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Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions

C >> Charles Mackay >> Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions





For eight years these enthusiasts made converts in Germany; but they
excited little or no attention in other parts of Europe. At last they
made their appearance in Paris, and threw all the learned, all the
credulous, and all the lovers of the marvellous into commotion. In the
beginning of March 1623, the good folks of that city, when they arose
one morning, were surprised to find all their walls placarded with the
following singular manifesto:--

"We, the deputies of the principal College of the Brethren of the
Rose-cross, have taken up our abode, visible and invisible, in this
city, by the grace of the Most High, towards whom are turned the
hearts of the just. We show and teach without books or signs, and
speak all sorts of languages in the countries where we dwell, to draw
mankind, our fellows, from error and from death."

For a long time this strange placard was the sole topic of
conversation in all public places. Some few wondered; but the greater
number only laughed at it. In the course of a few weeks two books were
published, which raised the first alarm respecting this mysterious
society, whose dwelling-place no one knew, and no members of which had
ever been seen. The first was called a history of "The frightful
Compacts entered into between the Devil and the pretended
'Invisibles;' with their damnable Instructions, the deplorable Ruin of
their Disciples, and their miserable End." The other was called an
"Examination of the new and unknown Cabala of the Brethren of the
Rose-cross, who have lately inhabited the City of Paris; with the
History of their Manners, the Wonders worked by them, and many other
Particulars."

These books sold rapidly. Every one was anxious to know something
of this dreadful and secret brotherhood. The badauds of Paris were so
alarmed that they daily expected to see the arch-enemy walking in
propria persona among them. It was said in these volumes, that the
Rosicrucian society consisted of six-and-thirty persons in all, who
had renounced their baptism and hope of resurrection. That it was not
by means of good angels, as they pretended, that they worked their
prodigies; but that it was the devil who gave them power to transport
themselves from one end of the world to the other with the rapidity of
thought; to speak all languages; to have their purses always full of
money, however much they might spend; to be invisible, and penetrate
into the most secret places, in spite of fastenings of bolts and bars;
and to be able to tell the past and future. These thirty-six brethren
were divided into bands or companies:- six of them only had been sent
on the mission to Paris, six to Italy, six to Spain, six to Germany,
four to Sweden, and two into Switzerland; two into Flanders, two into
Lorraine, and two into Franche Comte. It was generally believed that
the missionaries to France resided somewhere in the Marais du Temple.
That quarter of Paris soon acquired a bad name; and people were afraid
to take houses in it, lest they should be turned out by the six
invisibles of the Rose-cross. It was believed by the populace, and by
many others whose education should have taught them better, that
persons of a mysterious aspect used to visit the inns and hotels of
Paris, and eat of the best meats and drink of the best wines, and then
suddenly melt away into thin air when the landlord came with the
reckoning. That gentle maidens, who went to bed alone, often awoke in
the night and found men in bed with them, of shape more beautiful than
the Grecian Apollo, who immediately became invisible when an alarm was
raised. It was also said that many persons found large heaps of pure
gold in their houses, without knowing from whence they came. All Paris
was in alarm. No man thought himself secure of his goods, no maiden of
her virginity, or wife of her chastity, while these Rosicrucians were
abroad. In the midst of the commotion, a second placard was issued to
the following effect:--

"If any one desires to see the brethren of the Rose-cross from
curiosity only, he will never communicate with us. But if his will
really induces him to inscribe his name in the register of our
brotherhood, we, who can judge of the thoughts of all men, will
convince him of the truth of our promises. For this reason we do not
publish to the world the place of our abode. Thought alone, in unison
with the sincere will of those who desire to know us, is sufficient to
make us known to them, and them to us."

Though the existence of such a society as that of the Rose-cross
was problematical, it was quite evident that somebody or other was
concerned in the promulgation of these placards, which were stuck up
on every wall in Paris. The police endeavoured in vain to find out the
offenders, and their want of success only served to increase the
perplexity of the public. The church very soon took up the question;
and the Abbe Gaultier, a Jesuit, wrote a book to prove that, by their
enmity to the Pope, they could be no other than disciples of Luther,
sent to promulgate his heresy. Their very name, he added, proved that
they were heretics; a cross surmounted by a rose being the heraldic
device of the arch-heretic Luther. One Garasse said they were a
confraternity of drunken impostors; and that their name was derived
from the garland of roses, in the form of a cross, hung over the
tables of taverns in Germany as the emblem of secrecy, and from whence
was derived the common saying, when one man communicated a secret to
another, that it was said "under the rose." Others interpreted the
letters F. R. C. to mean, not Brethren of the Rose-cross, but Fratres
Roris Cocti, or Brothers of Boiled Dew; and explained this appellation
by alleging that they collected large quantities of morning dew, and
boiled it, in order to extract a very valuable ingredient in the
composition of the philosopher's stone and the water of life.

The fraternity thus attacked defended themselves as well as they
were able. They denied that they used magic of any kind, or that they
consulted the devil. They said they were all happy; that they had
lived more than a century, and expected to live many centuries more;
and that the intimate knowledge which they possessed of all nature was
communicated to them by God himself as a reward for their piety and
utter devotion to his service. Those were in error who derived their
name from a cross of roses, or called them drunkards. To set the world
right on the first point, they reiterated that they derived their name
from Christian Rosencreutz, their founder; and, to answer the latter
charge, they repeated that they knew not what thirst was, and had
higher pleasures than those of the palate. They did not desire to
meddle with the politics or religion of any man or set of men,
although they could not help denying the supremacy of the Pope, and
looking upon him as a tyrant. Many slanders, they said, had been
repeated respecting them; the most unjust of which was, that they
indulged in carnal appetites, and, under the cloak of their
invisibility, crept into the chambers of beautiful maidens. They
asserted, on the contrary, that the first vow they took on entering
the society was a vow of chastity; and that any one among them who
transgressed in that particular would immediately lose all the
advantages he enjoyed, and be exposed once more to hunger, woe,
disease, and death, like other men. So strongly did they feel on the
subject of chastity, that they attributed the fall of Adam solely to
his want of this virtue. Besides defending themselves in this manner,
they entered into a further confession of their faith. They discarded
for ever all the old tales of sorcery and witchcraft, and communion
with the devil. They said there were no such horrid, unnatural, and
disgusting beings as the incubi and succubi, and the innumerable
grotesque imps that men had believed in for so many ages. Man was not
surrounded with enemies like these, but with myriads of beautiful and
beneficent beings, all anxious to do him service. The air was peopled
with sylphs, the water with undines or naiads, the bowels of the earth
with gnomes, and the fire with salamanders. All these beings were the
friends of man, and desired nothing so much as that men should purge
themselves of all uncleanness, and thus be enabled to see and converse
with them. They possessed great power, and were unrestrained by the
barriers of space or the obstructions of matter. But man was in one
particular their superior. He had an immortal soul, and they had not.
They might, however, become sharers in man's immortality, if they
could inspire one of that race with the passion of love towards them.
Hence it was the constant endeavour of the female spirits to captivate
the admiration of men; and of the male gnomes, sylphs, salamanders,
and undines, to be beloved by a woman. The object of this passion, in
returning their love, imparted a portion of that celestial fire the
soul; and from that time forth the beloved became equal to the lover,
and both, when their allotted course was run, entered together into
the mansions of felicity. These spirits, they said, watched constantly
over mankind by night and day. Dreams, omens, and presentiments were
all their works, and the means by which they gave warning of the
approach of danger. But, though so well inclined to befriend man for
their own sakes, the want of a soul rendered them at times capricious
and revengeful: they took offence on slight causes, and heaped
injuries instead of benefits on the heads of those who extinguished
the light of reason that was in them, by gluttony, debauchery, and
other appetites of the body.

The excitement produced in Paris by the placards of the
brotherhood, and the attacks of the clergy, wore itself away after a
few months. The stories circulated about them became at last too
absurd even for that age of absurdity, and men began to laugh once
more at those invisible gentlemen and their fantastic doctrines.
Gabriel Naude at that conjuncture brought out his "Avis a la France
sur les Freres de la Rose-croix," in which he very successfully
exposed the folly of the new sect. This work, though not well written,
was well timed. It quite extinguished the Rosicrucians of France; and,
after that year, little more was heard of them. Swindlers, in
different parts of the country, assumed the name at times to cloak
their depredations; and now and then one of them was caught, and
hanged for his too great ingenuity in enticing pearls and precious
stones from the pockets of other people into his own, or for passing
off lumps of gilded brass for pure gold, made by the agency of the
philosopher's stone. With these exceptions, oblivion shrouded them.

The doctrine was not confined to a sphere so narrow as France
alone; it still flourished in Germany, and drew many converts in
England. The latter countries produced two great masters, in the
persons of Jacob Bohmen and Robert Fludd; pretended philosophers, of
whom it is difficult to say which was the more absurd and extravagant.
It would appear that the sect was divided into two classes,-- the
brothers Roseae Crucis, who devoted themselves to the wonders of this
sublunary sphere; and the brothers Aureae Crucis, who were wholly
occupied in the contemplation of things Divine. Fludd belonged to the
first class, and Bohmen to the second. Fludd may be called the father
of the English Rosicrucians, and as such merits a conspicuous niche in
the temple of Folly.

He was born in the year 1574, at Milgate, in Kent; and was the son
of Sir Thomas Fludd, Treasurer of War to Queen Elizabeth. He was
originally intended for the army; but he was too fond of study, and of
a disposition too quiet and retiring to shine in that sphere. His
father would not, therefore, press him to adopt a course of life for
which he was unsuited, and encouraged him in the study of medicine,
for which he early manifested a partiality. At the age of twenty-five
he proceeded to the Continent; and being fond of the abstruse, the
marvellous, and the incomprehensible, he became an ardent disciple of
the school of Paracelsus, whom he looked upon as the regenerator, not
only of medicine, but of philosophy. He remained six years in Italy,
France, and Germany; storing his mind with fantastic notions, and
seeking the society of enthusiasts and visionaries. On his return to
England, in 1605, he received the degree of Doctor of Medicine from
the University of Oxford, and began to practice as a physician in
London.

He soon made himself conspicuous. He Latinized his name from
Robert Fludd into Robertus a Fluctibus, and began the promulgation of
many strange doctrines. He avowed his belief in the philosopher's
stone, the water of life, and the universal alkahest; and maintained
that there were but two principles of all things, -- which were,
condensation, the boreal or northern virtue; and rarefaction, the
southern or austral virtue. A number of demons, he said, ruled over
the human frame, whom he arranged in their places in a rhomboid. Every
disease had its peculiar demon who produced it, which demon could only
be combated by the aid of the demon whose place was directly opposite
to his in the rhomboidal figure. Of his medical notions we shall have
further occasion to speak in another part of this book, when we
consider him in his character as one of the first founders of the
magnetic delusion, and its offshoot, animal magnetism, which has
created so much sensation in our own day.

As if the doctrines already mentioned were not wild enough, he
joined the Rosicrucians as soon as they began to make a sensation in
Europe, and succeeded in raising himself to high consideration among
them. The fraternity having been violently attacked by several German
authors, and among others by Libavius, Fludd volunteered a reply, and
published, in 1616, his defence of the Rosicrucian philosophy, under
the title of the "Apologia, compendiaria, Fraternitatem de
Rosea-cruce, Suspicionis et Infamiae maculis aspersam, abluens." This
work immediately procured him great renown upon the Continent, and he
was henceforth looked upon as one of the high-priests of the sect. Of
so much importance was he considered, that Keppler and Gassendi
thought it necessary to refute him; and the latter wrote a complete
examination of his doctrine. Mersenne also, the friend of Descartes,
and who had defended that philosopher when accused of having joined
the Rosicrucians, attacked Dr. a Fluctibus, as he preferred to be
called, and showed the absurdity of the brothers of the Rose-cross in
general, and of Dr. a Fluctibus in particular. Fluctibus wrote a long
reply, in which he called Mersenne an ignorant calumniator, and
reiterated that alchymy was a profitable science, and the Rosicrucians
worthy to be the regenerators of the world. This book was published at
Frankfort, and was entitled "Summum Bonum, quod est Magiae, Cabalae,
Alchimiae, Fratrum Roseae-Crucis verorum, et adversus Mersenium
Calumniatorem." Besides this, he wrote several other works upon
alchymy, a second answer to Libavius upon the Rosicrucians, and many
medical works. He died in London in 1637.

After his time there was some diminution of the sect in England.
They excited but little attention, and made no effort to bring
themselves into notice. Occasionally, some obscure and almost
incomprehensible work made its appearance, to show the world that the
folly was not extinguished. Eugenius Philalethes, a noted alchymist,
who has veiled his real name under this assumed one, translated "The
Fame and Confession of the Brethren of the Rosie Cross," which was
published in London in 1652. A few years afterwards, another
enthusiast, named John Heydon, wrote two works on the subject: the one
entitled "The Wise Man's Crown, or the Glory of the Rosie Cross ;" and
the other, "The Holy Guide, leading the way to unite Art and Nature,
with the Rosie Crosse uncovered." Neither of these attracted much
notice. A third book was somewhat more successful: it was called "A
New Method of Rosicrucian Physic; by John Heydon, the servant of God
and the secretary of Nature." A few extracts will show the ideas of
the English Rosicrucians about this period. Its author was an
attorney, "practising (to use his own words) at Westminster Hall all
term times as long as he lived, and in the vacations devoting himself
to alchymical and Rosicrucian meditation." In his preface, called by
him an Apologue for an Epilogue, he enlightens the public upon the
true history and tenets of his sect. Moses, Elias, and Ezekiel were,
he says, the most ancient masters of the Rosicrucian philosophy. Those
few then existing in England and the rest of Europe, were as the eyes
and ears of the great King of the universe, seeing and hearing all
things; seraphically illuminated; companions of the holy company of
unbodied souls and immortal angels; turning themselves, Proteus-like,
into any shape, and having the power of working miracles. The most
pious and abstracted brethren could slack the plague in cities,
silence the violent winds and tempests, calm the rage of the sea and
rivers, walk in the air, frustrate the malicious aspect of witches,
cure all diseases, and turn all metals into gold. He had known in his
time two famous brethren of the Rosie Cross, named Walfourd and
Williams, who had worked miracles in his sight, and taught him many
excellent predictions of astrology and earthquakes. "I desired one of
these to tell me," says he, "whether my complexion were capable of the
society of my good genius. 'When I see you again,' said he, (which was
when he pleased to come to me, for I knew not where to go to him,) 'I
will tell you.' When I saw him afterwards, he said, 'You should pray
to God; for a good and holy man can offer no greater or more
acceptable service to God than the oblation of himself -- his soul.'
He said, also, that the good genii were the benign eyes of God,
running to and fro in the world, and with love and pity beholding the
innocent endeavours of harmless and single-hearted men, ever ready to
do them good and to help them."

Heydon held devoutly true that dogma of the Rosicrucians which
said that neither eating nor drinking was necessary to men. He
maintained that any one might exist in the same manner as that
singular people dwelling near the source of the Ganges, of whom
mention was made in the travels of his namesake, Sir Christopher
Heydon, who had no mouths, and therefore could not eat, but lived by
the breath of their nostrils; except when they took a far journey, and
then they mended their diet with the smell of flowers. He said that in
really pure air "there was a fine foreign fatness," with which it was
sprinkled by the sunbeams, and which was quite sufficient for the
nourishment of the generality of mankind. Those who had enormous
appetites he had no objection to see take animal food, since they
could not do without it; but he obstinately insisted that there was no
necessity why they should eat it. If they put a plaster of
nicely-cooked meat upon their epigastrium, it would be sufficient for
the wants of the most robust and voracious! They would by that means
let in no diseases, as they did at the broad and common gate, the
mouth, as any one might see by example of drink; for, all the while a
man sat in water, he was never athirst. He had known, he said, many
Rosicrucians, who, by applying wine in this manner, had fasted for
years together. In fact, quoth Heydon, we may easily fast all our
life, though it be three hundred years, without any kind of meat, and
so cut off all danger of disease.

This "sage philosopher" further informed his wondering
contemporaries that the chiefs of the doctrine always carried about
with them to their place of meeting their symbol, called the R.C.
which was an ebony cross, flourished and decked with roses of gold;
the cross typifying Christ's sufferings upon the Cross for our sins,
and the roses of gold the glory and beauty of his Resurrection. This
symbol was carried alternately to Mecca, Mount Calvary, Mount Sinai,
Haran, and to three other places, which must have been in mid-air,
called Cascle, Apamia, and Chaulateau Virissa Caunuch, where the
Rosicrucian brethren met when they pleased, and made resolution of all
their actions. They always took their pleasures in one of these
places, where they resolved all questions of whatsoever had been done,
was done, or should be done, in the world, from the beginning to the
end thereof. "And these," he concludes, "are the men called
Rosicrucians

Towards the end of the seventeenth century, more rational ideas
took possession of the sect, which still continued to boast of a few
members. They appear to have considered that contentment was the true
philosopher's stone, and to have abandoned the insane search for a
mere phantom of the imagination. Addison, in "The Spectator," [No.
574. Friday, July 30th, 1714.] gives an account of his conversation
with a Rosicrucian; from which it may be inferred that the sect had
grown wiser in their deeds, though in their talk they were as foolish
as ever. "I was once," says he, "engaged in discourse with a
Rosicrucian about the great secret. He talked of the secret as of a
spirit which lived within an emerald, and converted everything that
was near it to the highest perfection that it was capable of. 'It
gives a lustre,' says he, 'to the sun, and water to the diamond. It
irradiates every metal, and enriches lead with all the properties of
gold. It heightens smoke into flame, flame into light, and light into
glory.' He further added 'that a single ray of it dissipates pain, and
care, and melancholy from the person on whom it falls. In short,' says
he, 'its presence naturally changes every place into a kind of
heaven.' After he had gone on for some time in this unintelligible
cant, I found that he jumbled natural and moral ideas together into
the same discourse, and that his great secret was nothing else but
content."

JACOB BOHMEN.

It is now time to speak of Jacob Bohmen, who thought he could
discover the secret of the transmutation of metals in the Bible, and
who invented a strange heterogeneous doctrine of mingled alchymy and
religion, and founded upon it the sect of the Aurea-crucians. He was
born at Gorlitz, in Upper Lusatia, in 1575; and followed, till his
thirtieth year, the occupation of a shoemaker. In this obscurity he
remained, with the character of a visionary and a man of unsettled
mind, until the promulgation of the Rosicrucian philosophy in his part
of Germany, toward the year 1607 or 1608. From that time he began to
neglect his leather, and buried his brain under the rubbish of
metaphysics. The works of Paracelsus fell into his hands; and these,
with the reveries of the Rosicrucians, so completely engrossed his
attention that be abandoned his trade altogether, sinking, at the same
time, from a state of comparative independence into poverty and
destitution. But he was nothing daunted by the miseries and privations
of the flesh; his mind was fixed upon the beings of another sphere,
and in thought he was already the new apostle of the human race. In
the year 1612, after a meditation of four years, he published his
first work, entitled "Aurora; or, The Rising of the Sun;" embodying
the ridiculous notions of Paracelsus, and worse confounding the
confusion of that writer. The philosopher's stone might, he contended,
be discovered by a diligent search of the Old and New Testaments, and
more especially of the Apocalypse, which alone contained all the
secrets of alchymy. He contended that the Divine Grace operated by the
same rules, and followed the same methods, that the Divine Providence
observed in the natural world; and that the minds of men were purged
from their vices and corruptions in the very same manner that metals
were purified from their dross, namely, by fire.

Besides the sylphs, gnomes, undines, and salamanders, he
acknowledged various ranks and orders of demons. He pretended to
invisibility and absolute chastity. He also said that, if it pleased
him, he could abstain for years from meat and drink, and all the
necessities of the body. It is needless, however, to pursue his
follies any further. He was reprimanded for writing this work by the
magistrates of Gorlitz, and commanded to leave the pen alone and stick
to his wax, that his family might not become chargeable to the parish.
He neglected this good advice, and continued his studies; burning
minerals and purifying metals one day, and mystifying the Word of God
on the next. He afterwards wrote three other works, as sublimely
ridiculous as the first. The one was entitled "Metallurgia," and has
the slight merit of being the least obscure of his compositions.
Another was called "The Temporal Mirror of Eternity ;" and the last
his "Theosophy revealed," full of allegories and metaphors,

"All strange and geason,
Devoid of sense and ordinary reason."

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