The Golden Builders

by Tobias Churton

  Hess was said to be superstitious, a man who followed his own lines, an eccentric, a phantast and, as a result of the multiplication of lies - a king of Utopia, an interpreter of dreams and a predictor. Whoever belonged to his closer friends and who he called his brother, was said to be a member of a gang of fanatics, of a group of conspirators and a gathering of obscurantists.

  In this period of time, when he was a most devoted priest to his own body, all kinds of people turned up - apparently times were ready for it-who introduced the end of the earth and the arrival of the Antichrist, things which are always pushed when the Church is slowing down. Since these people found a rich source in the bible to defend their case, Hess did not feel so much like rejecting them, moreover, while they did not touch the basic principles of faith. And little by little - for curiosity is part of the human kind - he also took to the teachings of holy numbers, in order to find out whether they could reveal anything about similarities between periods of time and between the old and the new Babylonia. In the beginning it was a matter of comparitive innocence (most of the true theologians joined in), but soon Hess came into trouble caused by lack of thought of some young adepts : for they not only expected Hess to give such doubtful drafts of repeating patterns in history, but they wanted him to come up and defend an idea which had never been fully his own. Thus, warned by his friends, he stood up for his point of view that he did not wish to recommend all his ideas to as many people as possible, but at least show the pure and very much to our faith related meaning supporting them, and that he furthermore wished to move away from the irresponsible explanations those supporters attached to his words. This however, was the very moment slander sprang to life. Growing with pride she exclaimed that now she had got hold of Hess on whom she had vainly tried her teeth when he had studied chemistry-and she called him a naometrist, a chiliast and a day-dreamer. It is amazing to see how her foul talk could smudge so pure a man. And since people are liberal in nothing else so much as in lies, she affected people who were actually not prejudiced at all, but who rather could be called a little bit unattentive towards the noble name he enjoyed in all his innocence.

  I am sorry to say that even I was influenced to prefer such a kind of paradox in Hess's mind and some imaginary golden age to the possibility of some playful calculations of the brain.

  If Andreae had toyed with Hess's apocalyptic ideas, it could not have been for very long. Andreae tended to lump together those who were obsessed with purely alchemical and magical solutions to the human condition along with those who racked their brains trying to extract complex numerological significance from apocalyptic writings. He called them the “little curiosity brothers” who obscure, rather than illuminate the spiritual life. He found their writings odd, strange, (insolite) often arrogant and fundamentally unhelpful. In his book Turris Babel (1619), Andreae devotes the fifth dialogue between Astrologus & Calculator and Conjectans (the interpreter of dreams) to an attack on the Naometria and kindred works :

  I would deny nothing to heaven, but I am enraged at you who read lies into the heavens; I respect sacred numbers, but I suspect that they have nothing to do with these tortured interpretations.

  In the Immortalitas he says that when Tobias Hess “was admonished in a friendly way, he moderated the defence of his opinion” and “finally withdrew himself from these exceedingly rash speculations.”

  Andreae was deeply suspicious of what he saw as misguided attempts to suugest that if one wanted to know God, then one should needs have access to occult, alchemical or specialist mystical knowledge. The exclusivity of much alchemical literature, seen as a single or reserved path to the truth appalled him. The mysterious Fraternity of value for Andreae was simply the Fraternity of Christ, best expressed in love for one's neighbour and an open hearted and open-minded response to new knowledge. So while in a sense the spiritually regenerated imitator of Christ has indeed become a member of a Brotherhood - which has (note the metaphor) become invisible to the (blind) eyes of the world and exists as it were, underground, Andreae cleverly (perhaps too-cleverly) attracts attention to it by playing dramatically with the mythology of secret gnostic adepts. Speaking of Brocardo, Studion and, by implication, astrologers like Paul Nagel and alchemists like Heinrich Khunrath, Andreae complained of their inability to talk to ordinary people in their own language, preferring an idiom Andreae calls : “Persian, Chaldean, Brahmanic, Druidic, of Fez or of Damcar.” The ambivalence of the Fama in attempting to get responsible science and scientists into positive and non-sectarian shape by using the imagery of mystical and magical secrecy, while at the same time clearly approving of men of learning such as Paracelsus, practically ensured that ‘in the wrong hands’ the Fama would attract attention very much at odds with what Andreae originally had in mind.

  Happily for us, Andreae's precise views on ‘natural magic’, or what we would call simply ‘science’ are laid out in a very amusing dialogue between a ‘Christianus’ and a ‘Curiosus’, in a playlet called Institutio Magica pro Curiosis (The institution of magic for the curious), which appeared in Andreae's brilliant polemical work Menippus in 1617.

  Taking place in the book-filled study of Christianus, the dialogue is a masterpiece of terse, intellectual comedy. Curiosus drops in for a chat, to find out how much magical power the famous Christianus really has. Curiosus is portrayed as a man who is desperate to find an occult explanation for everything; a man looking for the easy way out, and a fool obsessed with illusory powers. Here are some relevant extracts. The stage-directions are mine :

  CU: It is said, Christianus, that you have knowledge of all things, both serious and diverting…And - this is the most important point - that you have achieved all this within the space of two or three years.

  CH: And of course, as well as that, I'm able to produce gold and nourish the eternal flame!

  CU: All agree on one point, that you are a magician.

  CH: ‘Magician’ is an ambitious name, don't you think? Perhaps you mean necromancer?

  CU: I am not quite sure of the distinction but I mean the person who through intimacy with and servitude to the spirits achieves great and wonderful things.

  CH: I would rather prefer another definition of ‘necromancy’. But please tell me, do you really believe I am able to do the things you just mentioned? [Curiosus squints, nods his head & then wonders. Christianus decides to play with Curiosus on his own level. He looks significantly at the curtains. Curiosus gets the point, rises and closes them, crossing himself as he does so.] Well then, Curiosus, as it is now of prime importance to become a magician - or a wise man, we must incessantly invoke God's help.

  CU: [rubbing his hands] Excellent.

  CH: So [handing paper and pen to Curiosus], please write here, on the first line of your piece of paper : ‘Invocation of God’.

  CU: That's done.

  CH: Now please, examine yourself, whether you have been born with an earthy, a watery, an airy or a fiery character.

  CU: [looks up] This is all new to me.

  CH: You force me to consider opening up for you, a thing as yet known to nobody, not even to my brethren.

  CU: [earnestly] Please do.

  CH: But would I dare to entrust you with my secrets, lest they reach the common people?

  CU: Here, I give you my right hand in promise.

  CH: Please Curiosus [looks deeply into Curiosus' eyes], please consider and consider again where you lead me : for necromancy is a very serious business.

  CU: Please trust me, and if I fail you, so may the supreme God have me-

  CH: Please do not swear - I cannot stand it! I will believe you without any oaths. But tell me, are you really longing for this magic of mine?

  CU: Very much indeed, if only [he coughs] it can be exercised with a clear conscience.

  CH: Why, as surely as if you were studying the Bible itself. [Christianus gestures for Curiosus to close his eyes, very tightly. He tip-toes to the curtains and opens them. He touches Curiosus' shoulde
r, who opens his eyes to see his mentor pointing at the Bible, opened at Genesis 1.1., over which he immediately places a Mercator map of the known world and then the works of the Polymathia.]

  CU: [both astonished & disappointed] So…your magic is nothing more than this?

  CH: By the Holy Trinity…there is no other magic but the persistent study of the different sciences.

  CU: But if I follow your advice, I might as well throw my studies overboard and start work with a - with a craftsman or a sailor.

  CH: What you say there is not bad, but it's what you're thinking when you're saying it.

  CU: Would you make a farmer or a mining expert out of me?

  CH: No, Curiosus, all I want to do is to make a philosopher out of you so that you may become a citizen of the world - and not the alien wanderer.

  CU: - And that special Art whereby you can learn all sorts of things in no time at all?

  CH: Have I not told you that this Art is called hard work and perseverence? …The foremost stars of learning and the princes of the arts were always highly versed in many branches of science - this is testified by their books, densely filled with every kind of knowledge.

  CU: Perhaps they too were magicians!

  CH: O Curiosus - you always sing the same old song - everything that is inelegant, unlearned and vulgar is God's intention. But if it be spiritual, rare and admirable, then it is taken as the devil's work. But it was God who gave man a mind so aristocratic that when we refine our mind and abstain from worldly matters, then we can work wonders.

  CU : [a sudden afterthought] Do you have anything to say on medicine?

  CH : By all means. As there has taken place such a great accession of new land, that the world is now known to be twice as big as before -and as all this has been meticulously described, do you have any doubts that medicine too will make some progress? Is it such an absurd idea to try to reconcile, at least in part, Galenus and Paracelsus, as both ways round it appears that the one's remedies are not always happily applied and the other's not always unhappily - and as we cannot be sure whether Galenus, had he lived today, would not have borrowed a few things from chemistry? We know that this was done by, amongst others, Josephus Querceteanus, a thing greatly enhancing his reputation, but even more beneficial to his patients! In the meantime the other members of the medical profession are perpetually poised in battle array - as if they were to fight for their altars or their hearths - with such bitterness that many a patient has already succumbed to his pains amidst such sighing and suffering, as from neither side no helping hand was offered.

  I take the same line as to mathematicians. From them I only demand one thing, that they should show me the celestial phenomena regardless of whether the earth moves within them and the sun is fixed, or the sun moves and the earth is at rest, or the earth moves in one place and turns around its own axis - and so on and so on. All these things are beyond proof to us. For not because we think one way or another will the sun move rather than be fixed. Let it suffice for us to measure time exactly and to get a clue to the harmony God has equipped all things with.

  CU : Goodbye Christianus, carry on ridiculing man's folly!

  CH : That I will do. But for now, Curiosus, goodbye.

  This dialogue squarely places Johann Valentin Andreae in the centre of the European scientific avant garde of his day, albeit as a very well informed theologian and ideological activist. It also makes much more sense of the story of Christian Rosenkreuz as outlined in the Fama. We can now see that the journey of Father C.R.C. is a pure allegory for the transition of knowledge from the East to the West via Spain19. That transition of course included a great deal of knowledge of gnostic provenance. The underground (when not sky-high) nature of the Rose Cross Brotherhood, for 120 years, can also be seen as the burying of Renaissance and medieval Christianised science and cosmosophy during the ravages of the Reformation. Andreae is picking up the torch of the Renaissance and, as we have seen, calling out for a second spiritual and scientific reformation to encompass all men of goodwill in the true Christian spirit of love and brotherhood.

  In order to get an idea of how advanced Andreae was, one only has to recall the famous lines of Isaac Newton on the limitations of science. Newton - who took an interest in the Rosicrucian movement while being aware that its precise origin was an “imposture” - was not born until 23 years after the publication of Andreae's Menippus. (Newton was born in 1642). They make a stunning comparison with Andreae's words printed above, that mathematics can at best only offer a clue to the harmony of the cosmos:

  To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. ‘Tis much better to do a little with certainty, and leave the rest for others that come after you, than to explain all things. …I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

  Newton was the kind of man with whom Andreae hoped his Fama would put him in contact. Andreae - alas - was ahead of his time.

  Andreae and Radical Reform

  According to the archives of the senate of the university of Tübingen, there occurred in 1620 the trial of the Tübingen librarian Eberhard Wild, accused by the Theological Faculty of having sold books by the radical reformers Caspar Schwenckfeld, Valentin Weigel and Sebastian Franck, and of being friendly to the Austrian gentleman Michael Zeller, a ‘notorious’ Schwenckfeldian. Wild had edited the Imago20and Dextera porrecta21 of Andreae. The trial further revealed that the condemned books had been printed by Andreae's ‘secret friend’ Abraham Hölzl, even though no printer or author was mentioned on the title pages. Andreae, as a Lutheran deacon in the parish of Calw (near Stuttgart) was thus put in a delicate position. Hölzl had printed a catechism by Andreae and was known to be a visitor to Andreae's house. It was further suspected that Andreae and Hölzl exchanged heretical and occult books. After examination however, the theologians could establish nothing particularly reprehensible in Andreae's conduct. What was so terribly wrong with these radical reformers that Andreae should have had to defend himself from being associated with their works?

  Caspar Schwenckfeld (1489-1561)

  I cannot be one in faith with either the Pope or Luther, because they condemn me and my faith, that is, they hate my Christ in me. To have the real Christ according to the spirit is very important. Christ does not condemn Himself. He does not persecute Himself. (Caspar Schwenckfeld*)

  Schwenckfeld was a prince of Leignitz in Ossig, Lower Silesia. He was an aristocratic evangelist and a knight of the Teutonic Order, the exponent of an eirenic and evangelical spiritual Christianity with Gnostic resonances. Schwenckfeld was a spiritual hero. In 1518 Schwenckfeld converted to Lutheranism, but with reservations. He believed that the Spirit should be free of all institutions. He followed the “royal road”, tending neither to the right nor to the left - a road trodden by a few : “To my mind, I am one with all churches in that I pray for them, in that I despise none, because I know that Christ the Lord has his own everywhere, be they ever so few.”

  In 1524 Schwenckfeld wrote An Admonition to all the brethren in Silesia urging the adoption of the inward eucharist. Taking as his cue John VI.35 : I am the bread of life : he that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst, Schwenckfeld posited a mystical flesh upon which only those who perceived Christ spiritually might feed. Christ was “killed in the flesh and made alive in the Spirit” declared Schwenckfeld. He recommended his followers cease taking the external eucharist of bread and urged instead an inner, meditative feeding on Christ's true nature. He later regarded the correct institution of the Lord's Supper as impossible to reconstruct, its true nature lying in the “sealed book of the Apocalypse”. It may well be a Schwenckfeldian eucharist that Andreae has Christian Rosenkreuz celebrate in the first paragraph of his Chymical Wedd
ing :

  On an evening before Easter day, I sat at a table, and having (as my custom was) in my humble prayer sufficiently conversed with my Creator, and considered many great mysteries (whereof the Father of Lights his Majesty had shewn me not a few) and being now ready to prepare in my heart, together with my dear Paschal lamb, a small, unleavened, undefiled cake…

  The spiritual inner eucharist was part of a process of deification : a distinctively gnostic understanding of human potential. This process of deification - becoming divine (a process which was thought even to affect the nature of the flesh) - was predicated on a special understanding of Christ's and of human-nature :

  The bodily food is transferred into our nature, but the spiritual food changes us into itself, that is, the divine nature, so that we become partakers of it. (Schwenckfeld)

  Schwenckfeld developed his views through engaging his beliefs with those of the radical reformer Melchior Hoffmann, a man who had thoroughly imbued the ‘celestial flesh heresy’ of the Bogomils and Cathars. For Hoffmann, Jesus Christ is the “heavenly manna which shall give us eternal life” - that is, Christ's body, which in the words of the Eucharistic institution, “I give unto you”, must have been of a wholly spiritual nature. The second Adam (Christ) has a wholly heavenly origin, and is symbolised as heavenly manna, or heavenly dew, tangible only insofar as say water becomes ice through the blowing of the cold north wind. For Hoffmann, the ‘wind’ or ‘breath’ of the Holy Spirit made Christ's body tangible. (This conception has a highly alchemical ring to it). The teaching of the Catholic Church on the other hand was, and is, that Christ was emphatically the “Word made flesh”, in order thoroughly to redeem humanity in its full terrestrial identity; He was both God and man. Schwenckfeld held to this latter view, but with a difference. Schwenckfeld believed that human nature was, to an extent, already spiritualised. His flesh, when progressively spiritualised, is not as other flesh. (Attentive readers will note the parallel here with the “whole and unconsumed” corpse of Christian Rosenkreuz, discovered, according to the Confessio Fraternitatis, in 1604). Schwenckfeld describes human nature as “uncreaturely”, scarcely distinguishable from the divine nature in Christ. In this sense Schwenckfeld understood humankind to be the sons of God (LukeXX. 34-36).