HISTORICAL ORIGIN

“Chronologically,” the “Who and What” booklet tells us, “the Order is mentioned as far back as A.D. 1115, in a book of the collection of Brother ‘Omnis Mariar’ in Germany. It rose to considerable prominence during the sixteenth century when, following the invention of the printing press, a small pamphlet entitled ‘The Fama Fraternitatis’ ['the Fama (or Tradition of the) Fraternity or Brotherhood'] was issued, and given wide circulation. It was said to have been written by a (Lutheran) theologian, Johann Valentine Andrea (1586-1654). The pamphlets were part of a campaign for its revival.”

Now in every age there have been secret societies. But the Rosicrucian Brotherhood cannot be traced back historically beyond Johann Valentine Andrea, even nominally. I say even nominally, for the modern Rosicrucian Order has no continuity as an organization with Andrea’s Fraternity. It is an independent Society, founded centuries later, and claiming only to possess similar secret and mysterious teachings.

There is a legend that a certain German nobleman named Christian Rosenkreuz (1378-1484), when travelling in the Middle East, was there initiated into Arabian magic and other Oriental mysteries, which he determined to blend with the Christian religion. On his return to Germany, he is said to have founded in 1408 a “Fraternity of the Rosy Cross,” the members of which were to devote themselves to the study of the deepest forces of nature in profound secrecy. All that is sheer legend. There is no proof that Christian Rosenkreuz ever existed. All we know is that, in 1614, a pamphlet entitled “Fama Fraternitatis Rosae Crucis” was published at Cassel, in Germany, by Johann Valentine Andrea. He claimed that the secret wisdom of Christian Rosenkreuz had been transmitted by an anonymous Fraternity or Brotherhood for some two hundred years, and that he was the first to make the Fraternity known by his pamphlet. The Rose and the Cross were chosen as symbols because they were ancient symbols of occult societies, and because they were included in the family arms of the Andrea household.

The publication of the “Fama” was an open invitation to chosen souls to join the Fraternity, but under the penalty of death for any disclosure of its secrets and activities. The morbid propensity of the age for magic, weird and mysterious rituals, and secret societies led to an extensive membership, and the influence of Andrea’s Fraternity became very considerable. Andrea himself ultimately renounced Rosicrucianism, and frequently denounced it as ridiculous comedy and folly. But he had started something which he could not stop. When Freemasonry was founded as another secret society in 1717, it borrowed much from the Rosicrucians, above all from their ritual; and to this day there is, in the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, a symbolic degree known as the “Rosicrucian Degree.” But what is known as the “Rosicrucian Order” has no connection with Freemasonry. It is a modern, independent organization, having a secret philosophy and ritual of its own, modelled on those of Andrea’s Fraternity. AMORC itself was founded in 1915.