypothesis that Freemasonry originated in the Crusades, and that the first Freemasons were Templars. His degrees were therefore not philosophic but chivalric. The rite-manufacturers who succeeded him, followed for the most part in his footsteps, and the degrees that were subsequently invented partook of the chivalric and military character, so that the title of " Chevalier " or " Knight," unknown to the early Freemasons, became in time so common as to form the designation in connection with another noun of most of the new degrees. Thus we find in old and disused Rites, as well as in those still existing, such titles as " Knight of the Sword," " Knight of the Eagle," " Knight of the Brazen Serpent," and so many more that Ragon, in his Nomenclature, furnishes us with no less than two hundred and ninety-two degrees of Masonic Knighthood, without having exhausted the catalogue.

But it was not until long after the Masonic labors of Ramsay had ceased that the element of Hermetic philosophy began to intrude itself into still newer degrees.

Among the first to whom we are to ascribe the responsibility of this novel infusion is a Frenchman named Antoine Joseph Pernelty, who was born in 1716 and died in 1800, having passed, therefore, the most active and rigorous portion of his life in the midst of that flood of Masonic novelties which about the middle quarters of the 18th century inundated the continent of Europe and more especially the kingdom of France.

Pernelty was at first a Benedictine monk, but, having at the age of forty-nine obtained a dispensation from his vows, he removed from Paris to Berlin, where for a short time he served Frederick the Great as his librarian. Returning to Paris, he studied and became infected with the mystical doctrines of Swedenborg, and published a translation of one of the most important of his works. He then repaired to Avignon, where he established a new Rite, which, on its transference to Montpellier, received the name of the " Academy of True Masons." Into this Rite it may well be supposed that he introduced much of the theosophic mysticism of the Swedish sage, in parts of which there is a very strong analogy to Rosicrucianism, or at least to the Hermetic Doctrines of the Rosicrucians. It will be remembered that the late General Hitchcock, who was learned on mystical topics, wrote a book to prove that Swedenborg was a Hermetic philosopher; and the arguments that he advances are not easily to be confuted.

But Pernelty was not a Swedenborgian only. He was a man of multifarious reading and had devoted his studies, among other branches of learning, to theology, philosophy, and the mathematical sciences. The appetite for a mystical theology, which had led him to the study and the adoption of the views of Swedenborg, would scarcely permit him to escape the still more appetizing study of the Hermetic philosophers.

Accordingly we find him inventing other degrees, and among them one, the " Knight of the Sun," which is in its original ritual a mere condensation of Rosicrucian doctrines, especially as developed in the alchemical branch of Rosicrucianism.

There is not in the wide compass of Masonic degrees, one more emphatically Rosicrucian than this. The reference in its ritual to Sylphs, one of the four elementary spirits of the Rosicrucians ; to the seven angels which formed a part of the Rosicrucian hierarchy ; the dialogue between Father Adam and Truth in which the doctrines of Alchemy and the Cabala are discussed in the search of man for theosophic truth, and the adoption as its principal word of recognition of that which in the Rosicrucian system was deemed the primal matter of all things, are all sufficient to prove the Hermetic spirit which governed the founder of the degree in its fabrication.

There have been many other degrees, most of which are now obsolete, whose very names openly indicate their Hermetic origin. Such are the " Hermetic Knight," the " Adept of the Eagle" (the word adept being technically used to designate an expert Rosicrucian), the " Grand Hermetic Chancellor," and the " Philosophic Cabalist." The list might be increased by fifty more, at least, were time and space convenient. There have been whole rites fabricated on the basis of the Rosicrucian or Hermetic philosophy, such as the " Rite of Philalethes" the " Hermetic Rite," and the " Rite of Illuminated Theosophists," invented in 1767 by Benedict Chartanier, who united in it the notions of the Hermetic philosophy and the reveries of Swedenborg. Gadicke tells us also, in his Freimaurer-Lexicon, of a so-called Masonic system which was introduced by the Marquis of Lernais into Berlin in 1758, the objects of which were the Hermetic arcana and the philosopher's stone.

But the Hermetic degree which to the present day has exercised the greatest influence upon the higher grades of Masonry is that of the Rose Croix. This name was given to it by the French, and it must be noticed that in the French language no distinction has ever been made between the Rosenkreutzer and Rose Croix; or, rather, the French writers have always translated the Rosenkreutzer of the German and the Rosacrucian of the English by their own words, Rose Croix, and to this philological inaccuracy is to be traced an historical error of some importance, to be soon adverted to.

The first that we hear in history of a Rosicrucian Masonry, under that distinctive name, is about the middle of the 18th century.

The society to which I allude was known as the " Gold-und- Rosenkreutzer," or the "Golden Rosicrucians." We first find this title in a book published at Berlin, in 1714, by one Samuel Richter, under the assumed name of Sincerus Renatus, and with the title of A True and Complete Preparation of the Philosopher's Stone by the Order of the Golden Rosicrucians. In it is contained the laws of the brotherhood, which Findel thinks bear unmistakable evidence of Jesuitical intervention.

The book of Richter describes a society which, if founded on the old Rosicrucians, differed essentially from them in its principles. Findel speaks of these " Golden Rosicrucians " as if originally formed on this work of Richter, and in the spirit of the Jesuits, to repress liberty of thought and the healthy development of the intellect. If formed at that early period, in the beginning of the 18th century, it could not possibly have had a connection with Freemasonry.

But the Order, as an appendant to Masonry, was not really perfected until about the middle of the 18th century. Findel says after 1756. The Order consisted of nine degrees, all having Latin names, viz.: 1, Junior; 2, Theoreticus; 3, Practicus; 4, Philosophus; 5, Minor; 6, Major; 7, Adeptus; 8, Magister; 9, Magus. It based itself on the three primitive degrees of Freemasonry only as giving a right to entrance ; it boasted of being descended from the ancient Rosicrucians, and of possessing all their secrets, and of being the only body that could give a true interpretation of the Masonic symbols, and it claimed, therefore, to be the head of the Order. There is no doubt that this brotherhood was a perfect instance of the influence sought to be cast, about the middle of the 18th century, upon Freemasonry by the doctrines of Rosicrucianism. The effort, however, to make it a Hermetic system failed. The Order of the Golden Rosicrucians, although for nearly half a century popular in Germany, and calling into its ranks many persons of high standing, at length began to decay, and finally died out, about the end of the last century.

Since that period we hear no more of Rosicrucian Masonry, except what is preserved in degrees like that of the Knight of the Sun and a few others, which are still retained in the catalogue of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.

I have said that the translation of the word Rosicrucian by Rose Croix has been the source of an important historical error. This is the confounding of the French degree of " Rose Croix," or " Knight of the Eagle and Pelican," with Rosicrucianism, to which it has not the slightest affinity. Thus Dr. Oliver, when speaking of this degree, says that the earliest notice that he finds of it is in the Fama Fraternitatis, evidently showing that he deemed it to be of Rosicrucian origin.

The modern Rose Croix, which constitutes the summit of the French Rite, and is the eighteenth of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, besides being incorporated into several other Masonic systems, has not in its construction the slightest tinge of Rosicrucianism, nor is there in any part of its ritual, rightly interpreted, the faintest allusion to the Hermetic philosophy.

I speak of it, of course, as it appears in its original form. This has been somewhat changed in later days. The French Masons, objecting to its sectarian character, substituted for it a modification which they have called the " Philosophic Rose Croix." In this they have given a Hermetic interpretation to the letters on the cross, an example that has elsewhere been more recently followed.

But the original Rose Croix, most probably first introduced to notice by Prince (Charles Edward, the " young pretender," in the Primordial chapter which he established in 1747, at Arras, in France, was a purely Christian, if not a Catholic degree. Its most prominent symbols, the rose, the cross, the eagle, and the pelican, its ceremonies, and even its words and signs of recognition, bore allusion to Jesus Christ, the expounder of the new law, which was to take the place of the old law that had ceased to operate when " the veil of the temple was rent."

The Rose Croix, as we find it in its pure and uncorrupted ritual, was an attempt to apply the rites, symbols, and legends of the primitive degrees of Ancient Craft Masonry to the last and greatest dispensation; to add to the first temple of Solomon, and the second of Zerubbabel, a third, which is the one to which Christ alluded when he said, " Destroy this temple, and in three days will I raise it up "an expression wholly incomprehensible by the ignorant populace who stood around him at the time, but the meaning of which is perfectly intelligible to the Rose Croix Mason who consults the original ritual of his degree.

In all this there is nothing alchemical, Hermetic, or Rosicrucian and it is a great error to suppose that there is anything but Christian philosophy in the degree as originally invented.

The name of the degree has undoubtedly led to the confusion in its history. But, in fact, the words " Rosa Crucis," common both to the ancient Rosicrucian philosophers and to the modern Rose Croix Masons, had in each a different meaning, and some have supposed a different derivation. In the latter the title has by many writers been thought to allude to the ros, or dew, which was deemed by the alchemists to be a powerful solvent of gold, and to crux, the cross, which was the chemical hieroglyphic of light. Mosheim says:

" The title of Rosicrucians evidently denotes the chemical philosophers and those who blended the doctrines of religion with the. secrets of chemistry. The denomination itself is drawn from the science of chemistry ; and they only who are acquainted with the peculiar language of the chemists can understand its true signification and energy. It is not compounded, as many imagine, of the two words rosa and crux, which signify rose and cross, but of the latter of these words and the Latin word ros, which signifies dew. Of all natural bodies dew is the most powerful solvent of gold. The cross, in the chemical style, is equivalent to light, because the figure of the cross exhibits at the same time the three letters of which the word lux, i.e., light, is compounded. Now, lux is called by this sect the seed or menstrum of the red dragon,- or, in other words, that gross and corporeal, when properly digested and modified, produces gold." (1)

Notwithstanding that this learned historian has declared that it all other explications of this term are false and chimerical," others more learned perhaps than he, in this especial subject, have differed from him in opinion, and trace the title to rosa, not to ros.

There is certainly a controversy about the derivation of Rosicrucian as applied to the Hermetic philosophers, but there is none whatever in reference to that of the Masonic.Rose Croix. Everyone admits, because the admission is forced upon him by the ritual and the spirit of the degree, that the title comes from rose and cross, and that rose signifies Christ, and cross the instrument of his passion. In the Masonic degree, Rose Croix signifies Christ on the cross, a meaning that is carried out by the jewel, but one which is never attached to the rose and now of the Rosicrucians, where rose most probably was the symbol of silence and secrecy, and the cross may have had either a Christian or a chemical application, most probably the latter.

Again, we see in the four most important symbols of the Rose Croix degree, as interpreted in the early rituals (at least in their spirit), the same Christian interpretation, entirely free from all taint of Rosicrucianism.

These symbols are the eagle, thelelican, the rose, and the cross, all of which are combined to form the beautiful and expressive jewel of the degree.

(1) Mosheim "Ecclesiastical History," Maclane's Translation, cent. xvii., sec. i., vol. iii., p. 436, note

Thus the writer of the book of Exodus, in allusion to the belief that the eagle assists its feeble younglings in their first flights by bearing them on its pinions, represents Jehovah as saying, "Ye have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagle's wings and brought you unto myself." Hence, appropriating this idea, the Rose Croix Masons selected the eagle as a symbol of Christ in his divine character, bearing the children of his adoption in their upward course, and teaching them with unequaled love and tenderness to poise their fledgling wings, and soar from the dull corruptions of earth to a higher and holier sphere. And hence the eagle in the jewel is represented with expanded wings, as if ready for flight.

The pelican, "vulning herself and in her piety," as the heralds call it, is, says Mr. Sloane Evans, " a sacred emblem of great beauty and striking import, and the representation of it occurs not unfrequently among the ornaments of churches. (1)" The allusion to Christ as a Saviour, shedding his blood for the sins of the world, is too evident to need explanation.

Of the rose and the cross I have already spoken. The rose is applied as a figurative appellation of Christ in only one passage of Scripture, where he is prophetically called the " rose of Sharon," but the flower was always accepted in the iconography of the church as one of his symbols. But the fact that in the jewel of the Rose Croix the blood-red rose appears attached to the center of the cross, as though crucified upon it, requires no profound knowledge of the science of symbolism to discover its meaning.

The cross was, it is true, a very ancient symbol of eternal life. especially among the "Egyptian, but since the crucifixion it has been adopted by Christians as an emblem of him who suffered upon it. " The cross," says Didron, " is more than a mere figure of Christ ; it is, in iconography, either Christ himself or his symbol." As such, it is used in the Masonry of the Rose Croix.

It is evident, from these explanations, that the Rose Croix was, in its original conception, a purely Christian degree. There was no intention of its founders to borrow for its construction anything from occult philosophy, but simply to express in its symbolization a purely Christian sentiment.

(1) "The Art of Blazon," p. 130

I have, in what I have said, endeavored to show that while Rosicrucianism had no concern, as has been alleged, with the origination of Freemasonry in the 17th century, yet that in the succeeding century, under various influenced especially, perhaps, the diffusion of the mystical doctrines of Swedenborg, a Hermetic or Rosicrucian element was infused into some of the High Degrees then newly fabricated. But the diffusion of that element went no farther ; it never affected the pure Masonic system ; and, with the few exceptions which I have mentioned, even these degrees have ceased to exist. Especially was it not connected with one of the most important and most popular of those degrees.

From the beginning of the 19th century Rosicrucianism has been dead to Masonry, as its exponent the Hermetic philosophy, has been to literature. It has no life now, and we preserve its relics only as memorials of a past obscuration which the sunbeams of modern learning have dispersed.