Descartes was not a Rosicrucian

Descartes’s solitude that winter remained quite complete, especially regarding those who were not capable of contributing to his conversations. However, he did not exclude from his room those who were knowledgeable and could talk about science or literary news.

It was in conversations with the latter that he heard about a fraternity of scholars, established in Germany for some time, under the name of the “Brothers of the Rose Cross.”

He was told surprising praises about them. He was given to understand that they were people who knew everything and promised men a new wisdom, that is to say, the true science that had not yet been discovered.

Descartes combined all the extraordinary things that individuals told him with the buzz that this new society was making throughout Germany, felt shaken.

He who professed to generally despise all scholars because he had never met any who were truly so, began to accuse himself of haste and recklessness in his judgments.

He felt a stir of emulation within himself that touched him all the more for these Rose Crosses, as the news had come to him at the time of his greatest embarrassment regarding the means he should take for the search for truth.

He did not believe he should remain indifferent to them, because (he said to his friend Mydorge) if they were impostors, it was not right to let them enjoy a reputation ill-gotten at the expense of the good faith of the people; and if they brought something new to the world that was worth knowing, it would have been dishonest of him to want to despise all the sciences, among which there might be one whose foundations he was ignorant of. He therefore set out to find one of these new scholars, in order to be able to know them by himself and to confer with them. On which subject I think it is good to say a word about their history, for the satisfaction of those who have not yet heard of it.

It is claimed that the first founder of this brotherhood was a German born in 1378 of very poor parents, but of gentlemanly extraction.

At 5 years old, he was placed in a monastery where he learned Greek and Latin.

He left the convent at 16 and joined some magicians to learn their art for 5 years.

He then began to travel, first to Turkey, then to Arabia.

There he learned of a small town named Damcar inhabited only by philosophers.

His history, or rather his novel was written by Bringern.

says that he was received there by the inhabitants of the place with great civility; that they rendered him all kinds of good offices; and that they gave him a welcome as favorable as that which the Brahmans had given to the famous Apollonius of Tyana.

He was greeted there at first by his name even if he had not yet told his name to anyone.

• This is a circumstance copied from Apollonius.

They revealed to him many things that had happened in his monastery during the 11 years he had spent there.

They had been waiting for him for a long time as the one who would author a general reformation in the universe.

They then instructed him on various things, and communicated most of their secrets to him.

He stayed 3 years among them. He left their country and went to Barbary in the city of Fez to confer with the wise men and cabalists, of which this city was very abundant.

From there, he went to Spain. He was chased there for trying to lay the foundations of his new reformation.

He withdraw to Germany where he lived as a hermit until the age of 106 when he died without illness in 1484.

His body which remained unknown in the cave where he had lived, was discovered 120 years later. This gave rise to the establishment of the brothers of the Rose Cross in 1604.

There were only 4 brothers at first. They then increased to 8.

One of the first things that can be attributed to them is undoubtedly the invention of the novel of their founder, because they believed that the most famous establishments of this world have attracted veneration and credit by fabulous origins.

In order not to leave their foundation without a miracle, they pretended that the cave where their founder rested was illuminated by a sun which was at the bottom of the cave; but which received its light from the sun of the world.

By this means, all the rarities enclosed in the cave were discovered.

They consisted of a copper plate placed on a round altar, in which one read “Acrc living I have reserved this summary of light for a tomb” and of four figures with their inscriptions, which were for the first, “never empty”; for the second, “the yoke of the law”; for the third, “the liberty of the gospel”; for the fourth, “the entire glory of God.” There were also burning lamps, bells, mirrors of several kinds, books of various kinds, and among others, the dictionary of the words of Paracelsus, and the small world of their founder.

The most remarkable of these rarities was an inscription under an old wall:

“After 120 years I will be discovered.”

This designated very clearly the year 1604, which is that of their establishment.

Today, we do not know why they called themselves the “Rose Cross.”

They aimed for a general reformation of the world only in the sciences, not in:

• religion
• policy of government or
• morals.

They obliged to stay celibate.

They embraced the study of physics and focused more on medicine and chemistry.

Michael Maier wrote a book of the constitutions of the brotherhood which gives them only 6 general statutes.

1. To practice medicine for free for everyone
2. To dress according to the fashion of the country where they live
3. To assemble once a year
4. To choose skilled successors and good people to replace those who will die
5. To take for the seal of the congregation, the two capital letters Rc.
6. To keep the society secret and hidden at least for 100 years

The fame has made glosses on these statutes, which have given matter to a multitude of treatises that have been made for and against them.

The people called them a new sect of Paracelsian Lutherans.

Descartes did not know that one of their statutes ordered them not to appear what they were to the world; to walk in public dressed like others; not to reveal themselves either in their speeches or in any of their ways of life.

Thus, one must not be astonished that all his curiosity, and all his pains were useless in the researches he made on this subject.

Descartes:

• could not find a single man who declared himself to be of this brotherhood, or who was even suspected of being so.
• put the society in the rank of chimeras.

But he was prevented from doing so by the éclat that the large number of apologetic writings made, which had been published until then, and which continued to multiply since then in favor of these Rose Crosses both in Latin and in German.

He did not believe he should rely on all these writings either because:

• he viewed these new scholars as impostors or
• he renounced books and wanted to judge based on his eyes and ears and experience.

This is why he said that he:

• knew nothing of the Rose Crosses.
• was as surprised as his friends in Paris when he returned to Paris in 1623 that his stay in Germany had earned him the reputation of being a member of the brotherhood of the Rose Cross.

Descartes spent the rest of the winter and Lent on the borders of Bavaria in his irresolutions, believing himself well delivered from the prejudices of his education and of books, and always entertaining himself with the design of building all anew.

But although this state of uncertainty with which his mind was agitated, made the difficulties of his design more sensible to him than if he had taken his resolution at first, he never let himself fall into discouragement.

He always sustained himself by the success with which he knew how to adjust the secrets of nature to the rules of mathematics as he made some new discovery in physics.

These occupations guaranteed him from the sorrows and other bad effects of idleness, and they led him until the time when the Duke of Bavaria advanced his troops towards Swabia.

He followed them, as we have reported elsewhere, and he left them to come to Ulm, where he spent the months of July and August with part of those of June and September. From there he went to Austria to see the court of the emperor, after which he went to rejoin the army of the Duke of Bavaria in Bohemia, and entered with it into the city of Prague, where he remained until the middle of December.

He then took his winter quarters with a part of the troops that the Duke of Bavaria left on the extremities of southern Bohemia when returning to Munich.

He returned to his ordinary meditations on nature, exercising himself in the preludes of his great designs, and taking advantage of the advantage he had of being able to live alone in the midst of **“those to whom he could not envy the freedom to drink and play, as long as they left him that of studying in retirement.”