I have been posting about the mind-stretching Renaissance works in which enterprising scholars discovered, created, or forged scriptures to justify their religious and spiritual agendas: the Gospel of Barnabas is one prime example, the Rosicrucian Manifestos are another. One amazing feature of such products is just how very modern, and indeed post-modern, such writings are, in their willingness to break the fourth wall, to implicate the reader in the process of discovery and deceit – to write what we now call metafictional works. To that extent, the avant garde literary scene around 1610 looks an awful lot like that of 2010, or 2026.Crowley's edition of The Chemical Wedding is new to me (and I love that the editor's name is Crowley). I will have to have a look.[...]
If you are interesting in reading all three foundational Rosicrucian manifestos, there is a good recent English translation by Joscelyn Godwin et al.: Rosicrucian Trilogy: Modern Translations of the Three Founding Documents: Fama Fraternitatis, 1644; Confessio Fraternitatis, 1615; The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, 1616 (Weiser Books, 2016).
This Anxious Bench post is a continuation of Professor Jenkins's Lost and Found Scriptures series. For earlier posts, see here and links.
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