Tag: Kabbalah

One of the most interesting groups one comes across when delving into occult studies, and certainly one of the most compelling and influential was the movement known as the Rosicrucians. Or as can bee seen in this Wikipedia article, the many competing groups, orders, well meaning mythmakers, and outright charlatans composing the movement. The group has been everything from a coffee klatch of enlightenment scientists to a high ranking masonic degree, and later devolved into small secret societies of practicing occultists and mail-order initiatory societies. Due to its influence on the enlightenment and through its masonic connections, it could also be seen in the US Founding Fathers vision of a United States as most of those involved were all deists and masons.

The entrance of a perhaps mythical group of alchemist christian mystics into public consciousness was achieved with the publication of three manifestos in the early 17th century. Possibly well-intentioned hoaxes, they purported to reveal the existence of a secret order or invisible college of hermetic and christian alchemists possessing the secrets of the Universe as well as those of healing and perhaps immortality. As societal mores were changing, and free thought was becoming more prevalent, these manifestos offered an exciting and compelling worldview influenced by Kaballah and the writings of alchemists like Paracelsus.

Given their outsized influence on enlightenment thinkers in general as well as the Freemasons responsible for creating modern western governments, how have we ended up in this late-capitalism sci-fi dystopian hell world? They had the ideals, they had the power. The manifestos claimed that the group was actively seeking members, yet despite their most earnest fans creating group after group to venerate and promulgate their teachings, we have no public knowledge of an immortal group of transcendental philosophers offering access to the cosmos. Instead we have most recognizably, the A.M.O.R.C and the Order of The Golden Dawn, including all its offshoots which comprise most of the New Age and occult traditions.

The symbol above is one of the densest compressions of occult knowledge and philosophy into one representative icon that has ever been unleashed upon the public. It invites one to years of study to uncover its meaning, and is the product of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn created by Macgregor Mathers. This order is directly and indirectly responsible for nearly all occult thinking and philosophy from the end of the 19th century until today, and was created in a hoax that clearly mimics the original manifestos of the 17th century Rosicrucians. Responsible for the occultism of both Aleister Crowley, and his one-time student Israel Regardie, many offshoots of this order exist today and I warn the reader study will become a rabbit hole of many years.

Meanwhile the most visible “Rosicrucian” group in the U.S the A.M.O.R.C despite declines in membership and general public interest, claims to be the true re-revelation of the tradition. There’s nothing Ancient about them, but they do purport to convey the mystical. Starting as a mail order group, the founder H. Spencer Lewis was so enamored of his own revelations that he claimed in books to have secret knowledge of the life of Jesus, despite plagiarizing whole chapters of his book The Mystical Life Of Jesus from another crackpot. His Temple complex and museum are interesting, but the remaining organization would probably prefer you not mention their founder as a charlatan, despite his demonstrations of turning zinc into gold in front of a hand selected audience.

So where do we place and how do we categorize all this disparate esoteric knowledge and outright chicanery bequeathed to us by true scholars of religion and science who may also be con men? Unless a group of undying, gold-making, ancient philosophers reveals itself, the vast majority of this literature as well as their practices, should probably be regarded as crap. Perhaps tracing back some of the influences like Kabbalah and Greek alchemy might be helpful, but the mystical side of the Hebrew religion is somewhat inaccessible to outsiders, and the mythology of alchemy may outweigh the fact. I suggest that the reader enter any study of these topics skeptically and with caution, while recognizing there may be true bits of wisdom contained inside.