Invisibles : The True History of the Rosicrucians by: Tobias Churton

The subtitle to this book is The True History of the Rosicrucians and here, writer and film maker Tobias Churton brings us the facts behind the “invisible” Brothers of the Rosy Cross.

Born out of the pain of war and religious confusion, and allegedly founded by “Knight of the Golden Stone” Christian Rosenkreuz, it is claimed that they possessed the secret of Man and God and that they could turn metal into gold. Also that they have tried to govern Europe in secret, and most amazingly, that they are under the influence of extra terrestrial powers.

Churton informs us of their true philosophy and why such great minds, such as Issac Newton, Robert Boyle, Goethe, Mozart, Elias Ashmole, Rene Descartes, Erasmus Darwin, and Comenius were all attracted to their teachings. The Rosicrucian movement appears to have begun in a similar way to Christianity. Just as the three magi from the east saw the “Christmas Star” so at the beginning of the 17th century a new star appeared in the night sky over Europe.

Out of the debate which followed concerning the importance of the star the Rosicrucian spiritual thinking began. In the opening of the book, Churton reveals to us the importance of revelation in the early 17th century: “It was universally allowed that it was God who revealed (or obscured) his creation to man’s mind. The laws of the universe reflected God’s will. He made it; He wrote the rules. However, beyond the relatively slim volume of known rules lay a dimension of action which men recognised as being miraculous. Men’s expectations could be shattered by miraculous interventions of God’s will. Such occurrences threw man back into a position of awe-struck dependency, mindful of the perils of sin and the need for salvation. In short, whatever Man might discover by himself, the most significant knowledge came from God’s revelation.

Man could measure but only because God had made the archetypes of measurement. He dispensed this knowledge through His Son and through the angels (or messengers) who ruled the stars and the planets beneath His Throne. The universe was rational because it expressed God’s mind; the cosmos had been measured into being. God enlightened the ‘higher reason’ (intellectus) of the wise; Man’s ordinary capacities of reason were not autonomous and were limited, just as Man without God was woefully finite, even damned. The wise relied on wisdom from above. They needed inspiration. Inspiration means the gift of spirit, breath or living divine intelligence coming into the person. God was the ‘stone’ that fell on the fortunate wise, winnowing his mind – separating the wheat from the chaff, the gold from the dross.

If the inner cup was clean, God could pour his new wine into the truly open mind of the savant. This experience gave him dramatically increased powers of perception. Higher knowledge and spiritual experience were thus inseparable. For those blessed with the eyes to see, aspects of the divine mind could be found expressed within nature. As both Genesis and Aristotle taught, without God’s creative hand matter was formless, a void. Real knowledge of the universe was knowledge of God’s creative being and will. This knowledge was invisible to men and women in their ordinary, unlightened condition. Our word ‘rational’ comes from a Latin word meaning ‘calculation’. Our dim calculations were seen as shadows or copies of God’s mighty, pristine calculations. Mathematically speaking, God worked with infinite series. Man being mortal could only really comprehend finite series. God was the Master; we were the pupils with the copy books.

The creation was writ with God’s radiant finger on the blackboard of space. The universe was a manifestation – a projection – of God’s creative nature, his Wisdom. Wisdom was often personified as a female figure and could be discerned throughout the cosmos. The wise were enjoined to seek her. Science was a province of wisdom. That explains why the ‘magi’ (members of a tribe of astronomers) are know to us as ‘the wise men’. They followed the patterns of wisdom, discernible in the stars. The universe was a book; an open codex or mystic scroll; the stars could be read. Reading the celestial text was possible because the planets moved. Roaming from constellation to constellation, the planets could be seen moving in relation to one another. Take Venus, for example. Sometimes she would rise into view just before the Sun rose in the east. Sometimes she appeared as the Sun set in the west. Equipped with four compass points, a background of observable stars – and occasional ‘guest stars’ called comets – and seven moving bodies (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn), the ancient astronomers had all the players necessary for an amazing nightly drama series. What is more, everything that happened out there was, in the profoundest sense, reflected in life here on Earth, the apparent centre of it all.

Life was one and its essence was movement. As above, so below. That was the ancient principle. Our lives mirrored the heavens. If you knew how to read the celestial text the truth was, indeed, out there. While for mystics the truth was not only discerned by external observation, the kingdom of the heavens was, at the same time, within you. If you looked hard enough and were graced with divine revelation, you would see how the workings of the stars and planets were reflected in the mind and the body, in the soul and in the spirit. God’s creative Wisdom was all-pervading.” So, it was with this background that formulated 17th century thinking. As Churton points out this followed The Reformation in the previous century, when he states: “16th century Europe had more prophets than all the books of the Hebrew Bible put together.” Following the sighting of the close conjunction of the planets Saturn and Jupiter in the constellation of Pisces by Johannes Kepler on 17th December 1603, the phenomenon occurred again as predicted 20 years later in 1623, this time in the sign of Leo.

At the same time, the “Thirty Years War” was raging across Europe and many people were trying to make sense of their lives. Churton explains that it was in this context that the Rosicrucian movement emerged: “As rebellious Protestants were slaughtered in France, with no sign either of the Midnight Lion, or of the Second Coming to save them, an otherwise calm Paris suddenly got into a fluster over the imminent appearance (or disappearance) of groups of people called the ‘Brothers of the Rose Cross’. Only, these were not really people in the ordinary sense at all. These ‘Brothers of the Rose (or Rosy) Cross’ were, when they chose to be, invisible. After ‘Rosicrucian’ leaflets were posted on the recently constructed Pont Neuf (New Bridge) and placards appeared around the city, it was feared that the devilish invisible ones were some kind of protestant supermen on a mission impossible; to plot the overthrow of catholic Europe. What a difference a couple of decades make! The last time Jupiter and Saturn had conjoined, these invisibles had never been heard of.

Perhaps they had been invisible then! On the other hand, could it be that Johannes Kepler was a better predictor than Simon Studion? While Studion’s apocalyptic predictions had been consistently proved wrong, Kepler had modestly suggested that the triple conjunction and supernova of 1604 heralded a significant war, or the appearance of a new sect. In Paris in 1623, it appeared that Kepler’s prediction had come true. There was war alright, and there was as catholic Parisians thought, a new sect – and the war and the sect were connected. And there was a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in Leo, in the fiery trigon – what did it all mean?” It is from this beginning in the book that Churton then explores all aspects of the Rosicrucian movement and the close link with Freemasonry through the ages, up to the 20th century. This book is a must for those interested not only in the Rosicrucians themselves but also in the birth of Freemasonry and other linked fraternal bodies.

Published by Lewis Masonic at £19.99 – Purchase this title online at www.lewismasonic.com