The Rosicrucian Enlightenment

Yates is again tracing the magical roots of the late Renaissance, this time in the Jacobean Age. The Rosicrucian manifestos appear in 1614-15 and herald a new age whereby all thought will be known. John Dee, renaissance magus in Elizabeth's court, appears as one of the major influences on the manifestos, also incorporating Paracelsian alchemy, but seeking inner gold. "The Rosicrucian movement is aware that large new revelations of knowledge are at hand, that man is about to arrive at another stage of advance, far beyond that already achieved…And the Rosicrucians…are concerned to integrate these into a religious philosophy."

This movement is also strongly associated with the court of the Elector Palatine, Frederick V, who married the daughter of James I of England in 1613. This marriage represents an alliance of Protestant forces in Europe to keep the Catholic Hapsburgs and the post Council of Trent counterreformation in check, and perhaps to wrest the Holy Roman Empire and especially the German states, from Hapsburg control. Yates makes it clear that Frederick overplays his hand--especially after James I refuses to come to his aid, a move that disgusted English Protestants and helped foster the attitudes that led to the Glorious Revolution of 1848-- after the "defenestration of Prague" in wresting the throne of Bohemia from Ferdinand, who revoked the religious toleration promulgated by Rudolph II. Frederick's crushing defeat in 1620 seemed to promise the total annihilation of all Protestant forces in Europe until Gustavous Aldophus saved the day, but only after the Thirty Years War devastated much of Germany.

Rosicrucianism was pretty much a spent force by then, but the ideas gave rise to the Royal Society, to Masonic Lodges, and occupy an important background of thought and attitude in the coming Scientific Revolution. "The world, nearing its end, is to receive a new illumination in which the advances in knowledge made in the preceding age of the Renaissance will be immensely expanded. New discoveries are at hand, a new age is dawning. And this illumination shines inward as well as outward; it is an inward spiritual illumination revealing to man new possibilities in himself, teaching him to understand his own dignity and worth and the part his called upon to play in the divine scheme."

Author: Yates, Frances

Date Published: 1972

Length: 322

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