The Rose Cross and the Age of Reason

The Rose Cross and the Age of Reason PDF Author: Christopher McIntosh
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438435614
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
This new edition of Christopher McIntosh's classic book on the Golden and Rosy Cross order is eagerly awaited. The order stands out as one of the most fascinating and influential of the high-degree masonic and illuminist groups that mushroomed in Europe from the 18th century onward. Active mainly in the German-speaking lands, it recast the original Rosicrucian vision and gave it renewed vitality. At one point it became politically influential when the Prussian King, Frederick William II, was a member of the order. Historians have often perceived the Golden and Rosy Cross as having had a conservative, anti-Enlightenment agenda, but this study – drawing on rare German sources – shows that the matter was more complex. The members of the order practiced alchemy and operated a degree system that was later imitated by later orders such as the Golden Dawn. Like the latter, the Golden and Rosy Cross exerted a wide and enduring cultural influence. Both the alchemy of the order and its powerful ritual system are insightfully described in Christopher McIntosh's clear and compelling style.

The Rose Cross and the Age of Reason

The Rose Cross and the Age of Reason PDF Author: Christopher McIntosh
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438435614
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
This new edition of Christopher McIntosh's classic book on the Golden and Rosy Cross order is eagerly awaited. The order stands out as one of the most fascinating and influential of the high-degree masonic and illuminist groups that mushroomed in Europe from the 18th century onward. Active mainly in the German-speaking lands, it recast the original Rosicrucian vision and gave it renewed vitality. At one point it became politically influential when the Prussian King, Frederick William II, was a member of the order. Historians have often perceived the Golden and Rosy Cross as having had a conservative, anti-Enlightenment agenda, but this study – drawing on rare German sources – shows that the matter was more complex. The members of the order practiced alchemy and operated a degree system that was later imitated by later orders such as the Golden Dawn. Like the latter, the Golden and Rosy Cross exerted a wide and enduring cultural influence. Both the alchemy of the order and its powerful ritual system are insightfully described in Christopher McIntosh's clear and compelling style.

The Rose Cross and the Age of Reason

The Rose Cross and the Age of Reason PDF Author: Christopher McIntosh
Publisher: Brill's Studies in Intellectua
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
This the first comprehensive study of the eighteenth-century German Rosicrucian revival and, in particular, of the Gold und Rosenkreuz (Golden and Rosy Cross) order. It examines the order's relationship to the Enlightenment and its influence on the cultural, political and religious life of its age.

Western Esotericism and Rituals of Initiation

Western Esotericism and Rituals of Initiation PDF Author: Henrik Bogdan
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791480100
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
For more than three hundred years the practice of Masonic rituals of initiation has been part of Western culture, spreading far beyond the boundaries of traditional Freemasonry. Henrik Bogdan explores the historical development of these rituals and their relationship with Western esotericism. Beginning with the Craft degrees of Freemasonry—the blueprints, as it were, of all later Masonic rituals of initiation—Bogdan examines the development of the Masonic High Degrees, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn—the most influential of all nineteenth-century occultist initiatory societies—and Gerald Gardner's Witchcraft movement of the 1950s, one of the first large-scale Western esoteric New Religions Movements.

The Rosicrucian Enlightenment Revisited

The Rosicrucian Enlightenment Revisited PDF Author: John Matthews
Publisher: SteinerBooks
ISBN: 9780940262843
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
A collection of writings based on the Rosicrucian Enlightenment, a movement which went underground during the Thirty Years' War and lives on today as part of contemporary spiritual movements.

Eliphas Lévi and the French Occult Revival

Eliphas Lévi and the French Occult Revival PDF Author: Christopher McIntosh
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description


The Transcendental Universe

The Transcendental Universe PDF Author: C. G. Harrison
Publisher: SteinerBooks
ISBN: 1584204974
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
"Our very 'I' consciousness is possible because the mineral earth--the first layer of the interior of the Earth--and the other chthonic regions exist. Our human nature is a reflection of the subearthly and supraearthly realms that comprise the macrocosm and the microcosm. 'The true meaning of the microcosm-macrocosm analogy is not that the human being is a little cosmos, but that the cosmos is a big human being.' From this perspective, it makes complete sense that the subterranean realms described by spiritual science live within the deepest realms of our human nature and subconscious life of darker feelings and will. Deep within the human being, they radiate into the shadows of thought. This region is more familiarly known as Hell, Hades, or the Abyss. The subterranean spheres, then, are the Earth's 'dark side'" (from Paul V. O'Leary's introduction). Throughout human history, ancient wisdom and traditional myths have placed human beings between the heavens and the underworld, describing the heavens as the light-filled realm of the gods and the source of goodness, and characterizing the underworld as a demon-filled realm of darkness and the source of evil. Modern science, however, denies the heavens and knows little of the Earth's interior -- even physically -- beyond the first few miles, after which it simply resorts to conjecture based on the extrapolation of existing sensory data. In other words, natural science fails to take into account that the Earth is a living, spiritual being and ignores the presence of its soul-spiritual qualities and influences. To remedy this, during the early twentieth century, Rudolf Steiner researched the psychic, spiritual, and cosmic nature of the Earth's interior. He described how the different layers of the inner Earth affect and interact with human beings living on Earth. More theologically and cosmically, he spoke of the layers of "Hell," through which Jesus Christ traveled in the period between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, uniting and integrating himself with the Earth and with human destiny. The seven authors in The Inner Life of the Earth approach this difficult and little-discussed topic from different directions. They discuss how the forces emanating from the interior of the Earth affect the weather, our atmosphere, human beings, and how human behavior in turn affects them, showing that earthly and human evolution are a unity and should never be thought of as occurring separately. They also discuss the deep significance of Christ's incarnation, by which he united with the Earth to become the Spirit of the Earth. Without Christ's deed, the Mystery of Golgotha, which reunites cosmic and human evolution with the divine, human beings would be unable to work in freedom with Christ or with Sophia, divine feminine Wisdom, in her form as the Soul of the Earth, to overcome evil and help lift all creation toward goodness and greater human, cosmic, and divine fellowship.

The Rosicrucian Enlightenment Revisited

The Rosicrucian Enlightenment Revisited PDF Author: Ralph White
Publisher: SteinerBooks
ISBN: 1584205261
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In 1995, to honor the role of Central Europe in the spiritual history of the West, the New York Open Center invited students of Rosicrucianism and the Western Mystery traditions to the Czech Republic to discuss the historical backgrounds of Rosicrucianism. Two years later a second meeting was held in Prague to celebrate the Hermetic world of Rudolf II. The result is this book: in which John Matthews addresses the relationship between the Grail and the Rose; Christopher Bamford speaks of the prehistory of the Rosicrucian reformation in the late Middle Ages--among women mystics, alchemists, Cathars, Franciscan spirituals, as well as in Luther and the great Paracelsus; Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke tells the wild tale of John Dee's mission to central Europe; Joscelyn Godwin unfolds the paradigmatic Rosicrucian life of Michael Maier; Claire Goodrick-Clarke recounts influence of Comenius; Paul Bembridge speaks of Rosicrucian Resurgence at the Court of Cromwell; Robert Powell describes the roles of Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, and Rudolf II; and Christopher McIntosh speaks of the Rosicrucian Legacy. Also included are the texts of the two Rosicrucian Manifestos--the Fama and the Confessio. Illustrated.

Hermetic Behmenists

Hermetic Behmenists PDF Author: Dionysius Andreas Freher
Publisher: Topaz House Publications
ISBN: 0998821314
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 826

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Book Description
Hermetic Behmenists reproduces the writings of Dionysius Andreas Freher and Francis Lee, two exceptional commentators on Jacob Boehme’s philosophy. The texts contained in this book were originally published in 1854, in an edition of 500, given away to friends, and sent to university libraries by their editor, Christopher Walton. They were never sold in stores. Walton was an English Behmenist and devotee of William Law, and the texts were assembled as part of a research project that was never completed, “Notes and Materials Towards an Adequate Biography of William Law”. Unfortunately, Walton presented the texts haphazardly, without table of contents, in microscopic type, with footnotes going up to one hundred pages in length, that in turn contained other texts. This edition of the writings aims to put the writings of Freher and Lee in a more accessible, and readable format. Besides Walton’s book, only fragments of Freher’s writings have been published. A great quantity of writings have been preserved in manuscript form. Freher was referred to as “Second to Boehme” in his capacity as a commentator on Boehme’s philosophy, making the inaccessibility of his works an unfortunate loss.

A Rosicrucian Utopia in Eighteenth-Century Russia

A Rosicrucian Utopia in Eighteenth-Century Russia PDF Author: Raffaella Faggionato
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402034873
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
This is the first investigation of the history of Russian Freemasonry, based on the premise that the facts of the Russian Enlightenment preclude application of the interpretative framework commonly used for the history of western thought. Coverage includes the development of early Russian masonry, the formation of the Novikov circle in Moscow, the ‘programme’ of Rosicrucianism and its Russian variant and, finally, the clash between the Rosicrucians and the State.

Theosophical Enlightenment

Theosophical Enlightenment PDF Author: Joscelyn Godwin
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438404220
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 466

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Book Description
This is an intellectual history of occult and esoteric currents in the English-speaking world from the early Romantic period to the early twentieth century. The Theosophical Society, founded in 1875 by Helena P. Blavatsky, holds a crucial position as the place where all these currents temporarily united, before again diverging. The book's ambiguous title points to the author's thesis that Theosophy owed as much to the skeptical Enlightenment of the eighteenth century as it did to the concept of spiritual enlightenment with which it is more readily associated. The author respects his sources sufficiently to allow that their world, so different from that of academic reductionism, has a right to be exhibited on its own terms. At the same time he does not conceal the fact that he considers many of them deluded and deluding. In the context of theosophical history, this book is neither on the side of the blind votaries of Madame Blavatsky, nor on that of her enemies. It may, therefore, be expected to mildly annoy both sides.