Order of the Golden and Rosy Cross
From KIAwiki
A partly Masonic Order derived from the earlier Society of the Golden and Rosy Cross around 1757. Apparently by one Hermann Fictuld a German alchemist who claimed initiation into a 'Society of the Golden Rosicrucians' in 1747. Fictuld was probably a Mason and set about recruiting members of the Strict Observance lodges who wanted to specialise their occult activities in alchemy. This was either within a new Order or an old chapter taken over by Fictuld. The Order was structured on Masonic lines and spread from Southern Germany to Sulzbach, Vienna, Hof, Frankfurt, Marburg, Kassel, Regensberg and Prague, overlapping with Freemasonry. Drawing on the mythos of the Strict Observance, and other Scots lodges, Fictuld claimed the original Rosicrucians were the survivors of the Knights Templar and had also preserved the Golden Fleece!
Its Sulzbach lodge was closely linked to the alchemical court of the Duke of Sulzbach, which had been greatly influenced by the Cabbalists Knorr von Rosenroth and Francis Mercurius van Helmont in the 1680s. Another early recruit was Mesmer, who brought his art to the Order.
In 1766 Rosicrucianism was banned throughout the Austrian empire and Fictuld fled to Innsbruck. He was replaced by Prof Joseph Wilhelm Schroeder of Marsburg, who organised the local OGRC from a Rosicrucian chapter within the Three Lions Masonic lodge. Who reformed the Order in 1767. It now became more biblical and Mosaic and the Templar origin was dropped. The branches were now known as Circles and consisted of a maximum of nine people headed by a Director. The famous nine degree system also dates from this time, with its Junior, Theoreticus, Practicus, Philosophus, Minor, Major, Adeptus Exemptus, Magister and Magus. But membership was restricted to Master Masons so in reality it was a 12 degree order. Its highest members were the mysterious Unbekannte Oberen or 'Secret Chiefs', an idea it adapted from Strict Observance Masonry. At its height it had Circles in Southern Germany, Austria, Hungary and Northern Italy, but its primary centres were in the north in Hamburg and Berlin (under Duke Frederick August).
The most influential member of the Order was Prince Frederick-William (Ormesus Magnus), the future King of Prussia. The Rosicrucians were complicit in convincing the King to launch a crusade against French Jacobinism and to suppress and censor Enlightenment activities in Germany. For this reason they became the primary occult enemy of the Bavarian Illuminati. According to J M Roberts, author of the Mythology of the Secret Societies, the Berlin Rosicrucians were the main source of the Illuminati Conspiracy scare tactics after that society was disbanded, while they themselves tightened their grip on the Prussian State.
Other important offshoots from the Order included the French Freres de la Rose Croix, into which the Tarot expert Etteilla was probably initiated in the 1770s. This lineage seems to have passed on via Eliphas Levi to Stanislas de Guaita and Josephin Peladin, who then founded the neo-Rosicrucian Qabalistic Order of the Rose Cross in 1888, which lasted well into the 20th century. This later span off the rival Catholic Order of the Rose Cross, under the fanatical Peladin, a short lived extreme Order, the remnant of which was allegedly involved in the Priory of Sion hoax. Another spinoff may have been the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn which was certainly modelled on the OGRC, within an English Masonic context, but also claimed contact with the remnants of the German original.
