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Updated: May 31, 2025
Both external and internal relations between alchemy and freemasonry are worthy of notice. The connection is partly through rosicrucianism. We cannot, of course, go into a thorough discussion of this unusually complex subject. We shall mention only what is necessary to our purpose.
There Rosicrucianism reappeared, there Anton Mesmer recovered the initial process of transcendental practice, there the Marquis de Puységur discovered clairvoyance, there Martines de Pasqually instructed his disciples in the mysteries of ceremonial magic; there the illustrious Saint-Martin, le philosophe inconnu, developed a special system of spiritual reconstruction; there alchemy flourished; there spiritual and political princes betook themselves to extravagant researches after an elixir of life; there also, as a consequence, rose up a line of magnificent impostors who posed as initiates of the occult sciences, as possessors of the grand secret and the grand mastery; there, finally, under the influences of transcendental philosophy, emblematic Freemasonry took root and grew and flourished, developing ten thousand splendours of symbolic grades, of romantic legends, of sonorous names and titles.
In masonry psychological elements have played a part which if improperly managed might degenerate, as indeed they did when gold- and rose-crossism was grafted on masonry. It appears to me too superficial to explain the movement merely from the external connection of rosicrucianism and the masonic system.
It might be Rosicrucianism and Symbolism which had just come in, and Sar Péladan does anybody to-day read the Sar's long tedious books, bought by us with such zeal and promptly left to grow dusty on our shelves? and Huysmans and their fellow teachers of Magic and members of the Rose-Croix were being interpreted in paint and in black-and-white, and if the interpretations did not interpret to so prosaic a mind as mine, it mattered the less because they were often excuse for a fine design.
The speculators who fished in the muddy waters of late rosicrucianism put many desirable things as bait on the hook; as power over the world of spirits, penetration into the most recondite parts of nature’s teachings, honor, riches, health, longevity. In one was aroused the hope of one of these aims, in another of another.
The age of hobgoblins, haunted houses, and supernatural influences has passed away with the marvels of alchemy and the weird myths of Rosicrucianism. Because many deaths have occurred at that place, and the residents were consequently plunged in gloom, you must not rashly impute eldritch influences to the atmosphere surrounding it.
Rosicrucianism turned into freemasonry for practical reasons. As the most outstanding imposters represented themselves as rosicrucians this name was not conserved. The wrong was prevented, in that the true rosicrucians withdrew as such and assumed a different dress. Generally we imagine a different origin of freemasonry.
What critic was there to tell Joan of Arc that visions and voices were pathological? That was the regulation form of inspiration in her day. Comparative mythology like a comparison of mysticism, alchemy, rosicrucianism and masonry shows that the human mind left to itself will formulate similar ideas. These ideas, however, are modified by the advance of learning as time goes on.
I will give consideration to the chemical viewpoint of alchemy and also the hermetic philosophy and its hieroglyphic educational methods. Connections will be developed with religious and ethical topics, and we shall have to take into account the historical and psychological relations of hermetic thought with rosicrucianism in its various forms, and freemasonry.
It amounts to the same thing for us, whether there were “so-called” or “real” rosicrucians; the substance of their teaching lives and this substance, which is evident in literature, was what I referred to when I said that rosicrucianism is identical with higher alchemy or the hermetic or the royal art.
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