The Secret History of Freemasonry

Speculative Freemasonry 243

in the Leipzig Library, this Guild of Mages gave birth in Germany to the
Brothers of the Gold Rose-Cross in 1570, which was earlier than
Valentin Andrea's Fama Fraternitatis.*
The Rosicrucians represent the most direct influence on the trans-
formation from operative masonry to speculative Freemasonry. At the
beginning of the seventeenth century, there existed in Holland,
Germany, and England various groups of learned men who formed
secret societies in conformance with the principles proclaimed by the
books we have already mentioned, but particularly Andrea's
Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross. Not surprisingly, these same men were
drawn to freemasonry. In fact, Sir Robert Moray, who, as we have
learned, was admitted as an accepted mason in the Lodge of Edinburgh
in 1641, was a Rosicrucian.^11
Because of its symbolism, masonry provided an especially propi-
tious environment for this influence. The first proof of a relationship
between freemasonry and the Rosicrucian Society can be found in a
poem published in Edinburg in 1638: Muses Threnodie. Its author was
Henry Adamson, master of the arts and citizen of Perth. In it we can
read this verse:

For we breathren of the Rosies Cross

We have the mason work and second sight.

Rosicrucianism's most profound effect on Freemasonry can be
observed in London. Toward the end of the first half of the seventeenth
century, one Rosy Cross Society was a powerful organization in the
capital. Alchemy was then at the height of its popularity and its adepts
played an important role—as paradoxical as it may appear—in the

• The Agla, an association of book craftsmen, is another example of a sixteenth-century
  esoteric society whose influence on the creation of modern Freemasonry is less obvious
  but no less significant. The collective "glyph" of this vast organization was the number
  4, which figured in the personal mark of every master of this brotherhood, frequently
  drawn atop a secondary figure representing an internal group to which the signatory
  belonged. For example, a hexagram, "Solomon's Seal," the planetary sign of Saturn, or
  the monogram of Mary designated a group concerned with alchemy and hermetic stud-
  ies, whereas the heart, such as the one found on playing cards, indicated a branch in
  which mysticism, particularly that of the Kabbalah, was studied and practiced. See
  Amberlain, Le Martinisme (Paris: Niclas, 1946), 48 and 55.