The older "Rosicrucians"
Coming to fame by Masonic societies and modern
occultism as earlier described the manuscript copies of the Fama Fraternitatis were initially circulating among very few readers, of a
circle of friends in Tübingen.
Some echo’s of Rosicrucian ideas and images in the works of
playwrights and poets would lead one to assume there was sufficient interest in
such matters to encourage publication of the Rosicrucian manifestos in English,
but there is no evidence of a printed translation until the 1650s. Nearly forty
years after the publication of the first printed edition of the Fama fraternitatis in German at Kassel
in 1614.
This edition was
issued by Giles Calvert, a London publisher primarily of religious treatises
and political tracts, who produced during the 1650s a number of books on
alchemy and medicine.
Although the impact
of the Rosicrucian manifestos in Britain during the earliest times is not well
documented, through the discovery of the links between these manuscripts we can
trace a thread running from Thomas Vaughan through a number of aristocrats,
primarily of Scottish origin, close to King Charles I and King James, back to
Robert Ker.
In 1927, a linguist
and expert on the works of Andreae, Richard Kienast, maintained, inter alia, these theses:
1) the style of the Fama Fraternitatis is not that of
Johann Valentin Andreae as is known from his German
works; the writing should therefore be attributed to one of his Tübingen
friends.
2) the first version
of the Fama dates from 1604 or shortly after and
lacks the eschatological references to the Confessio Fraternitatis, which were inserted in the original text
about 1613 under the influence of Campanella's philosophy, eschatology and
empirical politics. Reading the works of the Calabrian monk, Campanella, which
had been brought to Tübingen by Tobias Adami in
September 1613 must, in any case, have encouraged Andreae
and his friends to publish the Fama at Kassel in
1614.
3) the Confessio, too, was not Andreae's
work but Besold's, as is proved by the parallel
between the quotations from the 4th Book of Esdra
about the struggle between the eagle and the lion, present in the writings of
both Besold and Campanella. The Confessio
must therefore have been written towards the end of 1614 and printed for the
first time at Kassel in 1615.
These assertions by Kienast about the influence of Campanella on the final version
of the Manifestos were accepted without discussion - except in the case of
Wilhelm Peuckert - by later historians of the Rosicrucians. Even Frances A. Yates, before establishing
with incredible success her bizarre hypothesis on the English origins of the Rosicrucians due to John Dee, had toyed with the idea of
the influence of Glordano Bruno and his followers as
well as with the idea that Campanella's works were brought to Tübingen between
1611-1613 by Tobias Adami. An idea also myself
supported when I first wrote about these subjects in Critique Quarterly, 1982.
Also the recent books
by Edighoffer, despite his correct identification of
all three of the Rosicrucian Manifestos as the work of Andreae,
sends Tobias Adami to Tdbingen
in September 1613 so as to treat the reading of Campanella in the Tübingen
circle of friends as the final impulse leading to the publication of the Fama Fraternitatis.
But all these
phantasy speculations on a presumed trip by Adami to
Tübingen, indeed on his sporadic presence in Germany around September 1613,
finally collapsed thanks to the exact reconstruction of the journeys of
Campanella's future publisher worked out by Luigi Firpo
more than twenty years ago, and translated by C. Gilly. In fact Adami did not return to Germany until late 1616 afther the first Rosicrucian tract had already been
published.
Then in 1998, Susanne
Ackerman’s Rose Cross over the Baltic, presented research about Johannes Bureus' papers in Stockholm and clarify the role of magical
texts in the formation of the Rosicrucian legend, and the Rosicrucian prophecy
on the Lion of the North.
As early as 1604, Bureus got involved in translating a Latin pamphlet sent to
him by the illegitimate son of the King, Carl Carlsson Gyllenhielm,
entitled 'A Warning delivered by one of the Pope's secretaries'. Its author
treats of a feared Protestant setback in Austria and Württemberg, and of the
formation in Rome of two colleges for Counter-Reformation Propaganda Fide. The
question of an evangelical union was therefore raised, a political union among
Protestant Princes that finally formed at Auhausen in
May 1608. It was to be led by Fredrick IV of Württemberg, with hopes of
including the Saxon Prince.
Following the Arabic
Sabaean tradition on celestial influence as set out by John Dee, Rosicrucians believed that celestial virtue is necessary
for transmutation and that an alchemist must continuously observe stellar
positions. Comets were seen to bring with them a liberation of spirit from
matter. The debate on the nature of the new stars, therefore, and on the
possible correspondences between the upper and lower realms, had a direct
influence on the theory of signs.
For example, in 1610,
Johannes Bureus studied Cornelius Gemma's De arte cyclognomica (Antwerp 1567)
at the same time he was reading John Dee's neo-Pythagorean Monas Hieroglyphica (Antwerp 1564). Dee quoted Postel's construction of the Hebrew alphabet out of a
single lod, while the grid for the compound patterns
of lod was presented by Postel
as an appendix to his edition of the Sefer Jezira (Paris 1552). The grid perfectly matched two
connected half-circles, thus not dissimilar to the Aries of Dee's Monas.
Obsession with perfect form was an integral part of both the Joachite and the neo-Pythagorean tradition, while semiotics
and astronomy was taken as an ensemble by these thinkers. In the same section
of these predominantly kabbalistic notes, Bureus
attempts to incorporate the structure of the Sefirot into his Runic scheme, and
as a matter of course he copies down Helisaeus Roeslin's 'signaculum mundi Pythagoricum'.
John Dee and Postel actually met in Paris in 1551, while Dee was giving
his lectures on Euclid there. Dee could easily have raised the issue of Roger
Bacon's optics, particularly since Postel's linguistic
skills could be of help. Is it even possible that Postel
knew the group to which Dee spoke in Paris in 1562 and to whom Dee presented a
kabbalistic table on Hebrew chronology?
Brahes'
reference to Postel's hints at the astronomical
relevance of Enochian magic, of which Dee was a champion, could indicate this.
We know that only a year later, an investigation was made into Postel's Gallic prophecies and heresy. He was declared
insane and was sent as a heretic to prison in St. Martin-des-Champs. Dee, on
the other hand, had gone first to Italy and then to Antwerp to publish his
Monas.
John Dee was stirred
up about the star, and had written on its lack of parallax in a treatise De
Stella admiranda, in Cassiopeae
Asterismo (1573). It is not surprising that the
condensed symbology of the neo-Pythagoreans is referred to by Tycho Brahe as
well
Postel's ideas on the world -historical mutation signalled by the exploding star in Cassiopeia was one
reason for Tycho Brahe's probing into its cultural significance. Neglected
material now emerged on the construction of the ancient computus
set out in the astronomical chapters of the Ethiopian Book of Enoch. These
remarks deepened with Tycho's critical exposition of authors arguing that the
new star heralded Elijah the prophet was to become a dominant cultural factor
for the Tübingen millenarians.
Yohannes Bureus, the Swedish antiquarian and teacher of Gustav
Adolf, worked as a royal archivist and found much inspiration in the French
visionary Guillaume Postel's cosmographic ideas on
the northern spread of the Hyperborean peoples. He was particularly interested
in Postel's claims concerning the double sources of
prophecy: that the Old Testament prophets are completed by the Sibylline
oracles, and of the prophetic role of Alruna, the
northern Sybil, who like the Celtic druids had been revered for her great
visionary powers. Alruna was born in 432 BC and Bureus believed she knew the great Thracian Sibyls, Latona, Amalthea, and Acheia.1
Bureus
sought to give new significance to the alleged medieval proofs that the
inhabitants around the Baltic were migrating tribes from before the fall of the
Tower of Babel, tribes that undivided and uncorrupted had remained in direct
cultural debt to the son and grandson of Noah: Japheth and Askenaz
(giving them the name Skanzea). Rock carvings and
other remains of an ancient solar cult showed that they were the Hyperborean
peoples living north of the Gauls spoken of in
classical times.2
Although Campanella,
had no influence at all either on the creation of the Rosicrucian Manifestos or
during the early years of debate about the existence and supposed intentions of
the Brotherhood. The fact that two of Campanella's early works, the Scuola del primo senno and the Epilogo magno, had reached Germany.
Bureus'
theosophic interests appear to have begun in 1591 with a book related to the
angelic magic set out by Agrippa of Nettesheim and
Paracelsus and contains a list of nine kinds of magic, including Olympian,
Hesiodic, Pythagorean, and Hermetic.
In following the
magical instructions in the Arbatel, Bureus was inspired to see himself as a prophet or a sage,
and he began to assimilate himself to the angelic role of Ariel the Lion of
God, one of the 72 spirits mentioned by Agrippa.
Bureus
argued for two ideas fairly common among Paracelsians,
that were nevertheless controversial. These are the idea of the two natures of
Christ, his status as the first and the second Adam, and the idea of the Homo
Triplex, the idea of three natures in man. To show that the human persona is
threefold, Bureus offered examples from the biblical
text. Thus, of Revelations 22:16, where it is said, 'The Soul and the Bride
say, come... whoever is thirsty let him come', he bluntly asks, who are they?
The answer, he thinks, is given in Hebrews 4:12 where God's word is likened to
a sharp sword that 'separates the spirit from the soul, dividing joints and
marrow'. On these scriptural grounds, Bureus was
confirmed in his belief in the three principles of human beings.
These three are
animated by a fourth principle, the inner sun, Lux, or the life-giving light,
that separates the pure from the impure, and that illuminates the whole. This
light solves, by bringing forth a solvent, hopefully sound (as in 'sundheet, sanitatis', or sanity;
thus punning on the role of the Paracelsian healer).
Of course there was
no firm evidence that the lost Hermetic books referred to by ancient authors had
ever existed. No surviving ancient author described the content of Hermetic
medical doctrine. And the famous medicine of Hellenistic Alexandria was Greek,
not Egyptian. When the Egyptian temples were destroyed the ancient Egyptian
medicine practiced by priests came to an end. And the Arabic medicine practiced
under Muslim rule derived from Greek sources.
Yet alchemical
treatises of Arabic origin attributed to Hermes, like the Tabula smaragdina, had been available in Europe since the Middle
Ages. And a emphasis on Hermetic origins seems to
have gained prominence in Paracelsian literature
during the second half of the sixteenth century; the German polymath Hermann
Goering, writing in the mid-seventeenth century, perceived the phenomenon as
more recent than Paracelsus himself or his first disciples. In fact the
persistence of the claim in the mid-seventeenth century induced Goering to
compose a 400-page diatribe against the Paracelsian
Hermes.
Unlike the Paracelsians, the ancient Egyptians did not use chemically
prepared or mineral medicines. They did not make much use of metal and all the
sources testified to their use of medicinal plants. The Hermetic books suggest
they thought in terms of four elements; they certainly never introduced the Paracelsian triad mercury, sulphur,
and salt. Most importantly, ancient Egyptian medicine was inextricably involved
with the cult of demons, superstition, magic, and incantations.
Bureus'
idea of a tripartite soul is not unusual in the Hermetic tradition. The bridal
mysticism was part of the alchemical world view presented in numerous texts and
by J.V. Andreae in his widely read Chemical Wedding
of Christian Rosencreutz.
Bureus
read this pamphlet no later than 1617, thus about four years after his
experience with the crucified heart. Yet Bureus from
earlier on had developed a Manichaean view of the soul through reading Johan Jessenius' commentary on Zoroaster (Zoroaster. Nova, brevis
veraque de universo
philosophia, Wittenberg 1593).
Excerpting 48 pages
of material from this book in 1595, Bureus moved on
to investigate the various forms of angelic magic found in the Arbatel De Magia Veterum. It was hardly these sources alone, however, that
in 1604 made Bureus dream of Lady Sophia.
Bureus
follows Postel in believing that the Hebrew
characters developed through Noah, Seth, and Enoch. On the copy of the
Ethiopian book of Enoch used by John Dee in sessions of angelic magic with
Edward Kelley at Prague in 1586, see N. Clulee, John
Dee's Natural Philosophy Between Science and Religion, London 1988, 209.
In the 1620s Bureus
had a vital influence on the apothecary Simon Wollimhaus, author of the strange
apocalyptic work Schola
Crucis oder ZwöIff Lutherische Kirchen die von Anjang der Welt gewesen und bleiben müssen bis an den Lieben
Jungsten Tag (Stockholm 1655). Another friend was the peasant healer Jon Olofsson, who also inherited Bureus'
millenarian interpretation.
In 1618, Olofsson wrote an 106-page apocalyptic treatise in which he
proclaims that the high Angel of God had sent a great prophet, who like John
the Baptist is crying before the fall of Jerusalem. The treatise is now lost,
but there remain an index and various excerpts.28 There are many indications
that Olofsson was stimulated by the Rosicrucian
writings: he mentions Johannes Bureus and speaks of a
heavenly letter placed for forty days on the altar at Uppsala.
Olofsson begins by drawing attention to the coronation of the
Swedish King as signalled by the comet of 1618. He
further hopes to have the text translated into Latin and Greek and sent out all
over the world, for he has discovered a great conspiracy: The truth is that the
papal dominion has destroyed the wisdom of the disciples of Christ. The New
Testament is full of forgeries.
Bureus
in his vision set out a triad of reformers in his FaMa
(Ms. Leiden UB, N 157B, 10r.) He begins with the names of J.H.P., M.L.T. and
J.B.C. (that is with Johannes Hus, Martin Luther and Jacob Böhme),
but then adds three new names: C. Ros., T. Par. and 1. Arn
(that is Christian Rosenkreutz, Theophrastus
Paracelsus and Johann Arndt). All taken together, they yield the word ARI, the
lion.
But for those who are
not familiar with the fact that there are also the so called 'elder Rosicrucians', that is the few people who wrote the first
three Rosicrucian texts, before any kind of organization came about, and also
long before Freemasonry first started.
There two
verifiability influences that are unmistakably quoted in the earliest
Rosicrucian manuscripts, these are Paracelsus indicating that at least some of
these early writers were so called, Paracelsians,
plus the mythical Hermes Trismegistes.
Luther's crest with a
black cross on a red heart upon a white rose is set beside an expansion on the
letters, F. R. C., Futurae Reformatio
Catholicae, signifying a hope for a future Universal
Reformation, similar to that heralded by the first Rosicrucian texts from
Tübingen.
As described in C.
Gilly, Adam Haslmayr - Der erste
Verkünder der Manifeste der
Rosenkreuzer,Amsterdam 1994, the manuscript copies of
the Fama Fraternitatis
where initially circulating among very few readers among a circle of friends in
the South German University town of Tübingen.
And although in
England some echo’s of Rosicrucian ideas and images
in the works of playwrights and poets would lead one to assume there was
sufficient interest in such matters to encourage publication of the Rosicrucian
manifestos , there is no evidence of a printed translation until the 1650s.
Nearly forty years after the publication of the first printed edition of the Fama fraternitatis in German at
Kassel in 1614.
This edition was
issued by Giles Calvert, a London publisher primarily of religious treatises
and political tracts, who produced during the 1650s a number of books on
alchemy and medicine.
Although the impact
of the Rosicrucian manifestos in Britain during the earliest times is not well
documented, through the discovery of the links between these manuscripts we can
trace a thread running from Thomas Vaughan through a number of aristocrats,
primarily of Scottish origin, close to King Charles I and King James, back to
Robert Ker.
Also in 1927, a
linguist and expert on the works of Andreae, Richard Kienast, maintained, inter alia, these theses:
1) the style of the Fama Fraternitatis is not that of
Johann Valentin Andreae as is known from his German
works; the writing should therefore be attributed to one of his Tübingen
friends.
2) the first version
of the Fama dates from 1604 or shortly after and
lacks the eschatological references to the Confessio Fraternitatis, which were inserted in the original text
about 1613 under the influence of Campanella's philosophy, eschatology and
empirical politics. Reading the works of the Calabrian monk, Campanella, which
had been brought to Tübingen by Tobias Adami in
September 1613 must, in any case, have encouraged Andreae
and his friends to publish the Fama at Kassel in
1614.
3) the Confesslo, too, was not Andreae's
work but Besold's, as is proved by the parallel
between the quotations from the 4th Book of Esdra
about the struggle between the eagle and the lion, present in the writings of
both Besold and Campanella. The Confessio
must therefore have been written towards the end of 1614 and printed for the
first time at Kassel in 1615.
A reason why I mention
this is because these assertions by Kienast about the
influence of Campanella on the final version of the Manifestos were accepted
without discussion - except in the case of Wilhelm Peuckert
- by later historians of the Rosicrucians.
Frances A. Yates,
before establishing with incredible success her bizarre hypothesis on the
English origins of the Rosicrucians due to John Dee,
had toyed with the idea of the influence of Glordano
Bruno and his followers as well as with the idea that Campanella's works were
brought to Tübingen between 1611-1613 by Tobias Adami.
An idea also myself supported when I first wrote about these subjects in
Critique Quarterly, 1982.
Also the French
language books by Edighoffer this past decade ,
despite his correct identification of all three of the Rosicrucian Manifestos
as the work of Andreae, sends Tobias Adami to Tdbingen in September
1613 so as to treat the reading of Campanella in the Tübingen circle of friends
as the final impulse leading to the publication of the Fama
Fraternitatis.
But all these
phantasy speculations on a presumed trip by Adami to
Tübingen, indeed on his sporadic presence in Germany around September 1613,
finally collapsed thanks to the exact reconstruction of the journeys of
Campanella's future publisher worked out by Luigi Firpo
more than twenty years ago, and translated by C. Gilly. In fact Adami did not return to Germany until late 1616 afther the first Rosicrucian tract had already been
published.
Then in 1998, Susanne
Ackerman’s Rose Cross over the Baltic, presented research about Johannes Bureus' papers in Stockholm and clarify the role of magical
texts in the formation of the Rosicrucian legend, and the Rosicrucian prophecy
on the Lion of the North.
As early as 1604, Bureus got involved in translating a Latin pamphlet sent to
him by the illegitimate son of the King, Carl Carlsson Gyllenhielm,
entitled 'A Warning delivered by one of the Pope's secretaries'. Its author
treats of a feared Protestant setback in Austria and Württemberg, and of the formation
in Rome of two colleges for Counter-Reformation Propaganda Fide. The question
of an evangelical union was therefore raised, a political union among
Protestant Princes that finally formed at Auhausen in
May 1608. It was to be led by Fredrick IV of Württemberg, with hopes of
including the Saxon Prince.
Yohannes Bureus, the Swedish antiquarian and teacher of Gustav
Adolf, worked as a royal archivist and found much inspiration in the French
visionary Guillaume Postel's cosmographic ideas on
the northern spread of the Hyperborean peoples. He was particularly interested
in Postel's claims concerning the double sources of
prophecy: that the Old Testament prophets are completed by the Sibylline
oracles, and of the prophetic role of Alruna, the
northern Sybil, who like the Celtic druids had been revered for her great
visionary powers. Alruna was born in 432 BC and Bureus believed she knew the great Thracian Sibyls, Latona, Amalthea, and Acheia.
Bureus
sought to give new significance to the alleged medieval proofs that the
inhabitants around the Baltic were migrating tribes from before the fall of the
Tower of Babel, tribes that undivided and uncorrupted had remained in direct
cultural debt to the son and grandson of Noah: Japheth and Askenaz
(giving them the name Skanzea). Rock carvings and
other remains of an ancient solar cult showed that they were the Hyperborean
peoples living north of the Gauls spoken of in
classical times.
Following the Arabic
Sabaean tradition on celestial influence as set out by John Dee, Rosicrucians believed that celestial virtue is necessary
for transmutation and that an alchemist must continuously observe stellar
positions. Comets were seen to bring with them a liberation of spirit from
matter. The debate on the nature of the new stars, therefore, and on the
possible correspondences between the upper and lower realms, had a direct
influence on the theory of signs.
For example, in 1610,
Johannes Bureus studied Cornelius Gemma's De arte cyclognomica (Antwerp 1567)
at the same time he was reading John Dee's neo-Pythagorean Monas Hieroglyphica (Antwerp 1564). Dee quoted Postel's construction of the Hebrew alphabet out of a
single lod, while the grid for the compound patterns
of lod was presented by Postel
as an appendix to his edition of the Sefer Jezira (Paris 1552). The grid perfectly matched two
connected half-circles, thus not dissimilar to the Aries of Dee's Monas.
Obsession with perfect form was an integral part of both the Joachite and the neo-Pythagorean tradition, while semiotics
and astronomy was taken as an ensemble by these thinkers. In the same section
of these predominantly kabbalistic notes, Bureus
attempts to incorporate the structure of the Sefirot into his Runic scheme, and
as a matter of course he copies down Helisaeus Roeslin's 'signaculum mundi Pythagoricum’.
Now, Dee and Postel actually met in Paris in 1551, while Dee was giving
his lectures on Euclid there. Dee could easily have raised the issue of Roger
Bacon's optics, particularly since Postel's
linguistic skills could be of help. Is it even possible that Postel knew the group to which Dee spoke in Paris in 1562
and to whom Dee presented a kabbalistic table on Hebrew chronology? Brahes' reference to Postel's
hints at the astronomical relevance of Enochian magic, of which Dee was a
champion, could indicate this.
We know that only a
year later, an investigation was made into Postel's
Gallic prophecies and heresy. He was declared insane and was sent as a heretic
to prison in St. Martin-des-Champs. Dee, on the other hand, had gone first to
Italy and then to Antwerp to publish his Monas.
John Dee was stirred
up about the star, and had written on its lack of parallax in a treatise De
Stella admiranda, in Cassiopeae
Asterismo (1573). It is not surprising that the
condensed symbology of the neo-Pythagoreans is referred to by Tycho Brahe as
well
Postel's ideas on the world -historical mutation signalled by the exploding star in Cassiopeia was one
reason for Tycho Brahe's probing into its cultural significance. Neglected
material now emerged on the construction of the ancient computus
set out in the astronomical chapters of the Ethiopian Book of Enoch. These
remarks deepened with Tycho's critical exposition of authors arguing that the
new star heralded Elijah the prophet was to become a dominant cultural factor
for the Tübingen millenarians.
Although Campanella,
had no influence at all either on the creation of the Rosicrucian Manifestos or
during the early years of debate about the existence and supposed intentions of
the Brotherhood. The fact that two of Campanella's early works, the Scuola del primo senno and the Epilogo magno, had reached
Germany.
Bureus'
theosophic interests appear to have begun in 1591 with a book related to the
angelic magic set out by Agrippa of Nettesheim and
Paracelsus and contains a list of nine kinds of magic, including Olympian,
Hesiodic, Pythagorean, and Hermetic.
In following the
magical instructions in the Arbatel, Bureus was inspired to see himself as a prophet or a sage,
and he began to assimilate himself to the angelic role of Ariel the Lion of
God, one of the 72 spirits mentioned by Agrippa.
Bureus
argued for two ideas fairly common among Paracelsians,
that were nevertheless controversial. These are the idea of the two natures of
Christ, his status as the first and the second Adam, and the idea of the Homo
Triplex, the idea of three natures in man. To show that the human persona is
threefold, Bureus offered examples from the biblical
text. Thus, of Revelations 22:16, where it is said, 'The Soul and the Bride
say, come... whoever is thirsty let him come', he bluntly asks, who are they?
The answer, he thinks, is given in Hebrews 4:12 where God's word is likened to
a sharp sword that 'separates the spirit from the soul, dividing joints and
marrow'. On these scriptural grounds, Bureus was
confirmed in his belief in the three principles of human beings.
These three are
animated by a fourth principle, the inner sun, Lux, or the life-giving light,
that separates the pure from the impure, and that illuminates the whole. This
light solves, by bringing forth a solvent, hopefully sound (as in 'sundheet, sanitatis', or sanity;
thus punning on the role of the Paracelsian healer).
Of course there was
no firm evidence that the lost Hermetic books referred to by ancient authors
had ever existed. No surviving ancient author described the content of Hermetic
medical doctrine. And the famous medicine of Hellenistic Alexandria was Greek,
not Egyptian. When the Egyptian temples were destroyed the ancient Egyptian
medicine practiced by priests came to an end. And the Arabic medicine practiced
under Muslim rule derived from Greek sources.
Yet alchemical
treatises of Arabic origin attributed to Hermes, like the Tabula smaragdina, had been available in Europe since the Middle
Ages. And a emphasis on Hermetic origins seems to
have gained prominence in Paracelsian literature
during the second half of the sixteenth century; the German polymath Hermann
Goering, writing in the mid-seventeenth century, perceived the phenomenon as
more recent than Paracelsus himself or his first disciples. In fact the
persistence of the claim in the mid-seventeenth century induced Goering to
compose a 400-page diatribe against the Paracelsian
Hermes.
Unlike the Paracelsians, the ancient Egyptians did not use chemically
prepared or mineral medicines. They did not make much use of metal and all the
sources testified to their use of medicinal plants. The Hermetic books suggest
they thought in terms of four elements; they certainly never introduced the Paracelsian triad mercury, sulphur,
and salt. Most importantly, ancient Egyptian medicine was inextricably involved
with the cult of demons, superstition, magic, and incantations.
Bureus'
idea of a tripartite soul is not unusual in the Hermetic tradition. The bridal
mysticism was part of the alchemical world view presented in numerous texts and
by J.V. Andreae in his widely read Chemical Wedding
of Christian Rosencreutz.
Bureus
read this pamphlet no later than 1617, thus about four years after his
experience with the crucified heart. Yet Bureus from
earlier on had developed a Manichaean view of the soul through reading Johan Jessenius' commentary on Zoroaster (Zoroaster. Nova, brevis
veraque de universo
philosophia, Wittenberg 1593).
Excerpting 48 pages
of material from this book in 1595, Bureus moved on
to investigate the various forms of angelic magic found in the Arbatel De Magia Veterum. It was hardly these sources alone, however, that
in 1604 made Bureus dream of Lady Sophia.
Bureus
follows Postel in believing that the Hebrew
characters developed through Noah, Seth, and Enoch. On the copy of the
Ethiopian book of Enoch used by John Dee in sessions of angelic magic with
Edward Kelley at Prague in 1586, see N. Clulee, John
Dee's Natural Philosophy Between Science and Religion, London 1988, 209.
In the 1620s Bureus
had a vital influence on the apothecary Simon Wollimhaus, author of the strange
apocalyptic work Schola
Crucis oder ZwöIff Lutherische Kirchen die von Anjang der Welt gewesen und bleiben müssen bis an den
Lieben Jungsten Tag (Stockholm 1655). Another friend was the peasant healer Jon Olofsson, who also inherited Bureus'
millenarian interpretation.
In 1618, Olofsson wrote an 106-page apocalyptic treatise in which he
proclaims that the high Angel of God had sent a great prophet, who like John
the Baptist is crying before the fall of Jerusalem. The treatise is now lost,
but there remain an index and various excerpts.28 There are many indications
that Olofsson was stimulated by the Rosicrucian
writings: he mentions Johannes Bureus and speaks of a
heavenly letter placed for forty days on the altar at Uppsala.
Bureus
in his vision set out a triad of reformers in his FaMa
(Ms. Leiden UB, N 157B, 10r.) He begins with the names of J.H.P., M.L.T. and
J.B.C. (that is with Johannes Hus, Martin Luther and Jacob Böhme),
but then adds three new names: C. Ros., T. Par. and 1. Arn
(that is Christian Rosenkreutz, Theophrastus
Paracelsus and Johann Arndt). All taken together, they yield the word ARI, the
lion.
Olofsson begins by drawing attention to the coronation of the
Swedish King as signaled by the comet of 1618. He further hopes to have the
text translated into Latin and Greek and sent out all over the world, for he
has discovered a great conspiracy: The truth is that the papal dominion has
destroyed the wisdom of the disciples of Christ. The New Testament is full of
forgeries.
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