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Rosicrucian Order, AM ORC

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PRINTED IN U.S.A.

N e w L igh t
on the

The articles in this booklet are of particular interest to

those students who like history, for they are a collection of
the traditions, concepts, and legends out of which our
current ideas and beliefs have come. They are not neces
sarily Rosicrucian in nature, but are presented by the
Rosicrucians for your reading pleasure. In many of the
ancient traditions there are truths hidden in allegorical
form, and each reader will discover a meaning suited to
his or her particular area of interest.

Hidden Archive
Research and Compilation by

Rosicrucian Research Library

Supreme Grand Lodge of A M O R C, Inc.

Printing and Publishing Department
San Jose, California 95191, U.S.A.

IN T R O D U C T O R Y

Wise Words From Rosicrucians

First Edition. 1984
Copyright 1984
Supreme Grand Lodge of A M O R C, Inc.
All Rights Reserved

I no sooner come into the library. . . with so lofty a spirit

and sweet content that I pity all our great ones and rich
men that know not this happiness.
Robert Burton
Whoever thou art that lovest to examine hidden doc
trine, do not idle but take as thine example everything
that can profit thee.
Michael M aier
He who wishes to rejoice without doubt in regard to the
truths underlying phenomena must know how to devote
himself to experiment.
Roger Bacon
Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by
a majority of the people.
Bruno
Salom ons House . . . the End of our Foundation is the
knowledge of Causes, and the secret motion of things.
Francis Bacon on the Rosicrucians
What the mind conceives man will eventually accomp
lish. Study is the conscious effort to learn; the pleasure
to be gained is a secondary motive. He who entertains a
new avenue of thought about the cosmos is a metaphysi
cian. He who demonstrates it is a scientist.
Validivar

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval

system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior writ
ten permission of the publisher.

'

The Celtic Druids

' I 0 the classical writers the most astonishing

A aspect of the beliefs of the Celts was their

lack of the fear of death. To the ancient Celt,
death was a transition between two forms of life.
Their afterworld was considered to be as inter
esting and full of adventure as this one. The
Druids, who kept the body of their higher teach
ings secret, were said to have made public their
beliefs in immortality and reincarnation so that
warriors would have no fear in battle. The fact
that the Druids taught and worshipped in clear
ings within groves of oak trees also appeared
strange and frightening to observers from the
largely de-forested Mediterranean world, who
worshipped in roofed enclosures.
The Druids were not only priests, they were
instructors in a 20-year learning process. The
whole of law and custom was memorized by
them. They computed the calendar, including
eclipses. None of their learning was put into
writing. Lesser orders of Druids were the divin
ers, or so-called magicians, and the bards,

whose poetry of praise was the highest honor

sought by the warrior and whose stinging satires
were their greatest fear.
The borderline condition was valued by the
Druids, and objects or situations that were
associated with it were held sacred. The mistle
toe, a sturdy plant parasitic on oak trees, was
considered neither tree nor shrub nor vegeta
tion, and was so highly valued that it was har
vested with a golden sickle. Dew was a water
neither from rain, nor well, nor stream, nor
ocean. Twilight was a time of neither night nor
day. Samhain, the feast at years end (today the
date of Halloween), was the time between times,
being of neither one year nor the next.
The word Druid has been translated as Holy
One, and the roots of the word seem to come
from oak and wisdom; therefore, Wise
One of the Oak Grove. Strabo compared them
to the Magi of Persia and the Brahmins of India,
saying that they gave forth their philosophy in
the form of riddles.

Stonehenge

HE megalithic circle on Salisbury Plain,

England, has captured the imagination of
generations of writers. It is now known to have
been built more than a thousand years before
the Celts came to Britain, so speculations on its
Druidic origin were not borne out.
Corrected radio-carbon dating has set its begin
nings even earlier than Homeric Troy and
Mycenae. The knowledge of the art of handling
great stone pieces seems to have traveled south
ward into Greece and Malta rather than in the
opposite direction.
The people who set upright the blocks of stone,
each weighing an average of 26 tons (23.66 met
ric tons), and topped them with lintels of about
6% tons (6.14 metric tons) were not utterly
uncultured savages. They wove wool into cloth,
had tool kits for the working of leather, and may
even have produced linen from flax. They used
metal for weapons, although beautifully crafted
stone axes were still used. They lived at the

transition point between the Stone and Bronze

Ages.
The mid-summer sunrise, mid-winter sunset,
and the extreme positions of moonrise and
moonset may be calculated from the features of
Stonehenge. Although its builders were not
literate, some kind of tally must have been used
to keep a record of their astronomical observa
tions. Quite sophisticated calculating devices
using counters have been discovered in use in
modern illiterate societies.
The tallest stones in the Stonehenge complex
are of sarsen stone, a very hard sandstone. The
bluestones, with their flecks of pink, were used
in the earliest stone assemblage, and are quite
distinctive. Until recently the only known source
for these stones was Mt. Prescelly in Pembroke
shire, but recent geological studies have found
that the same glacier that deposited the stones in
Wales had also left some on Salisbury Plain
itself, so the speculations on the transport of the
stones by land and water were unnecessary. We
must also dismiss the charming idea that the

medieval tales of the erection of the Stonehenge

megaliths in some way reflected a tradition
based on fact. The Giants Dance, as the
Arthurian chroniclers called Stonehenge, was,
they related, erected by fairy skills in Africa and
thence magically transported to Kildare, Ire
land. To obtain it, Ambrosius, King of Britain,
(a historical character) defeated its Irish defend
ers, and thanks to Merlins powers, it was car
ried by land and by sea to the spot where it will
stand forever. So much for romance!
Although all of Salisbury Plain was taken over
by the Romans to be used as imperial wheat
fields, where the grey stones stood high above
the early green and ripened gold of the grain, no
Roman traveler or historian is known to have
made mention of the monument. Perhaps,
knowing nothing of its antiquity, they dismissed
the stones as crudely made imitations of their
finely worked columns. Today we salute the
achievement of the early Britons in creating
such a wonder in stone.

The Two Merlins

early years of this millenium the lords
INandtheladies
of the various castles delighted in

hearing tales of valor and enchantment. A class

of wandering tale-tellers arose to entertain
them. The best of these continued a bardic tradi
tion, repeating historical details clothed in the
form of poetic tribute to heroes and usually set
to music. Others contented themselves with
patching together fragments of old stories and
attributing to known heroes of the past a variety
of exploits replete with invented magic won
ders. When this material was set down by chron
iclers, one inveighed against the lying
story-tellers without rime. From these con
fused sources, Geoffery of Monmouth, early in
the twelfth century attempted to relate events
concerning the Matter of Britain, the stories
of King Arthur, in some kind of historical
sequence. Tales of Merlin, the Enchanter, had
been inextricably woven into his source mate
rial. So popular was the Merlin aspect of the
history that Geoffrey wrote another book about

Merlin, and wrote as well what purported to be

the Prophecies o f Merlin. These are described as
being whirling words of which the only allu
sions that could be easily adapted to events
referred to happenings in Geoffrey's own time.
These were immensely popular and, since their
obscurities could be interpreted variously, were
applied in political matters to lend the support
of prophecy to some cause or other. Eventually
the Church intervened and banned the Prophe
cies o f Merlin at the Council of Trent.
The material on Merlin was evidently originally
drawn from two sources. There was MerlinMyrrdin from the Welsh and Merlin-Celidonius
from the Scottish or Northern material. The
Northern Merlin was a wild enchanter whose
proper habitat was the deep forests. He is said to
have gone mad when witnessing the carnage of a
great battle. T he Welsh Merlin was said to be a
historical character, a bard associated with oth
ers including the legendary Taliesin. A combi
nation of traits from both these characters, plus
another story about a child named Ambrosius,

were interlaced to form the literary figure of

King Arthurs advisor.
In some tales Merlin is described as the result of
a conspiracy of the demons to produce a son of a
virgin by demonic possession. This intent was
foiled by the sanctity of the mother, and thus the
child, baptized and Christian, w'as permitted to
use his other-worldly powers in the service of
God. Even though this explanation placed Mer
lin outside the class of wicked magicians, he was
usually given the traditional bad ending reserved
for the practitioners of the magic arts. He was
either locked within a tree or held in invisible
bondage by a beautiful woman to whom Mer
lin, in his infatuation, had given his secrets. Or
his body, placed in a tomb outside a church, had
been spirited away, but whether by demonic or
angelic powers the custodian of the church
could not say.
For some time modern critics considered the
whole of Geoffrey of M onmouths account fic
tion, but studies into the period (about 550
A.D.) when the Anglo-Saxons were temporar

ily beaten back from the south-west of Britain

have revealed traces of the war-leader Artor,
whose undoubted valor was the historic basis
for the whole cycle of narratives.

The Holy Grail

T O the modern reader, the legendary material
which constitutes the background of the
history of the Holy Grail is briefly this: The cup
from which Jesus drank at the Last Supper was
used by Joseph of Arimathea to collect some of
the blood from the crucifixion. This cup was
carried by him to Britain where he built a
church. His descendants guarded the Grail in
their castle and were to continue to do so as long
as they led chaste lives. The chalice had great
spiritual powers and could be viewed only by
the pure in heart. The beauty and mystical sig
nificance of the stories based on this material
are uplifting.
However, the earliest written versions of the
Grail stories are quite different, and they, in

turn, depend on an oral tradition that departs

even further from the modern forms.
The word grail ,graal in old French, was not a
common word. It meant, according to an abbot
of the period, a wide and slightly deep dish used
by the very rich for costly delicacies. Chretien de
Troyes, whose work (about 1190) was the earli
est written Grail story, describes the graal as not
containing a salmon or other great fish, as might
have been expected in such an object; but
instead, the author places in the lordly dish a
single Communion wafer.
In the oral material which Chretien is setting
down and elaborating on, the earlier stories can
be traced to an Irish-Welsh mythology. Bran
(whom we find as Bron in later Grail texts) was a
king whose three great treasures were the serv
ing dish from which meals could be provided for
any number assembled and all would be satis
fied; the drinking horn from which poured out
drink for all and changed any food into the most
delicious form of whatever the partaker desired;
and the spear that so longed to bathe in blood

that, whenever it was thrown in battle, nine men

died and one of them a king. The Old French for
horn (an object not easily recognized in
Chretiens period as a form of cup) was, to the
ear, identical with a declension of the word for
body. At a time when all were debating on
whether the sanctified wafer in the Mass was the
Real Presence of Christs Body or the symbol of
it (a question of doctrine decided in the favor of
the Real Presence by the Fourth Lateran Coun
cil in 1215), preachers were fond of recounting
tales of holy men subsisting for years with the
Communion wafer as their only sustenance.
Therefore it has been concluded that at some
point the drinking horn, cors, accompanying
the graal was replaced by the wafer within the
Grail, the cors (or corpus) of Jesus. The blood
thirsty Celtic spear is transformed into the lance
of Longinus which pierced Christs side and is
portrayed as accompanying the graal and hav
ing one or three drops of blood on its point.
Later texts described the Grail as the dish that
contained the Passover lamb at the Last Supper,

a chalice, or even a stone. The magical serving

dish of the pagan tales lent to the Grail such
magical powers as providing a feast to the taste
of each diner, or granting to the land happiness
and prosperity until some act of the king re
versed the effect. The stone in the early Parsi
fal series of legends possibly alludes to the Philos
ophers Stone, the symbol of transcendental
alchemical power. Since the Holy Grail is de
scribed, in one instance, as decorated by the
angels with precious stones, there is a linkage of
ideas.
Any or all of these aspects of this object of a
spiritual quest have deep symbolical meanings.
We can see the alteration of significance as the
authors viewed the material of the Grail legend
under the cultural influence of their own periods
of time and religious outlooks.

Was the Rose Known to A ncient Egypt?

HE insignia of the Rosicrucian
Order today is a Latin Cross,
botonee, with a single red rose at the
cross-point. The symbolism of
crosses has been dealt with at length
in Rosicrucian literature, but outside the secret
teachings, the rose has had less such attention.
Its universal symbolism has been love, youth,
and beauty. To the Queen of Flowers has also
been ascribed other symbolic meanings at var
ious periods of history. The idea of the rose as
an emblem of secrecy has an Egyptian origin,
and today what is said sub-rosa is not to be
repeated. The mystic rose of Dante was the
symbol of Paradise. Illustrations of this portion
of The Divine Comedy are worthy of study,
especially that of William Blake, who used
Rosicrucian imagery in his drawings.
The hero of the Fama Fraternitatis, which
publicized the Rosicrucian fraternity at the
opening of the seventeenth century, was Chris
tian /tostmkreuz. The Imperator of the Order at

that period was Francis Bacon, who had ties to

the royal House of Tudor, whose badge was the
rose. In Germany at that time, the Rosicrucian
Johannes Valentin Andrea bore on his coat of
arms four roses and a cross. The rose was also a
heraldic device of Martin Luther.
T he traditional beginnings of the Rosicrucian
Order were in Egypt. Under the Romans, Egypt
exported fresh roses to Italy for the use of the
wealthy patricians, growing them at Arsinoe on
the shores of Lake Moeris of mystic fame.
While the introduction of the rose to Egyptian
horticulture (about 600 B.C.) is credited to Per
sian influence, a wall painting in the tomb of
Thutmose IV shows garlands of flowers which
at least one author identifies as roses. This pharaoh s grandfather, the Thutmose III whose car
touche is even today a Rosicrucian emblem,
established a botanical garden at his palace.
Since he had campaigned in Syria where, in
season, the red rose perfumes the air, what
would be more natural than an attempt to culti
vate it, as a rarity, in his private garden.

Interest in the rose among students of occult

matters continued. The rose symbol is found in
Rosicrucian and the often interrelated alchemi
cal literature. We find The Rosarium Philosophorum, that is, The Rosary or Rose-Garden
of the Philosphers, as a title used not only by
Arnald of Villanova but by other anonymous
alchemical authors. In The Hermetic Garden
of Daniel Stolcius we see the alchemical emblem
picturing two eagles lifting a crown above a
unicorn resting in a rose bush. The quatrain that
follows this text begins:
You who seek the miracles of great things,
Stand by while the lovely rose is flowering.
The Rosicrucian Robert Fludd used the sevenpetaled rose as his symbol.

The Meaning of the Number Seven

H E Number Seven was described by H ippocrates as having occult virtues, influencing

all sublime beings. It is considered the number
of perfection. As the septenary it is founded on

the Seven Directions of Space: a pair for each

dimension, plus the center.
The ancient teachings of the Kabala state that
the seven lower Sephiroth constitute the Ancient
of Days, the forces of manifestation. In the
Judeo-Christian tradition we find: Wisdoms
seven pillars; Moses, the seventh patriarch;
David, the seventh son of Jesse; the seven sac
raments; seven capital sins; the Sabbath, the
seventh day of the week, the day of rest; the
seven sorrows, seven joys, and seven glories of
the Blessed Virgin; and, symbolically, the seven
stars as angels of seven churches.
In the Islamic tradition the seven Salaams are
the verses of the Koran in which the word
Salaam ( Peace) occurs. These are recited during
periods of danger or distress.
The ancient nations identified seven of their
gods with the seven moving celestial bodies.
M an s body has seven divisions and seven func
tions. The Number Seven is also called the Mas
ter of the Moon because the moon changes its
appearance every seven days. The Number

Seven is perfect because it is composed of the

Number Three and Number Four, or God and
Nature combined in man. Pythagoras says the
Number Seven has a body composed of four
principles and a soul composed of three princi
ples. Religion, mysticism, history, and mythol
ogy are full of references to the sacred aspect of
the Number Seven. We read of seven spirits set
behind Osiris place of purification in The Book
o f the Dead. The seven colors of the rainbow,
the seven notes in music, and so much more can
be noted by the discerning observer.

The Book of the Dead

HE Book o f the Dead is the title now com

monly given to the great collection of funer
ary texts which the ancient Egyptian scribes
copied for the benefit of the dead. It was really
the great religious book of ancient Egypt. The
200 chapters were recited to the dead in order
that they might remember and gain the power to
enjoy the privileges of life in their heaven.

Thoth, whose role among the gods was like

that of the Recording Angel, was credited as
the author of the Book o f the Dead. Pictorial
presentation played a considerable part in these
papyri. The work is full of magical references, as
its purpose is to guard the dead against the
dangers which they have to face in, first, the
underworld, and then in T uat, the world of
the dead.
The deceased were threatened by many obsta
cles and dangers in Amenti, or the underworld,
and in Tuat before reaching their final haven.
On this journey through these worlds toward
the Egyptian heaven, the dead meet many
beings who try to hinder their progress but fail
because of the power of the Book o f Dead which
the deceased carry with them. They also had to
undergo judgment by Osiris, ruler of the under
world, and to justify themselves before being
permitted to enter the realm of bliss. This was
the one and only moment when even the Book
o f the Dead was of no help. The souls of the
departed Egyptians were not masters of their

fate when their hearts were weighed by Thoth

before Osiris. It was at this time that each soul
had to repeat the Confession to Maat, so
familiar to every Rosicrucian. In repeating it,
the soul declares that he has not committed any
one of a long list of sins. If what he has said is
true, he is allowed to go on to a happy land of
joy presided over by the god Osiris. Thus, to this
end, every Egyptian of means had the priests
read the Book o f the Dead at his burial ceremo
nies and had that papyrus buried with his
mummy.

Is Sir Francis Bacon A uthor of the

So-called Shakespeare Plays?

r~THERE is a widespread belief that Francis

A Bacon, Baron Verulam, Viscount St.
Albans, was the son of Queen Elizabeth by a
secret marriage. Nicholas Bacon, a court offi
cial, raised the child as his younger son. We may
note that only Anthony, the first-born son, was
mentioned in Nicholas will. Queen Elizabeth
was openly delighted with Francischildish pre

cocity. Since the Shakespearian plays contained

passages that might have been considered criti
cal of political policy or hinting of a royal ambi
tion to a suspicious mind, Bacon prudently
allowed the plays that he wrote to be credited to
a semi-literate actor, Shakespeare by name.
Baconian scholars have discovered in Bacons
book Advancement o f Learning the main cipher
that explains these circumstances through mes
sages concealed in the Shakespeare plays and
sonnets. Bacon used two other ciphers: the
Kaye Cypher and the Simple Cypher. I he
Simple Cypher was used when he told of his
connections with the Rosicrucians; the Kaye
Cypher when he told of intimate personal
affairs.
The so-called portrait of Shakespeare attached
to the Sonnets in 1640 can be shown to be a
mask shadowing the features of Francis Bacon.
The earliest printed works of Shakespeare, in
watermark and border design, show figures and
symbols evidencing Bacons authorship. In
Westminister Abbey, such items as the scroll on

a monument and the designs on Shakespeares

statue there are significant. Numerous other cir
cumstances of this nature have been brought to
light, but the best proofs are contained in the
sonnet sequence ascribed to Shakespeare.
Without any ciphers, but just by close study, the
autobiography of the Bacon-Shakespeare per
sonage can be traced in them.
Rosicrucian records name Francis Bacon as
the Imperator at this period. His secret influ
ence was felt in Europe as well as in England.

enemy military codes. Champollion, in a pre

vious generation, used the three language
inscriptions on the battered Rosetta stone to
gain the key to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics.
No such keys are adequate to unriddle the mys
terious coils of imprinted pictorial symbols on
the Phaistos Disk.

The Mysterious P haist os Disk

R Y PT O G R A PH Y is the art of writing or

deciphering ciphers or secret writings. It
was an amateur cryptographer, Michael Ventris, who discovered that the script that had
defied the archaeologists and scholars of Minoan
Crete was actually archaic Greek written in
Minoan characters.
Ventris availed himself of the cryptographic
techniques usually employed today for breaking

The Disk is of ceramically.fired clay, about 16

centimeters (6 Vi) in diameter, and is impressed
on each side with characters stamped within
roughly sketched spirals. It was found in one of
the lesser rooms of the palace complex at Phais
tos, Crete in 1908. When the great fire raged that
destroyed the palace, the Disk fell among the
ashes and charred debris. It already existed.

then, at the date of the conflagration, about

1700 B.C.
The idea of printing on paper to create books
was conceived in China, and Pi-Sheng invented
a kind of moveable type for this purpose in 1041
A.D. Gutenberg made the independent inven
tion of moveable type in Germany in 1488 which
began the printing industry in Europe. The
maker of the Phaistos Disk, 3,000 years earlier
than Gutenbergs press, used a form of movable
type, that is, a set of carved stamps to press a
character in clay. Forty-five stamps were used
for the 241 imprintings on the Disk. With its
discovery at Phaistos, proof came to light of an
invention of antiquity, completely lost to subse
quent civilizations, that was twice re-invented
once in far Cathay, and again at the earliest
dawn of the Renaissance in Europe.
What message was it meant to convey? Cer
tainly nothing as ephemeral as lists of supplies
in the kings warehouse on a certain date, or it
would not have been hardened in a potters
furnace.

The coiled shape has suggested to some a rela

tionship to an initatory path in early or primi
tive rites of rebirth. Many uses, either magical
or practical, have been theorized. By using an
arbitrary scheme of relationship to Greek,
awkward (and dissimilar) messages have been
constructed.
Leon Pomerance, taking the symbol of a ring
enclosing seven dots as representing the Plei
ades, and the two symbols most frequently
accompanying it to be the constellations known
as the Serpents Tail and the Eagle, found a
direct relationship to the heavens as they
appeared in Minoan years. If these represent
star groups, how do they relate to ship and fish
and flowering plants? A key seems to have been
found to unlock some of the meaning of the
enigmatic Phaistos Disk.
The presence of hidden things, whether con
cealed in hieroglyphic script, buried unsuspected
under the earth, or lying undetected within our
innermost selves is always a challenge and a

triumph for those who undertake a quest for

discoveries.
(Illustration of the Phaistos disc is from The Alphabet: a Key to the
History o f M ankind, by David Diringer. Philosophical Library. 200
West 57 St.. New York, NY. Reproduced by permission.)

Divination for Water

T ^\O W SIN G , in the sense of the use of a divining rod to locate water, is a respected art in
many country districts today. There can be little
doubt of the self-confidence of men (less often,
women) who offer a money-back guarantee that
water will be found at the indicated spot, with a
sliding-scale of refund if the exact depth has not
been predicted.
The dowser is presumed to have learned to con
tact a certain strata of the unconscious mind
and permit it to cause all but undetectable con
tractions in the muscles of the forearm. This
movement is amplified in the rod, usually a
forked stick. Some combination of observation
and sensitivity to magnetic fields may enter the
subjective awareness to active the syndrome. It

has been observed that in the company of hos

tile unbelievers it can be difficult or even impos
sible to attain the attunement of mind so that
the muscle response can take place.
Folklore claims the superiority of wood from a
water-seeking tree like the willow, but a work
ing dowser commented If you are in an apple
orchard, use applewood. Even a bent wire coat
hanger has been used successfully to locate
water-pipes at Rosicrucian Park.

The Mysteries

ATER, Fire Air, and Earth are described

as the four principles by the Rosicrucians
and as the four elements by the alchemists.
Looking elsewhere in the archives, we find hid
den aspects of these deeply significant Four.
Hidden Water comes forth from subterra
nean regions in pools, fountains, and wells.
Mineral springs draw up with their waters sub
stances that offer a hidden source of healing
either as beverage or bath. Myth tells of a pool, the

headwater for a stream, where salmon may eat a

hazelnut from the Tree of Wisdom. Who catches
and eats such a salmon will have knowledge of
events past and to come, but he will pay a great
price for such secret things.
Hidden Fire, like all fire, is ultimately derived
from the Sun. The alchemists referred to it as
an Element w hich operates in the center of all
things and which we may understand as sym
bolical of life and energy. The idea of the spark
hidden in flint to be drawn forth by striking the
rock with steel has been used as an analogy to
such sudden mystic experiences as Pauls vision
on the road to Damascus.
Hidden Air has to do with invisibility. The
great and sometimes calamitous force of the
wind is a hidden one, visible to us only in its
effects. Air had a direct association with Breath,
and Breath with Spirit. Hidden Air can thus
represent the spiritual working within the self.
Hidden Earth describes the essential quality
of this, the most common and least known of
the Elements. Earth hides much in its depths.

revealing only a surface, and in the greatest part,

itself is hidden. This aspect of Earth is a part of
most of the mysteries. Frequently the secret and
sacred ceremonies of antiquity, whose final
revelations were never made known to the un
initiated, took place in caves, grottoes, or in
some representation of the same. At Eleusis the
candidates went into a cave, even as Perse
phone, in the mystery story they celebrated,
went into the underworld ruled by Pluto. In the
Isis mysteries the candidate learned the secret
name of Osiris, king of the Egyptian under
world. The cave was a part of the legendary
history of Mithras and of Zagreus, the Cretan
Dionysius. The Orphic rites were exoterically
based on Orpheus descent into Hades, where
the beauty of his music caused the Lord of the
Underworld to relent and allow his beloved to
follow him to the world of the living again, on
the unfulfillable condition that Orpheus should
not look back until he had reached the surface.
The esoteric side of all the mysteries dealt with
such profound themes as life, procreation, and
death, the harmonious interworkings of the

great round of the seasons, or immortality and

regeneration.

Symbolical Birds and Beasts

HE legends of Isis, upon which her myster

ies were based, show her as the Faithful
Wife who sought after and reassembled the scat
tered parts of her husbands body; as the Great
Enchantress who reunited the body and con
ceived a child by it; and as the Protecting
Mother who hid the infant Horus from the
murderous Set, and who gained for her son
some of the magical powers of Ra, the Sun-god.
Some of the symbolism attached to the Isis idea
is understandable only within the Egyptian cul
tural milieu. It will seem strange to Europeans
who have a revulsion for the scavenger birds
the vulture, kite, buzzard, and to a lesser degree,
the crow' and raventhat the wings of Isis and
the feathered crown worn on occasion by both
Isis and her sister, Nephthys, are from the kite
or vulture.

It was as kites that they perched on the syca

more coffin of Osiris. To the Egyptian, the idea
of a scavenger bird as a protector of health and
well-being is founded on the facts of sanitation.
Without the services of the winged ones who can
sense death, decaying flesh would be a serious
hazard.
In the ballads of Scotland, the crow, called
corbie, is used for ghastly effect, but the Vik
ings considered ravens to be sacred to Odin.
This god was renowned for wisdom and also
ruled death. His ravens went forth every day
about the whole earth and returned to report all
that occurred. In an American Indian myth, the
crow brings light or fire to mankind. The raven
(or the crow) in some tribes represents the chief
deity, while it has been noted that buzzards were
respected and reverenced by California tribes.
The thunderbird is a concept common to many
American Indian tribes. Considered by some
tribes fearsome or even evil, it creates thunder
with its wings, w hile lightning darts from its eyes
or from its tongue. Other legends give the thun-

derbird beneficent powers, and it figures in

Chippewa myths as that being who by the flap
ping of its wings brought the dry land forth from
the waters. In the Far West it is the raven who
performs this feat.
Perhaps if we consider these birds that are con
nected so intimately with death as symbols of
the act of releasing the vital forces from a body
and transforming them into something winged,
we may understand the thinking that can con
sider a vulture as a bird associated with the
Great Mother and Enchantress.
Another creature that has elicited a wide range
of emotional reactions is the domesticated cat.
Reverenced in Egypt where their services in
defending the granaries from rodents were
appreciated, they were frequently painfully killed
in later times in Europe to destroy evil spirits
with which popular imagination had associated
them. The cat is valued in India, yet a Buddhist
legend says that only the cat was too occupied
with its own affairs to appear and give tribute to
the dying Buddha.

The Mohammedans feel kindly toward felines,

following the example of the Prophet, who is
said to have cut off a corner of his robe so as not
to disturb his sleeping pet.
The snake has an enemy in the cat. T his was
reflected in Egyptian myth by R as taking the
form of a cat in battling the wicked Apep in
serpent form. The snake is probably the most
ambivalent of all animal symbols. It is asso
ciated with healing, especially during templesleep, and yet is death-dealing. The serpent
Apep was evil; yet the Uraeus, the cobra crown
of the pharaohs, was originally the Eye of Ra,
which led a semi-independent life. As the
Uraeus, the Eye was ruler of the world, and the
pharaoh wore its representation not only to
indicate his own rulership but to gain its aggres
sive protection.
Symbols must be understood in relation to their
particular setting. They have an obvious outer
significance, of which study and meditation will
reveal other and deeper layers of meaning.
These may, for the discerning mind and under-

Th e Rosicrucian Lib ra ry

standing heart, have a message for our inner

most selves.

A Final Wise Word of Benison

Vouchsafe to all such . .. (who have) Engaged
them in this Mysterious knowledge the Full and
Entire Accomplishments of a True and Pious
Philosophy, [to wit, Learning, Humility,
Judgement, Courage, Hope, Patience, Discre
tion, Charity & Secrecie].
Elias Ashmole, Rosicrucian and Alchemist

1
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III
IV
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VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
X III
X IV
XVI
X V II
XV III
X X II
X X III
XXV
XXVI
X X V II
X X V III
X X IX
XXX
XXXI
X X X II
X X X III
X X X IV
XXXV
XXXVI
X X X V II
X X X V III
X X X IX
XL
XU
X L II

R osicrucian Q uestions and A n s w e rs w ith Com plete

H is to ry of the O rd e r
R osicrucian P rinc iples for the Home and Business
T h e M ys tic a l L ife of Je s u s
Th e S ecret Doctrines of Je s u s
Unto The e 1 Grant
(Secret Teachings of Tibet)
A Tho usan d Yea rs of Yesterda ys
(A Revelation of Reincarnation)
Self M astery and Fate w ith the C ycles of Life
(A Vocational Guide)
Rosicrucian M anual
M ystics at P ra ye r
Behold the S ig n
(A Book of Ancien t S ym bolism )
M ansions of the Soul
(A Cosm ic Conception)
Le m u ria The Lost Continent of the Pacific
T h e Te ch n iq u e of the M aster
T h e S ym b o lic Prop h ecy of the Great P yram id
Th e T ech n iq ue of The D isciple
M ental Poisoning
G la n d s Th e M irro r of Self
T h e S an ctua ry of Self
S eph er Y e zira h
Son of the Sun
T h e C onscious Interlude
E s s a y s of a M odern M ys tic
Cosm ic M ission Fu lfille d
W h ispering s of Self
H erbalism T h ro u g h the Ages
E g y p t's Ancien t Heritage
Y e s te rd a y Has M uch to Tell
T h e Eterna l F ru its of K n ow ledge
Cares That Infest
M ental Alch em y
M essages from the Celestial Sanctum
In Search of Reality
T h ro u g h the M in d s Eye
M y s tic is m Th e Ultim ate Exp e rien ce
T h e Conscience of Science and Other Essa ys
T h e U n iv e rs e of N u m b ers
Great W om en Initiates
(O ther volum es w ill be added from time to tim e.
W rite for complete catalogue.)