The Rosicrucian Fellowship (TRF) ("An International Association of Christian Mystics") was founded in 1909 by Max Heindel with the aim of heralding the Aquarian Age and promulgating "the true Philosophy" of the Rosicrucians.[1] It claims to present Esoteric Christian mysteries or esoteric knowledge, alluded to in Matthew 13:11 and Luke 8:10, to establish a meeting ground for art, religion, and science and to prepare the individual through harmonious development of the mind and the heart for selfless service of humanity.[2]
The Rosicrucian Fellowship conducts Spiritual Healing Services and offers correspondence courses in esoteric Christianity, philosophy, "spiritual astrology" and Bible interpretation.[3] Members of the Rosicrucian Fellowship are vegetarian and abstain from alcohol, recreational drugs and tobacco.[4] Its headquarters are located on Mount Ecclesia in Oceanside, California, and its students are found throughout the world organized in centers and study groups.[5] Its declared mission is to promulgate a scientific method of development suited particularly to the Western people whereby the "Soul body" may be wrought, so that humanity may hasten the Second Coming.[6] [7] Religious scholars classify the Rosicrucian Fellowship as a new religious movement.[4] [8] [9]
In 1908 Max Heindel started, in New York City, the work of rewriting a previous draft in German of teachings ostensibly written under the instruction of Elder Brothers in their temple near the border of Bohemia and Germany.[10] Heindel moved to Buffalo, New York, where he finished the typescript about September 1908. The work, called The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, was revised and printed in November 1909.
The first edition of 2500 copies, printed in Chicago, was exhausted in six months but it was learned that 2000 of these had been given by the publisher as payment of the debts of the publishing house to other publishers. Immediately, a large second edition was ordered: a first payment was made to the printer with the help of Augusta Foss,[11] who would become Max Heindel's wife. This time two booksellers bought one-third of the imprint before it was off the press.[12]
The Rosicrucian Fellowship's formal constitution occurred on August 8, 1909, in Seattle, Washington, at 3:00 p.m. The first Rosicrucian study center had been already previously formed in Columbus, Ohio, on November 14, 1908, where Heindel lectured and taught for a number of months. After each lecture he distributed free mimeographed copies to the audience; those twenty lectures were printed in 1909, along with the first edition of Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, under the title The Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures. The Columbus Center was followed by centers in North Yakima, Washington (November 1909), Portland, Oregon, and Los Angeles, California (February 27, 1910), the city where Heindel reencountered his theosophist friend Augusta Foss. In Los Angeles, Max Heindel gave conferences three times a week to audiences of nearly one thousand people from November 29, 1909, till March 17, 1910.
On October 28, 1911, the organisation's international headquarters, still used today, were opened at Mount Ecclesia in Oceanside, California. The ceremony of ground-breaking consisted in planting a large Cross with the initials C.R.C. (for Christian Rosenkreuz, the legendary head of the original order) painted in gilt letters on the three upper ends and with a climbing rose. The Rosicrucian Fellowship Temple, called The Ecclesia, was erected for the purpose of affording more powerful means for the healing of disease, and dedicated on December 25, 1920. Spiritual Healing meetings are held there each day.
According to Max Heindel, the invisible Order of the Rose Cross exists in the inner worlds, was founded in 1313 and is composed of twelve great adepts presented as belonging to human evolution but already advanced far beyond the cycle of rebirth.[13] Their mission is explained as aiming to prepare the whole wide world for a new phase in religion that includes awareness of the inner worlds and the subtle bodies and safe guidance in the gradual awakening of man's latent spiritual faculties: "to prepare a new phase of the Christian religion to be used during the coming age now at hand."[14]
Admission into the Rosicrucian Fellowship is free of fees and is funded by donation. The Fellowship recognizes seven grades, but its study is primarily based upon a system of three grades: regular student, probationer and disciple.[15] After a two-year term of being a Regular Student of the Fellowship, a person who abstains from all flesh food, tobacco, mind-altering drugs, and alcohol may apply for probationership. When the Probationer has complied with the necessary requirements and completed the term of probation he may send request for individual instruction. Access to the Disciple grade is granted upon merit;[16] once admitted into discipleship subsequent Spiritual unfoldment of the advanced soul within the Order of the Rose Cross is conducted through the process of the nine Lesser Initiations.[17]
The school's teachings hold that man is a Spirit with all the powers of God, powers that are being slowly unfolded in a series of existences (rebirths) in a gradually-improving body, a process under the guidance of exalted Beings ordering our steps in a decreasing measure as man gradually acquires intellect and will. For this purpose we live many lives[18] of increasingly fine texture and moral character. Through the "Law of Cause and Consequence" we constantly set new causes into operation which will create new destiny to balance and improve the old destiny brought from the past. All causes set into action in one life cannot be ripened in one existence but "Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap".
The human being is seen as a threefold Spirit, possessing a mind, by means of which he governs the threefold Body. This threefold body he transmutes into a threefold Soul upon which he nourishes himself "from impotence into omnipotence".
The Ego (not as defined by Freud) is the threefold Spirit, the God Within, which uses these vehicles to gather experience in the school of life. The three aspects of the Spirit are (from highest to lowest aspect):
The Mental body functions like a mirror, reflecting the outer world and enabling the ego to transmit its commands as thought and word, and also to compel action.
The threefold body consists of;
The threefold soul consists of;
Bible teachings enable us to become aware that Jesus Christ must be born within. There is a distinction between the Christ which is born within us, our true Saviour, and the Cosmic Christ, the Christ without. The latter helps us in the task of having Christ born within; however, it is our task to form the Christ within, the "Soul Body" which is the vehicle humanity will need to live in the Sixth Epoch, the New Galilee.[19]
The "Astral body" is a vehicle evolved from a work of transmutation upon the etheric body (the two superior ethers), not to be confounded with the "desire body" since during astral projection the desire body molds itself readily into this prepared matrix and, when the individual returns to the physical body, the effort of will whereby he enters automatically dissolves the intimate connection between the desire body and the Astral or Soul body. The term "Astral body" was, it is said, employed by the mediaeval Alchemists because of the ability it conferred upon the one who has it to traverse the "starry" regions. The "Astral body" is regarded as the "Philosopher's Stone" or "Living Stone" of the alchemist, the Golden "Wedding Garment" that Christ speaks of in the Gospel of Matthew,[20] the "Soul Body" [''soma psuchicon''] that Paul mentions in the First Epistle to the Corinthians or the "Diamond Soul" spoken of in some of the ancient philosophies. It will eventually be evolved by humanity as a whole.
The physical body is a vehicle which the Spirit uses to gain experience, while death is a passing of the Spirit into a larger sphere, a birth which should be prepared for with the greatest care. The Ego must assimilate what it has experienced. The Spirit withdraws with the two higher vehicles, which are tied to the etheric and physical bodies by a slender cord. At death the desire and mental bodies leave the physical, taking with them but one permanent etheric atom, which during life is stationed in the solar plexus. The seed atom, of the dense body, like the negative film of the camera, has been impressed with all the experiences of the life just ended. At death the force of this atom leave the body and all these impressions are transferred from the vital body, the storehouse of these experiences, into the desire body, which then forms the basis of the man or woman's life in purgatory and the first heaven. This transfer is done by the Spirit during the first three and one-half days (84 hours) after the rupture of the connection between the seed atom and the heart, ordinarily known as death: death is not complete until this transfer has been accomplished. During this time sensation is still present, and the Spirit suffers through inharmonious surroundings, including postmortem examination and embalming.
Death should be prepared for with the greatest care, requiring a "post mortem interval", or preservation period, of the physical body for three and half days (84 hours), for life review purpose (in a pacific death; not in a sudden impact such as: shock, accident, catastrophe, heart attack or suicide), before cremation or any other way of body disposal.[21]
The evolution of man is divided into seven Periods:[22]
We are presently in the second half of the Earth Period: we have just passed the end of our involution and are beginning our evolution, or the spiritualization of matter and our return to God our Father.
The three Aspects of God are Will, Wisdom and Activity. The Father has completed His union with the first aspect, will. The Son, Christ, the highest Initiate of the Sun Period: has completed His union with the Second aspect of God, wisdom. Jehovah, the Highest Initiate of the Moon Period, has completed His union with the third aspect, activity.[23]
The sevenfold constitution of man is related to five of seven worlds, different planes of existence having varying density and vibration, states of spirit-matter not separated by space or distance but permeating one another, so that God and the other great beings pervade their own realms and those of greater density than their own, including our own. Some worlds are related to the planet and the higher ones to the whole Solar System.[24] These seven worlds are the planes of evolution of each Solar System and constitute the seventh and lower cosmic plane; the six superior cosmic planes possibly each have a different and larger structural and dynamic expression in the physical universe.
related to the etheric body; home of the Angels (seen as being one step beyond the human stage, as humans are a degree in advance of the animal evolution), astrologically associated to Aquarius; Akashic records in the reflecting ether (pictures at least several hundred years back or much more in some cases, almost as the pictures on a screen, scene shifts backward). The etheric region is subdivided in four regions according to the grades of density of the aether permeating our physical planet Earth; Reflecting Ether, Light Ether, Life Ether and Chemical Ether.
The worlds of matter (Physical world, Desire world and World of Thought/Region of Concrete Thought) are considered to be a reverse reflection of the worlds of Spirit (World of Thought/Region of Abstract Thought, World of Life Spirit and World of Divine Spirit).
Members of the Rosicrucian Fellowship cannot consume alcohol, meat or use tobacco.[28] They advocate a vegetarian diet for ethical and spiritual reasons.[29] [30] They also recommend that vegetables be eaten raw as cooking destroys valuable cell salts.[30] They have stated that the "vegetarian diet is most conducive to health and purity; that meat of all kinds, including fish and fowl, also alcoholic drinks, tobacco, and stimulants are injurious to health and spirituality".[30]
Lineage
School
Central concepts
