The Rosicrucians
Their Rites and Mysteries

Jennings' history joins the nineteenth-century debates that sought to determine the relationships between modern science, religion, and the supernatural.

Hargrave Jennings (Author)

9781108073219, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 19 May 2011

360 pages, 258 b/w illus.
21.6 x 14 x 2 cm, 0.46 kg

Hargrave Jennings' 1870 work joins the debates of the nineteenth century that sought to determine the relationships between modern science, religion, and the supernatural. A prolific writer and an occultist, Jennings (1817–1890) had previously published on the religions of India. He spent two decades researching and writing this work, which is the first history in English of the Rosicrucians. As he states, his 1858 Curious Things of the Outside World first asserted the ideas he elaborates in this text, and he is not a member of the Rosicrucian sect, simply a historian of it. This was his best-known book, in which the discussion extends to the Kabbalah, Gnosticism, the Druids, and ancient and medieval cultures; five editions were subsequently printed, and it was translated into German in 1912. It will interest scholars of the history of ideas, of the relationship of science and magic, and of the occult.

Preface
1. Critics of the Rosicrucians criticised
2. Singular adventure in Staffordshire
3. Insufficiency of worldly objects
4. The Hermetic philosophers
5. An historical adventure
6. The Hermetic brethren
7. Mythic history of the fleur-de-lis
8. Sacred fire
9. Fire-theosophy of the Persians
10. Ideas of the Rosicrucians as to the character of fire
11. Monuments raised to fire-worship in all countries
12. Druidical stones and their worship
13. Inquiry as to the possibility of miracle
14. Can evidence be depended upon? – Examination of Hume's reasoning
15. Footsteps of the Rosicrucians amidst architectural objects
16. The round towers of Ireland
17. Prismatic investiture of the microcosm
18. Cabalistic interpretations by the Gnostics
19. Mystic Christian figures and talismans
20. The 'Rosy Cross' in Indian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and mediaeval monuments
21. Myth of the scorpion, or the snake, in its many disguises
22. Ominous character of the colour white to English royalty
23. The beliefs of the Rosicrucians – meaning of lights and of commemorative flambeaux in all worship
24. The great pyramid
25. History of the tower or steeple
26. Presence of the Rosicrucians in heathen and Christian architecture
27. The Rosicrucians amidst ancient mysteries and in the orders of knighthood
28. Rosicrucianism in strange symbols
29. Connection between the Templars and gnosticism
30. Rosicrucian origin of the Order of the Garter
31. Rosicrucian supposed means of magic through signs, sigils, and figures
32. Astro-theosophical system of the Rosicrucians – the alchemic magisterium.

Subject Areas: Religion: general [HRA]