Paracelsus and the Rosicrucian Doctrine: Spiritual Transformation and Alchemical Symbolism

In the Book of the Resurrection and Glorification of the Body, Paracelsus explains: "Men regenerated by the Cross receive a spiritual body whose glorification is symbolized by the Rose. It is Christ, the God-Man who transfigures us just as the philosopher's stone transmutes metals." According to Paracelsus, the Rosicrucians are: "people who have been elevated by God and who have remained in this state of elevation and have not died, [...] no one knows what has become of them yet they are still on earth." From Paracelsus's writings, the Rosicrucians seem to be quite particular characters - it's unclear whether they are physical people in flesh and blood or spirits, or characters present in metaphysical or glorified bodies... in short, it's unclear. And so the description remains until 1614, the year when a series of manifestos from the Rosicrucian fraternity emerged in Tübingen, declaring themselves ready to operate a spiritual and social revolution. The Manifesto tells of Christian Rosenkreutz, the founder of the confraternity who, born in 1378, began traveling to the Orient from a young age and after wandering through various formative experiences, returned to Europe where he remained disappointed by the community and withdrew into hermitage. Here he finally contacted four scholars beyond the level of their time and they decided to form a confraternity that followed these rules: 1. They would practice no other profession than that of healing the sick, and this gratuitously. 2. They would wear no particular garb imposed by the Confraternity, but the costume of the country. 3. Every year, on day C, they would meet in the House of the Holy Spirit, or would communicate the reason for their absence. 4. Each brother would choose a worthy person who, after his death, could succeed him. 5. The word Rose-Cross would be their only seal and distinctive sign. 6. The Confraternity would remain secret for one hundred years. Christian Rosenkreutz died in 1484 (do you remember the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction of 1484 that was supposed to promise a great moral and spiritual reform?). One hundred years later we are in 1584 with John Dee's journey to the continent, but it is in 1604, one year before Khunrath's death and 120 years since Christian Rosenkreutz's death, that according to legend the discovery of Rosenkreutz's tomb occurs, which is interpreted as a sign to spread and publicly declare the existence and purposes of the Confraternity. And what were the crucial points of this Rosicrucian doctrine? What was the novelty they wanted to bring? First of all, the Rosicrucians focused their attention on a predominantly Alchemical symbolism. They refer to Paracelsus who explicitly says: "The proofs of the authenticity of natural gold give us an image of the proofs and phases through which our body must pass so that after resurrection a new body is born, which is brighter than the Sun and is called the body of transfiguration." In this image by Khunrath we see this double practical-operative and speculative aspect simultaneously. On one side of the drawing, the laboratory where physical transmutations and preparations are carried out is represented, while on the left is the oratory, the place of prayer where the alchemist performs spiritual transmutation. This very practical and scientific approach is a characteristic of the Rosicrucians. While in other times and according to other currents one directed oneself more towards a speculative, theoretical approach of study and speculation, the Rosicrucians instead row strongly on the immediate realizational aspect. You see that the laboratory on the left is founded on two columns: Reason and Experience. This practical and scientific approach will ensure that this movement gathers and attracts the greatest scientists of the contemporary and subsequent era. From the ranks of the Rosicrucians will emerge the founders of the Royal Society, the oldest community of scientific research in the modern sense. Among the founding members we remember Elias Ashmole who gave new impulse and new purposes to speculative masonry, his friend Robert Moray who found the place to found the Royal Society, Thomas Vaughan the translator of the Fama Fraternitatis into English, Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke etc., then Newton, Samuel Pepys etc... So the approach is an extremely practical and realizational one based on experience. Theory serves to illuminate experience as the inscription says "What is attempted with Wisdom sometimes happens." Indeed in the oratory we see that the orator is praying to the angel of Wisdom Hocmiel so that he may illuminate him (as can be read on the tent). We come to the first operation that is revealed by a particular detail: "Learn to die well." We see however that under the table there is something, which suggests a necessary experience that constitutes the basis of these prayers. Under the table indeed there is a kind of skull and there is an inscription that says: DISCE BENE MORI: Learn to die well. Here we return to the discourse of death and descent into hell of which we have spoken in various previous lessons on resurrection. Practically according to the Rosicrucians, at the moment of death, the soul leaving the body has a lapse of time in which the vital principle and the spiritual principle, abandoning the body, reunite, making the dying person experience for a certain period of time a state of ecstasy corresponding to a vision of the white Light typical of the dying. By managing to fix oneself in this light, then the soul and spirit were transfigured by this light thus bringing about resurrection. Thus the experimenter can call himself a Watcher. Here indeed is a training for...