c CUNYB/Clarke December, :
Magic, Mathematics, and Mechanics did not prevent many people from believing its publicity and claiming
to be secret members. The document that purported to reveal its origin
and constitution had first appeared in.The title reveals unam-
biguously the millenarian ambitions of its protagonists:A Universal and
General Reformation of the whole World; together with the Report of the Fra-
ternity of the Rose Cross, written to all the Learned and Rulers of Europe.
TheReportalludes to the recovery of an ancient form of wisdom that was
originally made available to Adam after the Fall. It includes clear references
to Paracelsus, and it has connotations of magic, the cabbalistic tradition,
alchemy, and astrology. It was not just a new philosophy of nature; it also
included a religious or mystical dimension that intimated the imminent
discovery of a new world. This apparent hoax was compounded by the
publication, in the following year, ofA Brief Consideration of the more
Secret Philosophy written by Philip `a Gabella, a student of philosophy, now
published for the first time together with the Confession of the Rose Cross Fra-
ternity().TheConfessionrepeated themes already included in the
Report, such as the relative insignificance of transmuting base metals into
gold, the importance of the Bible as a source of wisdom for its members,
and the recognition of the Roman Empire as its political authority.Its
central message was that ‘the book of nature stands open to all men’,
and that most men fail to understand it because they are insensitive to its
revelations and untutored in the arcane wisdom of the brotherhood.
It was particularly difficult during these years to distinguish between
genuine advances in knowledge and the claims of soothsayers and mystics
who exploited the general climate of uncertainty to further their dubi-
ous ambitions. The line of demarcation between the two that we might
wish to project back into history was simply not there, and the ease with
which authors oscillated from one to the other requires explanation only
to those who look back from today’s perspective. For example, Bacon’s
New Atlantiswas utopian, as was Campanella’sThe City of the Sun. When
Descartes returned to Paris in, the city was posted with placards
announcing the arrival of members of the Rose Cross who were both visi-
bleand invisible, and who claimed to be able to speak all the languages of
the countries they visited without learning them from books or otherwise.
‘The representatives of our principal college of the brothers of the Rose
Cross, who are visiting this city, visible and invisible, in the name of the
Most High, towards whom the heart of the just is turned. We teach all the
sciences without books, writings or signs, and we speak the languages of