The Society Of The Rose Croix.

THE SOCIETY OF THE ROSE CROIX .

BT THE EDITOR . T \ 7 " have translated this interesting chapter from chapter v ., page 247 , of " » the second part , a " Histoire des Transmutations , " from Louis Figuier ' s striking work , "L'Alchimie et les Alchimistes , " probably altogether unknown to most of my readers .

The Alchemical , medical , theosophical , cabalistical , ancl even thaumaturgical fraternity , which is concealed under the name of the Society of the Rose Croix , made so much noise in France , and above all in Germany , at the beginning of the seventeenth century , there was published in regard to it , from 1613 to 1630 , such a vast number of apologetical or critical writing , that we cannot forget this sect in the history of the principal notabilities of

Alchemy . But we must at once warn the readers who desire positive facts and precise information of the impossibilit y on our part entirel y to satisfy them ; at least , unless we wish to affirm or deny without proof or sufficient evidence , we are often forced to allow our recital to float on in a certain vagueness , which is that of the subject itself , and which results , besides , from the formal desire of the founder of the Rose Croix .

An article of those statutes declares in express terms " this societ y is to be kept secret for one hundred and twenty years . " The clause was so well observed that at the very time when they appeared with their most vivid " eclat " on the horizon of the "Theosophics , " the Rose Croix proclaimed themselves invisible , ancl they were so in such a measure , that Descartes , whose curiosity had been excited b y the " manifesto , " made the most diligent researches in without

Germany , being able to find a single person belonging to their society . In a word ; the mystery in which they had enveloped themselves , joined to the cloud with which God , they said , had carefully covered them to place them out of reach of their enemies , had succeeded so well in rendering them intangible , that more than one historian has believed himself justified in leaving their very existence in doubt . We shall not push scepticism far

so . The impossibility of knowing individually by their names and following separately m their acts the members of this undiscoverable societ y does not appear to ns a decisive argument against the witness and the evidence which certify their existence . Onl y on account of the shadows which surround it , we willingly demand permission of adding the epithet " fantastical" to those which we have previously given to it .

How , then , was formed the society of the Rose Croix ? Here , if we can believe a widely-spread legend , and this was its origin . Towards the end of the fourteenth century a German called Christian Rosenkreutz made a journey to the East to instruct himself in the science of the sages . Born in 1378 , of poor , though noble , parents , he had been placed , since the age of five years , in a monastery , where he had learned the Greek and Latin languagesArrived

. at his sixteenth year , he fell into the hands of certain magicians , in whose society he laboured for five years . It was not until after these , his first studies , and this commencement of initiation , that the young gentleman carried out his undertaking towards the countries of the East . Rosenkreutz was scarcely twenty years old when he arrived in Turkey . He sojourned there some time