The Forbidden Universe (16 page)

Andreae himself often used the term
ludibrium
in relation to the manifestos and the Rosicrucians in general. He also applied this term to his own
Chemical Wedding. Ludibrium
basically means a jest, game or a play, which given Andreae’s moonlighting activities as a playwright, and his love of the theatre – he particularly admired English drama – probably best describes his intentions. While not literally true, the manifestos were, in Churton’s words, ‘a dramatic joke with serious intent’.
¹⁰
This description calls to mind other similar manifestations, including the relentless social sarcasm of Charles Dickens’ comic scenes, the steely undercurrent of today’s political satire or, as we claim elsewhere, the subtext behind Leonardo’s ‘Holy Shroud’ of Turin, which we also describe as a
commedia
, or serious joke.

Disappointingly, the story of the great Christian Rosenkreutz in his strangely lit entombment and the origins of his Fraternity are certainly not factually true. After examining Andreae’s later voluminous writings, Tobias
Churton proposes that the manifestos are an allegorical account of the transmission of the philosophy that Rosicrucianism continues. Originating in the Middle East, it was preserved in the Arab world before entering Europe via Spain (the
Fama
describes ‘C.R.’ returning from Arab lands through Spain). But as Andreae decries in other writings, after a promising start that tradition came to a shuddering halt when the brotherhood had to go underground. Now the time was right for it to re-emerge, heralding the coming of a new world fit for heroes.

In the same way that the writers of utopian works, which Rosicrucian were very much in vogue at the time (for example Campanella’s
City of the Sun
), hoped to inspire people to attempt to achieve their perfect society, the Rosicrucian manifestos aimed to provoke readers into banding together to create a learned philosophical
brotherhood
based on the principles they described. Inviting membership was one method to achieve this. By bringing fellow travellers into the open, they could then begin to build their own utopia, completing a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But was there a secret society behind the tracts? Although this question is harder to answer, clearly the publications were part of a campaign organized by a group of
like-minded
individuals, who we can legitimately call Rosicrucians, if only for want of a better term. As we will see, there is a suggestion that this group called itself ‘Antilia’.

However, in answering the above question, let us also not forget about one group in particular. Experienced in operating underground and passionately dedicated to creating a brave new world from its heartland in Lutheran Germany, Bruno’s Giordanisti, formed a quarter of a century before, certainly presents itself as a potential
candidate
for the secret society behind the manifestos. As we will see, there were specific connections between Andreae’s
circle and the Italian radical Hermeticists connected with Bruno and Campanella, and the Giordanisti would be a natural conduit between the two.

The underlying esoteric philosophy contained in the manifestos was the Renaissance occult philosophy, which as we have seen had Hermeticism at its core. It also
highlighted
another tradition that had yet to feature prominently in the Hermetic revival: alchemy. A word derived from ‘Al Khem’, the ancient Egyptian word for their country, ‘alchemy’ is also the root of the modern word ‘chemistry’. Despite being derived from Hermetic principles – essentially their application in the field of chemistry – alchemy had yet to become a major part of occult philosophy, coming into Rosicrucianism through the works of the early sixteenth century physician and esotericist Paracelsus.
¹¹
This is especially fitting given that the Rose Cross’ main concern was always healing.

Another Hermetic giant whose philosophy heavily influenced the manifestos was John Dee. His masterwork,
The Hieroglyphic Monad
(
Monas hieroglyphica
, 1564),
presented
a new symbol, derived from astrological and other magical glyphs, which he believed embodied the secrets of the cosmos. The significance of Dee’s arcane treatise can be deduced fromthe fact that it was the basis of the Latin tract
A Brief Consideration of a More Secret Philosophy
(
Secretioris philosophiae consideratio brevis
) that prefaced the Rosicrucian
Confessio
. Attributed to Philip à Gabella, who was almost certainly fictitious – his surname probably a reference to the Cabala – it presents explanations, complete with handy diagrams, which shed some light on Dee’s distinctly abstruse work. The clear suggestion is that the ‘more secret philosophy’ behind that penned by the Rosicrucians is Dee’s, whose importance to the movement is underscored
by the fact that Andreae’s
Chemical Wedding
is decorated with his
monas hieroglyphica
symbol.

The legacy of the great English Hermeticist was obviously hugely important to the shadowy occultists behind the Rosicrucian manifestos. This is perhaps not only true in the world of magic, for Dee was a friend of Elizabeth I, besides being her astrologer, spymaster (whose codename was 007) and a major figure behind the explosive expansion of the emerging English Empire. His was a very useful name.

Andreae was a deeply committed Christian – the motto ascribed to the Fraternity of the Rose Cross, and used elsewhere in Andreae’s writing, is
Jesus mihil omnia
, ‘Jesus above all’. However, in Tobias Churton’s words, ‘There are clearly many elements of Andreae’s thought – not counting his early and fecund immersion in the world of alchemy – which are clearly of Hermetic provenance.’
¹²
In one of his later works, Andreae praised Pico della Mirandola for being one of the pioneers of the philosophy and spirit that he wanted to see more of, besides lamenting its decline in his own day.

The Hermetic basis of Rosicrucianism can be seen in the works of two major devotees, one English and the other German, who both recognized Rosicrucianism as a development of Hermeticism.

The English physician Robert Fludd (1574–1637) was a major intellect of the period, and like any good Renaissance man was passionately devoted to the pursuit of all knowledge. His work was heavily influenced by – really, a continuation of – that of Pico, Ficino and Agrippa, and he quotes constantly from the
Corpus Hermeticum
and
Asclepius
. There are resonances with Bruno’s works that indicate Fludd was familiar with them, although he never mentions the Hermetic martyr directly.

It would be surprising if Fludd had not studied Bruno, since he was a great exponent of the magical art of memory
for which Bruno was most famous. In Fludd’s version, the basic ‘memory buildings’, the interior of which the
practitioner
holds in his or her imagination, mentally placing talismanic images at specific points within them, are conceptualized as theatres. And, it seems, the theatre on which Fludd based his system was none other than Shakespeare’s legendary Globe, highlighting the theatrical and dramatic undercurrents that run throughout this story.
¹³

Fludd attempted to attract the interest of the Rosicrucians by publishing, in 1616 and 1617, two books on the subject defending them from attack. In both he elucidates his belief that the works of ‘Mercurius Trismegistus’ are the supreme source of the tradition of ancient wisdom of which he himself and the Rosicrucians were a proud part. He was also a devout Anglican, again showing that Christian piety was considered utterly compatible with the arcane.

Later, in 1633, Fludd was to write that the name of the Brothers of the Rose Cross is ‘so odious to contemporaries that it is already buried away from the memory of man’.
¹⁴
While some see this statement as repudiation in all but name, the reality is very different. Fludd was actually explaining why the brotherhood changed its name to ‘the Wise’. As we will see, by the time Fludd wrote this, the Rose Cross had endured attacks that had given it a dark reputation.

Michael Maier (1568–1622) was a very similar figure to Fludd. A respectable physician and committed Lutheran, he was also a distinguished alchemist. For a time he was also doctor and counsellor to the great esoteric patron Emperor Rudolph II, to whom he dedicated a study of Hermes Trismegistus. From 1611 Maier also spent five years at James I’s court in London. Long after his death, his work came to influence the genius that was Isaac Newton. But once again,
as Maier was a likely candidate for the Giordanisti, we find the shadow of Bruno towering in the background.

Both Fludd and Maier were dyed-in-the-wool Hermeticists, basing their work firmly on the Hermetic philosophy. This is particularly significant given that they seem to have dismissed Isaac Casaubon’s damning historical critique, despite undoubtedly being aware of it. Both moved in the same English intellectual circles as Casaubon, and Maier was even at James I’s court when he published his book at the King’s instigation.

When we look more closely at the traditions behind the manifestos, and their direct connections with the Hermetic reform movement, it becomes very obvious that Rosicrucianism was a repackaging of the not-very-secret agenda of Bruno and Campanella.

The essential message of the manifestos was that a new reformation was needed. And the increasingly chaotic world in which the manifestos emerged certainly showed that change was needed. The Protestant reformation was failing externally through Catholic pressure as well as through internal division. The Counter Reformation that spawned the likes of the Jesuits was causing great havoc and threatening to take Europe back into the Dark Ages. The situation was slipping out of Protestant control.

The Rosicrucians sought a return to primitive, unadorned and non-popish Christianity, blended with unashamed mysticism and shot through with a kind of spiritualism. They advocated a form of shamanism or mediumship, by which practical and magical information was
communicated
from the spiritual dimension. Overlying all this, however, was the drive towards self-transformation through alchemy of the body and soul. All things would be possible to the initiate, who was radiant with Christ’s love and power and would stride forth into transcendence as a human god. This was the ultimate glittering prize and its
seekers would do everything in their power to see that they remained in the race to win it.

It is surely beyond coincidence that the Rosicrucians should emerge in the same circles and espouse the same principles as the Giordanisti that Bruno founded in Germany in the late 1580s and early 1590s, little more than a decade before his death. But there were more direct connections between the Rosicrucians and the Italian side of the Hermetic reform movement. The
Fama
was bound with a German translation of a chapter from the Venetian Traiano Boccalini’s
News from Parnassus
, which had appeared two years earlier, calling for, in the words of the
Fama
, a ‘general reformation of the whole wide world’. We recall that unsurprisingly the Bruno-inspired Boccalini was an enthusiastic member of Galileo’s intellectual circle. This pairing of books links the German Rosicrucian current with ‘secret, mystical, philosophical and anti-Hapsburg currents of Italian origin’.
¹⁵
As if to remove all doubt of this connection, Andreae defends Boccalini in his
Three Books of Christian Mythology
(
Mythologiae Christianae Libri tres
, 1618).

The conclusive link, however, is found in the two German disciples who visited Tommaso Campanella in prison in Naples and got his books published in Frankfurt. Tobias Adami and Wilhelm Wense were Andreae’s close friends and members of the Societas Christiana that he founded in or around 1618. This society embodied the same spirit and principles advocated by the manifestos – religious reform based on the Christian principle of ‘love thy neighbour’, and the use of scientific enquiry to improve the human condition – but in a more overt and less esoteric way. It was to be the first of a network of Christian Unions, which Adami proposed should be called the City of the Sun, explicitly based on Campanella’s as-yet unpublished work of the same name (which Adami finally managed to
get published in 1623).
¹⁶
City of the Sun
was also notably a strong influence on Andreae’s utopian
Christianopolis
(1619).

Which leaves us with the big question, why choose that particular time to introduce Rosicrucianism to the waiting world?

In 1612 James I bequeathed his daughter Elizabeth to the mystical Frederick V, the Elector Palatine, hereditary ruler of the German state of the Palatinate of the Rhine and leader of the Protestant Union, a coalition of Protestant German states formed four years earlier for mutual defence against the Catholic powers. This was seen as a great sign in esoteric circles; it revived those hopes that had once centred on Elizabeth I, Bruno’s great goddess, the self-created living icon of the bewigged and jewel-encrusted Gloriana. Her successor James I (of England and VI of Scotland) was notoriously suspicious of all forms of occultism. Upon his succession in the first decade of the seventeenth century, he withdrew royal patronage from Dr Dee, causing a serious decline in the old man’s fortunes and a sad slide into death. But the union between James’ daughter and the Elector unequivocally aligned England with the Protestant Union, which had a direct political appeal to James. But it was viewed among those hostile to the Church of Rome with a fervour bordering on the apocalyptic.