Rosicrucians Emerged As An Antidote To The Material Side Of Alchemy

Rosicrucians emerged in Europe as an antidote to the material side of alchemy and to stem the tide of the folly. From this point of view, the Rosicrucians are group of Reformers. The spiritual side of man must be awakened and utilised, before the Philosopher’s Stone, or the Elixir of Life, can be discovered. Wonder-seekers then, as now, craving for power and wealth, did not appreciate that higher ethics are prerequisite to real wisdom. The Rosicrucians were alchemists in the spiritual sense and professors of divine magic, which is devoid of selfishness, love of power, ambition, and lucre. Most divergent are the lines of thought between Christian and Occultist.

Christian lamps were preserved by the power of god. Pagan lamps were the work of the devil, according to St. Augustine, “who deceives us in a thousand ways.” Their light is sublimated gold, rescued magically by invisible stellar attraction, out of material depths. With bibliographical note by Boris de Zirkoff.

Rosicrucianism was not a sect, is was but one of many branches of the same tree. Rosicrucians no longer exist, the last of that fraternity having departed in the person of Cagliostro. Occultism is a double-edged weapon for one who is unprepared to devote his whole life to it. The theory of it, unaided by serious practice, will always remain a foolish and ignorant speculation. He who rejects the immortality of man’s soul cannot perceive the unity of homogeneity of his Creator through the plurality of heterogeneity, and he therefore condemns himself to live hand-by-hand with death in the “vale of tears.” Any attempt to learn about Occultism by book study alone will always prove insufficient — even to the analytical mind trained to extract the quintessence of truth scattered throughout myriads of contradictory statements — unless supported by practice and experience. As primitive Christianity split into numerous sects, so the science of Occultism gave birth to a variety of doctrines and brotherhoods. For example, the Egyptian Ophites, became the Christian Gnostics, shooting forth the Basilideans of the second century. And the original Rosicrucians, created the Paracelsists or Fire-Philosophers, the European Alchemists, and other branches of their sect. The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross was not founded until the middle of the thirteenth century, by Christian Rosenkreuz — a reformed sorcerer. The Rosicrucians gave birth to the early Theosophists, at whose head was Paracelsus, and to the Alchemists, one of the most celebrated of whom was Thomas Vaughan who wrote the most practical things on Occultism, under the name of Eugenius Philalethes. The Welsh Alchemist was definitely “made before he became.” Unlike the European Rosicrucians who, in order “to become and not be made,” have struggled alone, violently robbing Nature of her secrets, the Oriental “Rosicrucians” in the serene beatitude of their divine knowledge, are ever ready to help the earnest student struggling “to become” with practical knowledge, which dissipates like a heavenly breeze the darkest clouds of sceptical doubt. Whereas the lofty principles and doctrines of Christ and Buddha were calculated to embrace the whole of humanity, Confucius confined his attention solely to his own countrymen without troubling his head about the rest of mankind. Intensely Chinese in patriotism and views, his philosophical doctrines are as much devoid of the purely poetic element, which characterizes the teachings of Christ and Buddha, as the religious tendencies of his people lack in that spiritual exaltation which we find, for instance, in India. Confucius did not have the depth of feeling and spiritual striving of his contemporary, Lao-tzu. The heavy, childish, cold, sensual nature of the Chinese explains the peculiarities of their history. Marginal are the differences between the Rosicrucian and the Oriental Kabbalah. American Spiritualism, which has proved such a sore in the side of the materialists, will soon become a science of mathematical certitude, instead of being regarded only as the crazy delusion of epileptic monomaniacs. The Zohar is an inexhaustible mine of hidden wisdom and mystery for all subsequent Kabbalists. All recent Kabbalahs are copies of the God’s Splendour. While the Oriental Kabbalah remained in its pure primitive shape, the Mosaic or Jewish one is full of drawbacks, and with the keys to many secrets purposely misinterpreted. If the primitive Rosicrucians learned their first lessons of wisdom from Oriental Masters, that was not so with their direct descendants, the Paracelsists: the Kabbalah of the latter Illuminati degenerated into the twin sister of the Jewish. The custodians of the real Kabbalah of primitive humanity are certain Oriental philosophers. Their location will not be revealed until the day when humanity shall awake from its spiritual lethargy, and open its blind eyes to the dazzling rays of Truth. Thus the light of Truth will finally dissipate the unhealthy mists of the battalions of religious sects which disgrace our times. They will warm up and recall into new life the millions of wretched souls, who shiver and are half frozen under the icy hand of deadly scepticism. Occultism without practice will ever be like the statue of Pygmalion that no one can animate without infusing into it a spark of the Sacred Divine Fire. The Jewish Kabbalah, the only authority of the European Occultist, is based on the secret meanings of the Hebrew scriptures, which afford no hope for the adepts to solve them practically. More! The likelihood of anyone becoming a practical Kabbalist-Rosicrucian through studying the Jewish Kabbalah single-handed, without being initiated and so being “made” such by someone who “knows,” is as foolish as to hope to thread the Cretan labyrinth without a clue, or to open the secret locks of the ingenious inventors of the mediaeval ages, without having possession of the keys. The Seventh Rule of the Rosicrucian “who became but was not made” has its secret meaning, like every other phrase left by the Kabbalists to posterity. The Rosicrucian has to struggle alone and toil long years in the hope of finding out some of the lesser secrets of the great Kabbalah. His mental, moral, and physical fitness will be tested to the extreme. His spirit will have to pass through the ordeal of incarnation and life, and be baptised with matter before he could attain inner knowledge. There is nothing new under the Sun. There is not a science, nor a modern discovery in any section of it, which was not known to the Oriental Occultists of the hoary antiquity. What would not modern physicians, practitioners of their blind and lame science of medicine, give for a part of the knowledge of botany and plants! The hope of finding remnants of such wisdom as Ancient Asia possessed, ought to tempt our conceited modern science to explore that territory assiduously. Religions and sciences, laws and customs, they are all the direct products of Oriental Occultism, disguised by the hand of time, and palmed upon us under new pseudonyms. The time is near when the old superstitions and the errors of centuries will be swept away by the hurricane of Truth. There is scarcely a rite or ceremony of the Christian Church that does not descend from Occultism. When the devout worshippers of the Vatican lift up their eyes in mute adoration upon the head of their God on Earth, their Pontifex Maximus, what they admire the most is the caricatured head-dress, the Amazon-like helmet of Pallas Athene, the heathen goddess Minerva.

Materialism is moral and spiritual blindness. Shall we let the blind lead the blind? Before Alchemy existed as a Science, its quintessence alone acted in Nature’s correlations. The virtuous man can produce external, perceptible, phenomenal results by invoking Kriyashakti, his own inherent power of creative thought, and become a co-worker with Nature in her higher departments. Like the lightning conductor that directs the electric fluid, the force of Kriyashakti conducts the quintessence of life and gives it direction; led haphazardly, it can kill; directed by the potency of human will and magnetic force, it can create according to a predetermined plan. Poor alchemy! Star of the morning, daughter of the dawn, how fallen from thine high estate! That which once was, still is and forever shall be, even to the end of time. Words change and their meaning becomes quickly disfigured. But eternal ideas remain, and shall not pass away. The ass’ skin is congenial to the tastes of today’s philosophicules and materialistic alchemists, who sacrifice the living soul for the dead form, than revering Princess-Nature in all her nakedness. With so many would-be alchemists around, even Hermes himself would lose his way. Only High Initiates are able to unravel the jargon of Hermetic philosophers and divulge their secrets pertaining to all seven realms of nature. To the practical alchemist, whose object is the production of wealth by the special rules of his art, studying their metaphysical basis was a secondary consideration; while the Sage, who had ascended to the plane of metaphysical contemplation, would reject the material objectives of these studies as unworthy of any further consideration. The origin of alchemy is lost in the remotest antiquity of the Far East. The Chaldeans were only the heirs, first to antediluvian and later to the alchemy of the Egyptians. The Wisdom of the East no longer exists in the West; it died with the three Magi. Hermes never was the name of a man, but a generic title, just as the term Neo-Platonist was used in former times, and Theosophist is being used in the present. Even in the time of Plato, Hermes was already identified with the Thoth of the Egyptians. Thoth-Hermes is simply the personification of the Voice of the sacerdotal caste of Egypt, the Voice of the Great Hierophants. Alchemy is as old as tradition itself. The Golden Fleece was a treatise written on animal skin, explaining how gold could be made by alchemical means. There still remain underground a large number of such alchemical works, written on papyrus and buried with mummies, ten millennia old. The whole secret lies in the ability to recognise in such works what appears to be only a fairy tale, as in the golden fleece and the “romances” of the earlier Pharaohs. Explicit instructions do not come from the sanctuaries of Egypt. Most are fractionally correct interpretations of the allegorical stories of the alchemical green, blue, and yellow dragons, and the rose tigers of the Chinese. Alchemy was imported to Europe from China, transformed into Hermetic writings which were then fabricated by the old Greeks and the Arabs, and refabricated in the Middle Ages — now jumbled up and distorted beyond recognition. The two objects of the Chinese system and the Hermetic Sciences, in making gold and prolonging life, are identical. But the Eastern Adept-Initiates, despising gold and having a profound indifference for life, care very little about such selfish pursuits which, in most cases, are acts black art. The third object of alchemy, i.e., transmutation, has been wholly neglected by Christian adepts who, being satisfied with their belief in the immortality of the soul, they never properly understood the meaning of this object. The transmutation of the real alchemist is the occult process by which his debased nature and brute energy are conquered; and thus, ennobled by his highest intellectual faculties, his soul is infused into the spiritual dynamics of the Divine Will. Woe to those who seek to obtain magical powers for selfish ends and money-making under the cloak of alchemy. Alchemy is a noble philosophy, purely metaphysical. The transmutation of base metals into gold was merely an allegory for freeing man of his ancestral evils and infirmities, by redeeming the flesh below and regenerating the soul above. It is incorrect to think that there exists any special “powder of projection,” or “philosopher’s stone,” or “elixir of life.” The latter lurks in every flower, in every stone and mineral throughout the globe: it is the ultimate essence of everything on its way to higher and higher evolution. And as there is no good or evil, so there is neither “elixir of life” nor “elixir of death,” nor poison as such, but all this is contained in one and the same Universal Essence, this or the other effect, or result, depending on the degree of its differentiations and various correlations. The light side of that Essence produces life, health, bliss, divine peace, and so forth; the dark side brings death, disease, sorrow, and strife. This is demonstrated by knowing the nature of the most deadly poisons; of some of them, even a large quantity will produce no ill effect, whereas a grain of the same poison will kill with the rapidity of lightning; yet, exactly the same grain, when altered by a certain combination, will heal. Seek not the secrets of nature in nature. Know your self, first and foremost. The treasure of treasures lies in the innermost chamber of your heart, where the sunlight of truth shines with unfading glory. How can those who are fools in nature, hope to profit from alchemical works — the timeless testimonies to creative powers of Nature? Let the seeker of Truth be wary of things that are readily understood, especially mystical names and secret operations, for Truth lies hid in obscurity. Pearls of Truth cannot be given to the profane; less so today than when the Apostles were advised not to cast pearls before swine. The chemist imitates nature, the alchemist surpasses nature herself. Chemistry decomposes and recombines material substances, it purifies simple substances of foreign elements, but leaves the primitive elements unchanged. Alchemy changes the character of things, and raises them up into higher states of existence. As all the powers of the universe are potentially contained in us, our body and its organs are the representatives of the powers of nature and a constellation of the same powers that formed the stars in the sky. The physician who knows nothing of alchemy can only be a servant of nature, but the alchemist is her lord.

Science has made wonderful discoveries on the objective side of all the physical phenomena. Where it is really wrong is, when it perceives in matter alone — i.e., in that matter which is known to it — the alpha and the omega of all phenomena. Our quarrel with the Materialists is not so much for their soulless Forces, as for their denying the existence of any “Force-bearer,” the Noumenon of Light, Electricity, etc. With biographical and bibliographical notes on Alexander Nikolayevich Aksakov by Boris de Zirkoff.