The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross

MYTHICAL ROSICRUCIAN PRECURSORS

The Order of the Rosy Cross offers, on its external side, not only those general difficulties which are inherent to the subject of secret association but some others of a peculiar kind, chief among which are perhaps the successive transformations which it has suffered from within the groups and the actual circumstances of its origin, supposing that this is referable to the first quarter of the seventeenth century. It is much more difficult of approach than is, for example, the outward history of Emblematic Freemasonry. When the art and craft of building temples and houses began to be spiritualised is admittedly in a cloud of darkness, setting aside of course the casual symbolism which runs through all literature. We shall probably never know when men first took tools in their hands and began to moralise upon them, or when for such reason they might have called themselves speculative Masons — had a denomination of this kind come into their heads. But late or early — and not so late, I think — a time arrived when they issued out of their obscurity and held that epoch-making meeting which is connected for ever with the name of the London Apple-Tree Tavern. Thereon followed the institution of a Grand Lodge which became that of England — regarded now a? the Mother Temple of the whole Masonic world. About the history henceforward there is no element of doubt on the broad scale, and so also we know the long story of spiritual and emblematic evolution which is that of the High Grades.