THE ANXIOUS BENCH:
The Rosicrucians: A 400-Year-Old Hoax That Worked (Philip Jenkins).
To return to the theme of this blog series, the Rosicrucian texts were composed as an authoritative text with scriptural authority. We may not like the word “forged” because that words implies people were meant to take them as literal and factual, and there was never much doubt that readers were assumed to be using the lens of the allegorical and symbolic.
But whatever we think of that distinction, this is undoubtedly an account of the finding of a sacred text concealed in a tomb. And explicitly, we are told that it was placed there to await the days when it could safely be revived, or better, resurrected. In those last times, that scripture would become the charter of a purified mystical Christianity. This is exactly the topos that we have encountered with the other texts that appeared in this brief and incredibly creative period at the start of the seventeenth century.
And does that not also sound precisely like much of the literature that greeted the finding of the Gospel of Thomas in the twentieth century?
In many ways the three foundational Rosicrucian documents represent peak Renaissance techno-Hermeticism. They present apocryphal, deeply symbolic, Vitruvian architecture and venerable, if similarly apocryphal, Hermetic magic, astrology, and elevated alchemy. And, as Prof. Jenkins notes, more than one authoritative apocryphal book.
All this was a novel, and strangely successful way to start a secret society. Annouce that you are in charge of a venerable clandestine fraternity. Invite people to publish applications for admission. And never reply to any of them.
I would post some bibliography, but it looks like Prof. Jenkins will have more to say on the subject. Maybe after that.
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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