Society of the Golden and Rosy Cross
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This Order or Society first emerged in 1710 under the leadership of Samuel Richter aka 'Sincerus Renatus', a follower of Jacob Boehme and Paracelsus, and author of 'The True and Complete Preparation of the Philosophers Stone of the Brotherhood, from the Order of the Golden and Rosy Cross'. The book was a reworking of ideas found in Michael Maier's Themis Aurea and the writing of Julius Sperber (a Pansophist and Qabbalist, who in 1615 became an apologist for the Rosicrucians) It also outlined a new form of Rosicrucian organization, open to both Protestants and Catholics. This was limited to a membership of 63 and led by an Imperator, who was in touch with the last of the original Rosicrucian masters, who had 'immigrated to India'. The Imperator had to change his name and home every ten years, and if necessary reform the entire order. The membership, who for the first time had to go an initiation procedure, identified each other by a coded exchange:
A: Ave Frater
B: Rosae et Aurea
A: Crucis
B: Benedictus Dominus Deus Noster Qui dedit nobis signum
A: Benedictus Dominus Deus Noster Qui dedit nobis signum
Following which secret signs were exchanged.
The title 'Golden Rosy Cross' was first used by a self declared member of the 'Collegium Rosanium', Peter Mormius of Leyden, who in 1620 had claimed to have met the last of the original Rosicrucians in an order of that name (then with just three members), and who taught him their secrets. This Collegium seems to have been influential in the Netherlands, and the term 'College' next reemerges with the French Rosicrucians of 1623. See The Rosicrucians
The name Sincerus Renatus is often taken to refer to a lodge of the Order of Inseperables, the Sincera Confoederation, based in Richter's home town of Halle, of which he is thus assumed to have been a member. It has been surmised that the Golden Rosy Cross was the name of the alleged inner circle of this order.
The author Christopher McIntosh traces dozens of references to an early non-Masonic Order of the Golden and Rosy Cross all over Germany soon after this, all using the same formula in different words and styles. It is thus assumed that the association was more of a network of semi-autonomous cells. For this reason it is usefully refered to by its alternative name the Society of the Golden and Rosy Cross to distinguish it from its later Masonic form. It also seems to have been the first to include women so Fraternity is not an accurate term.
The Austrian chapter of this Society is of particular interest as the first to mention that the Elixir can be made from bodily secretions, such as blood, sweat, urine and semen. These works are also the first to put alchemy in a sexual context. A basic notion being a vital force that fell from the stars as dew (Ros) or 'the fallen shooting star', was absorbed by the human body and could be extracted from certain bodily secretions. Members of various aristocratic Austrian secret societies engaged in secret rituals in tightly guarded woods on Autumn mornings to collect this 'dew'.
A Society of the Rosy Cross, much like the above association, is last heard of in French Mauritius in 1794, where the Comte Chazal famously initiated one Dr Bacstrom.
The most famous text of the SGRC is the Secret Teachings of the Rosicrucians.
