Rosy Cross

The Rosy Cross (also called Rose Cross and Rose Croix) is a symbol largely associated with the semi-mythical Christian Rosenkreuz, Qabbalist and alchemist and founder of the Rosicrucian Order.^[1][2] The Rose Cross is said to be a cross with a white rose at its centre^[3] and symbolizes the teachings of a tradition formed within the Christian tenets:

What think you, loving people, and how seem you affected, seeing that you now understand and know, that we acknowledge ourselves truly and sincerely to profess Christ, condemn the Pope, addict ourselves to the true Philosophy, lead a Christian life, and daily call, entreat and invite many more unto our Fraternity, unto whom the same Light of God likewise appeareth?^[4]

It has several meanings, depending on the source. Some groups, such as the Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis, from a non-sectarian or non-religious view, suggest that the rosy cross predates Christianity, where "the cross represents the human body and the rose represents the individual's unfolding consciousness.^[5]

The Rosicrucian Fellowship and kindred groups of rosicrucianists, promulgating an Esoteric Christian viewpoint, hold that the Rosicrucian Brotherhood was founded in the early 14th century, or between the 13th and 14th centuries,^[6] as an Invisible College of mystic sages, by a highly evolved entity having the symbolic name of Christian Rosenkreuz in order "to prepare a new phase of the Christian religion to be used during the coming age now at hand, for as the world and man evolve so also must religion change".^[7]

Paracelsus, who was called the "Luther of Medicine",^[8] describes these mystics sages as "persons who have been exalted (verzueckt) to God, and who have remained in that state of exaltation, and have not died (...) nobody knew what became of them, and yet they remained on the earth".^[9] Modern Rosicrucian groups and some researchers ^[10] suggest that there is much evidence that the Rosicrucian Order not only has made herself known in the early 17th century through the Rosicrucian Manifestos, but has been active since the beginning of the Renaissance period, not only as an hermetic Order, but also through forerunners – geniuses of the western world, sometimes also known to be Freemasons – in the literary,^[11][12] cultural, ethical, political, religious and scientific fields.

In the late 18th century, Karl von Eckartshausen, a German Christian mystic, describes the true Adepts of the Rose Cross in the following terms: "These sages, whose number is small, are children of light, and are opposed to darkness. They dislike mystification and secrecy; they are open and frank, have nothing to do with secret societies and with external ceremonies. They possess a spiritual temple, in which God is presiding".^[13] Later, in the early 20th century, Max Heindel, a Rosicrucian Initiate, emphasizes that the roots of the Brothers of the Rose Cross, immersed in the western mystery tradition, are almost impossible to be traced as "theirs is a work which aims to encourage the evolution of humanity, they have labored far back into antiquity--under one guise or another".^[14]

It has also been suggested that the rose represents silence while the cross signifies "salvation, to which the Society of the Rose-Cross devoted itself by teaching mankind the love of God and the beauty of brotherhood, with all that they implied." ^[15] Others saw the Rosy Cross as a symbol of the human process of reproduction elevated to the spiritual: "The fundamental symbols of the Rosicrucians were the rose and the cross; the rose female and the cross male, both universal phallic [...] As generation is the key to material existence, it is natural that the Rosicrucians should adopt as its characteristic symbols those exemplifying the reproductive processes. As regeneration is the key to spiritual existence, they therefore founded their symbolism upon the rose and the cross, which typify the redemption of man through the union of his lower temporal nature with his higher eternal nature." ^[16]

It is further a symbol of the Philosopher's Stone, the ultimate product of the alchemist