This weekend, - (see DATE of posting) - two of the main Rosicrucian sects are celebrating their 100th anniversary. Not that they put it that way, since the members of the Rosicrucian Fellowship purport to trace their antecedents back to a set of secret manifestoes first published in 1610 revealing truths about the Rosy Cross – the symbols of female and male intermingled – which were "concealed from the average man" but which could bring fulfilment and salvation to the tutored adept.

And the Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis (AMORC) goes one better, claiming that its hidden knowledge goes back through secret doctrines of Jesus Christ and Pythagoras to the ancient gnosis of an Egyptian Pharoah – which is why AMORC has a Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum at its headquarters in San Jose.

The Rosicrucian Fellowship has its headquarters down the road at Mount Ecclesia, in Oceanside, so California will be the centre of both sets of celebrations this weekend. But the Rosicrucian network spreads its tentacles wide, over all five continents, and there are even events this week in Bath and Wantage.

For all their concern about tracing lineage, however, it is possible to find beneath the umbrella of modern Rosicrucianism just about any belief, philosophy or superstition you might care to name – pantheism, reincarnation, alchemy, psychic power, astral out-of-body travel, telepathy. There are Cosmic Ray Coincidence Counters and Sympathetic Vibration Harps. And you can corral just about any historic hero – Plato, Dante, Descartes, Newton – into secret membership of the movement (unbeknown, of course, to the dull minds of conventional historians).

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Posted: 9:58:08 AM  
link to this article: http://www.marinasmasters.com/2006/categories/articles/2009/08/08.html#a7016