[Les Symboles Secrets dés Rose-Croix]
Translation from the French by Robert Hutwohl[1]
Introduction.—A few centuries ago the name of a book produced a great stir in the world. It appeared suddenly and mysteriously, on the mental horizon, to soon disappear just as mysteriously. The Rosicrucians were said to be a secret society of men possessing superhuman, if not supernatural, power. They were said to be able to prophesy them, future events, to penetrate the deepest mysteries of nature, to transform iron, copper, lead or mercury into gold, to prepare an “elixir of life” or a “universal panacea” by means of which they could retain their youth and virility, further, it was believed that they could command the spirits, the elementals of nature and knew the secret of the “Philosopher’s Stone,” the substance which made its possessor all-powerful, immortal and supremely wise.
Many historical facts seem to confirm the truth of these allegations, and certain legal documents, still extant, tend to prove that gold, under certain conditions, was in reality produced by artificial means; but the “Rose-Croix” always asserted with insistence that this art was only one of the most insignificant parts of their divine science and, that they possessed much more important secrets. Some people suspected of being “Rose-Croix” could heal the sick by the simple touch of their hands or by means of some astonishing medicine, and proceeded to extraordinary ceremonies or festivities like those of which the Christian Bible speaks, the others Sacred Books and the History of Ancient Religions. Some of these characters were supposed to have lived several hundred years; others, on the contrary, are supposedly still on earth. The Rosicrucians themselves were careful not to contradict such stories; on the contrary, they affirmed that there are many occult laws and mysterious powers of which humanity, in general, knows very little at the present time and which, for many centuries to come, will remain unknown to “Science,” because all science is based on the observation of facts and facts need to be perceived before they can be observed, but the spiritual faculties of perception are not yet sufficiently developed in men, in general, to enable them to see spiritual things. They also said that if our powers of perception were fully developed, we would see the universe populated by beings other than ourselves, of whose existence we have no idea at the moment. They said that we should then see this universe filled with things of life whose sublime beauty surpasses the most exalted imagination of man, and that we should learn mysteries in comparison with which the art of making gold falls into insignificance and becomes comparatively worthless. They spoke of the inhabitants of the four realms of Nature—nymphs, undines, gnomes, sylphs, salamanders and fairies—as personages with whom they were intimately related and who existed not only in the domain of the Fable, but were really alive, of an ethereal organism, too subtle to be perceived by our material and gross senses, but alive, conscious, and knowing, ready to serve man, to instruct him and to be instructed by him. They spoke of “planetary spirits” who were once men, but who are now as above human beings as they are above animals, and they earnestly asserted that if men knew the divine powers which are latent in their constitution, and careful in their development, instead of wasting their life and energy on the idle and comparatively insignificant affairs of their short and transient earthly outer existence, they might one day become like those planetary spirits, that is, i.e., gods.
We are unable to demonstrate how far such assertions made by ancient and modern Rosicrucians are true, or whether they have not been exaggerated or misinterpreted; likewise we cannot hope to be believed if we advance our own testimony in favor of a doctrine rejected by the authorities of modern science which has never seen anything but what can be perceived by means of the external senses. We do not wish to argue with those who are unable to see in man more than an intellectual animal, extremely skeptical of anything to do with the existence of an invisible world included in the visible world, but who is vain and gullible enough to believe that nothing can exist without their knowledge of it, and that, if by chance, something divine and spiritual really existed despite their assertions to the contrary, they would have discovered it a long time ago. I do not wish to quarrel with scholars on these matters, because the existence of the Invisible cannot be proved so long as it remains invisible to them, the very existence of the sun remaining a mere matter of opinion and speculation for those who are blind.
What can a purely material science know about God or about Spirit? What can a science which deals only with the details of outer phenomenal life know of the fundamental, invisible principles which are the outer causes of the universal manifestation of life?
There were true and false Rosicrucians during the Middle Ages, just as there are true and false Christians today. Pseudo-Rosicrucians were numerous. The real ones were rarely known. A few personages suspected of being Rosicrucians were imprisoned in dungeons and tortured in order to obtain their secrets from them; but nothing was gained by these persecutions, because divine things cannot be revealed to him who does not have the capacity to understand such revelations. No one can learn from another the use of spiritual powers which he does not possess, and no one possesses spiritual powers unless he himself has become spiritual. No one can learn to become an artist or a musician if he does not possess a natural aptitude for these arts; likewise, no one can learn the exercise of spiritual functions unless he possesses the organs required for it.
We might as well try to teach human language to an animal as to teach a “materialist” person the use of spiritual powers to become an alchemist.
Such attempts always end in failure, because the laws of nature are immutable, and no one can attain a state higher than that to which his nature is suited. Intellectuality is not identical with spirituality, but simply a product of spiritual activity in an (incipient) state. It is only when man has overcome his animality that his organism becomes an instrument suitable for the exercise of the divine powers and a suitable temple to be inhabited by God.
Although the Rosicrucians were visible men, occupying visible and mortal bodies, they were none the less highly spiritualized and developed beings, in whom the spiritual powers which are latent in every human organism were unveiled to such a degree that they had enabled them to control the action of the universal principle of life and to acquire there, power over certain secret forces of nature. By this they had acquired the possibility of accomplishing acts which necessarily appeared incredible and miraculous to those who did not possess these powers. It is this ignorance of the forces of nature which is the cause of the failure suffered by all modern research, scientific and historical, concerning the true nature of the Rosicrucians.
Their character and history are not understood, simply because the true character and nature of the being we call MAN is not understood nor his history fully known. What were, who were the Rosicrucians? This question is echoed in: “What and who is man?”
So long as we know nothing of man except his outer anatomy and physiology, we cannot hope to be able to judge of the sources of his emotional and intellectual functions much less of the divine attributes than the true inner man—the mind. regenerated—possesses. If we want to know something about the divine interior man, the consciousness of our dignity must first be awakened in us and we must come to know ourselves; for man cannot really know anything outside of what exists in himself—all other knowledge being mere speculation, hypothesis, belief and opinion.
A little reflection will prove the truth of this argument. If you look at some external object—a tree, for example—we see nothing of it except the image created by this sight on our mind, that is to say within ourselves. How then could we know anything about a thing that does not exist in ourselves, but in another’s mind. It is true that this other person can describe this thing to us in a way that enables us to form an image of it in our minds, resembling, up to a certain point, the image which is in the mind of the other; but this image is our own; it is purely our own creation, made with the help of another, and therefore we only know what we ourselves have created. Moreover, if we see, smell, smell, hear or taste a thing, we still know nothing about that thing. All that we know are the sensations that it produces on our organism and if this organism were different, the sensations received would be different. We therefore know nothing about the thing in itself, but only about its relationship to us. How then could we know anything about a thing with which we have no relation or relations of which we are unaware? This is an old philosophical doctrine, accepted theoretically by our scholars and philosophers, but which they continually neglect in practical life because they are not yet fully awakened to the realization of the truth.
FR. HARTMANN. (Trad. de M[arie]. Chauvel de Chauvigny). {Sophia Esclarmonde, High Priestess of the Cathar, Bishop of the French Gnostic Church (1842–1927}
Notes
[1] The Secret Symbols of the Rosy-Cross. [Les Symboles Secrets dés Rose-Croix [Franz Hartmann. Cairo, Egypt. Papyrus 2, no. 7 (September 1912), 468-472] {This article was reformatted from the original, but with the content unchanged other than minor typos and translated from French by Robert Hutwohl, ©2025}