Mark Booth - The Secret History of the World

Karl von Eckartshausen, the early theosophist, wrote: ‘These sages whose number is small are children of light. Their business is to do as much good to humanity as is in their power and to drink wisdom from the eternal fountain of truth. Some live in Europe, others in Africa, but they are bound together by the harmony of their souls, and they are therefore one. They are joined even though they may be thousands of miles apart from each other. They understand each other, although they speak in different tongues, because the language of the sages is spiritual perception. No evil person could possibly live among them, because he would be recognized immediately.’

People today freely and openly describe meetings with Indian mystics such as Mother Meera, who confer life-changing mystical experiences. On the other hand we tend to be shy of ascribing supernatural powers to remarkable Christians these days. But you really do not need to look very far into the lives of the great Christian mystics to find evidence of psychic powers. Reading von Eckartshausen you might suspect that he had been influenced by ideas about Hindu holy men. That may be true, but this should not stop us from recognizing that the great Christian mystics and Hindu adepts have much in common.

The mystic John Tauler, for example, was a pupil of Meister Eckhart. The older man does not seem to have been Tauler’s spiritual master in the sense in which we have just been using that phrase. Tauler was preaching in 1339 when he was approached by a mysterious layman from the Oberland, who told him his teaching lacked true spirituality. Tauler gave up his life and followed this man, who is supposed in some Rosicrucian traditions to have been a reincarnation of Zarathustra.

Tauler disappeared for two years. When he reappeared, he tried to preach again, but could only stand there and cry. On his second attempt he was inspired, and it was said of him that the Holy Spirit played upon him as upon a lute. Tauler himself said of his experience of initiation, ‘My prayer is answered. God sent me the man long sought to teach me wisdom the schoolmen never knew.’

Tauler’s is the mysticism of everyday life. When a poor man asked if he should stop working to go to church, Tauler replied: ‘One can spin, another make shoes and these are the gifts of the Holy Spirit.’ In Tauler we may recognize the great sincerity and practical probity of the German people. Martin Luther would say of him, ‘Nowhere in either Latin or German have I found more wholesome, powerful teaching, nor any that more fully agrees with the Gospels.’

OF COURSE NOT ALL INITIATES ARE MYSTICS, and neither is everyone who has genuine communication with the spirit worlds. Certain great individuals, such as Melchizedek, have been avatars, embodiments of great spiritual beings who are able to live in constant communication with the spirit worlds. Others, such as Isaiah, were initiates in previous incarnations, carrying the powers of an initiate into their new incarnation. The cosmos prepares people in different ways. Mozart is believed to have undergone a series of short incarnations which had the purpose of interrupting his experience of the spirit worlds only briefly, so that in his incarnation as Mozart he could still hear the Music of the Spheres. Others, such as Joan of Arc, inhabit bodies that have been prepared to be so sensitive, so finely tuned, that spirits of a very high level are able to work through them, even though they are not in any sense incarnations of these spirits. Modern mediums are sometimes people who have suffered a trauma in childhood which has caused a rent in the membrane between the material and spirit worlds.

Anyone who has spent time with mediums or psychics accepts that they often, even routinely, receive information by supernatural means — anyone, that is, whose cast of mind is not such that they are absolutely determined to disbelieve. However, it is equally apparent that most mediums cannot control spirits with whom they converse. Often they cannot even recognize them. These spirits are sometimes mischievous, giving them a lot of reliable information on trivial matters, but then tripping them up on important things.

Unlike mediums, initiates are concerned to communicate their altered states of consciousness, either directly, as happened to my friend in New York, or by teaching techniques to achieve altered states.

THE LIFE OF CHRISTIAN ROSENKREUZ is usually thought of as an allegory — or a fantasy. In the secret tradition the great being who had incarnated briefly in the thirteenth century, as the boy with the luminous skin, was incarnated again in 1378. He was born into a poor German family living on the border of Hesse and Thuringia. Orphaned at the age of five, he was sent to live in a convent, where he learned Greek and Latin not very well.

At the age of sixteen he set out on a pilgrimage. He longed to visit the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. He travelled to Egypt, Libya and Fez. He went, too, to Cyrpus, where a friend who was accompanying him died. Then on to Damascus and Jerusalem and finally to somewhere called Damcar, where he studied for three years and was initiated by a Sufi brotherhood known as the Ikhwan al-Safa, or Brethren of Purity. During this time he translated into Latin The Liber M, or Book of the World , said to contain the past and future history of the world.

When he returned to Europe, he was determined to pass on what he had learned. He landed first in Spain, where he was laughed at. After several humiliations he returned to Germany to live in seclusion. Five years later he gathered around him three old friends from his day in the convent.

This was the beginning of the Fraternity of the Rosy Cross.

He taught his friends the initiatic sciences he had learned on his travels. Together they wrote a book containing ‘all that man could desire, ask and hope for’. They also agreed to submit to six obligations: to heal the sick for free; to adopt the clothing and habits of the countries they visited in order to remain inconspicuous; that every year they would return to the house of Christian Rosencreuz, now known as the House of the Holy Spirit, or otherwise send a letter explaining their absence; before death each brother would choose a successor whom he would initiate. They agreed that their fraternity would remain hidden for a hundred years.

They were joined by four more brothers, before all eight set out to the far corners of the earth in order to reform and transform it.

The extraordinary supernatural gifts attributed to the Rosicrucians made them one of the great romantic legends of European history. They had the gift of great longevity — Rosencrantz died in 1485 at the age of 107. Because they knew ‘the secrets of nature’ and could command disembodied beings, they could exert their will magically, which they did mostly for the sake of performing healing miracles. They could read minds, understand all languages, even project living images of themselves over great distances and communicate over great distances. They could also make themselves invisible.

The great Cabalist Robert Fludd was, according to esoteric tradition, one of the scholars employed by James I to work on the Authorized Version of the Bible. Often thought to have been a Rosicrucian himself, he was at the least a well-informed and sympathetic fellow traveller. Fludd came to the defence of the Brotherhood in print, repudiating accusations of black magic. He argued that the supernatural gifts of the Rosicrucians were the gifts of the Holy Spirit laid out by St Paul in the Epistle to the Corinthians — prophecy, performing miracles, possession of languages, visions, healings, expelling demons. That the local parish priest could no longer do these things helps to account for Europe’s growing fascination with the shadowy Rosicrucians.