The "Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosencreutz"

FESTINA LENTE - MAKE HASTE SLOWLY

When Christian Rosencreutz, the protagonist of the 17th century book "The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosencreutz" written by the Tübinger theologian Johann Valentin Andreae, starts his journey to the mystical castle of the King and the Queen, he comes to a crossroad and is forced to decide between 4 different ways leading to the castle.

Fortunately, a little tablet on a tree offers help regarding the right decision to make.

It says that there are 4 ways to come to the castle, but that only 3 of them are possible to follow. Every one of them will lead to the goal, but only when you do not go astray.
The first one is short, but full of dangers, because on it are many murderous cliffs.
The second one is longer, because it has side tracks, although they do not lead into offside.
It is said to be plane and easy, as long as, with the aid of your compass, you do not get lost on the right or the left.
The third one is said to be truly the Royal Way.
The fourth one, however, is not for the living, because its power is said to be overall consuming and not digestible for corruptible bodies.
The tablet also says that, once it is chosen, it is not permitted to leave the way.

We find that, eventually, Christian Rosencreutz chooses the second way.

Next to the quasi- anonymous "Fama Fraternitas" (1614) and the "Confessio Fraternitas" (1615) J. V. Andreae's book "Die chymische Hochzeit des Christian Rosencreutz" (1616) was one of the three german manifestos to inaugurate the rosicrucian movement on the european continent.
Whereas the first two texts are written in the form of a lecture and open letter from an allegedly secretive rosicrucian Order to the learned and pious public, with the "Fama" giving detailed account of the legend of the Order and its first members, as well as detailed description of the discovery of the tomb of its founding member Frater C.R., and the "Confessio" being a critical and satirical speech with a certain reformative intent (the protestant movement was still in its infant years), the "Chymische Hochzeit" somewhat falls out of place.
It is written in the style of a novel or fairy tale and is full of allegory and mystico-magical and alchemical symbolism. In seven chapters it deals with the magical journey of a certain Christian Rosencreutz, who, after experiencing an inner awakening, follows the invitation to a mystical "wedding" that takes place in the castle of the King.
Due to the impact of ancient and hermetic symbolism that is contained in every chapter of this novel, its inherent statements and implications are still alive and make it a timeless allegory on the initiatory path of the mystery traditions of the west. Because of the ageless validity of the symbolism involved, one is able to translate and adapt it to modern times.
Also owing to the qualities of these symbols is the fact that their meaning may be manifold and their different layers may not be grasped by one person alone.

Regarding the passage about the crossroad at the beginning of the second chapter, Christian Rosencreutz can simply be regarded as someone who has decided to follow a path of spiritual attainment, without yet to know exactly what path to choose.
So why does he choose the second path? Being very humble and of no noble descent he does not regard himself as royal, and therefore unprepared for the third path of Royal Art.
And although the tablet warns in unmistakable terms of the danger of the fourth path, he already decided not to take this route- seeing that poisonous clouds and tongues of fire emit from its direction.
Finally his reason tells him to take the second path, because having the constitution of an old man, he fears to loose control over the pitfalls of the shorter first path and to fall over its cliffs.

This little passage reminded me of some thoughts i had regarding the nature of the path of an hermetic initiate and why only few people are attracted to follow the serious practical and theoretical study that is involved there.
By flipping through various esoteric newspapers on the market iam always astounded by the vastness of offerings that is made to the esoterically inclined. Salvation is advertised by many groups, gurus and healers, nearly for nothing but one mouse-click or some cash transfer. Buy a guided meditation CD for 100 bucks and delete your karma! Visit a high priced retreat and attain illumination in one weekend! Transform your personality by letting a self-acclaimed spirit healer lay his hands on you - in just one session!
These and similar claims flood the mainstream esoteric landscape and many people i know who regard themselves as "highly spiritual", always leave me with the feeling that most of them do not really search for spiritual transformation, but for entertainment only, entertainment with the flair of the supernatural and occult. Also, in times like ours, many people are simply angst driven, and seeing that exoteric religion, common science and school education offer no means to relieve the feeling of uncertainty, the feeling that something is missing, the feeling of incompleteness and being the playball of forces which you can neither perceive nor control, they turn to dubious gurus and practises who nicely and with brilliant marketing skills know how to fill the gap that is yawning inside their hearts.
This is sad, but iam scared that no one is to blame. The esoteric scene is a market of belief systems, and like any market it needs and lives by its customers.

Now big cities like Berlin are a murky pool of esotericism and strange cults. There are hundreds of people out there who hop through different workshops every weekend. One week they pay for a buddhistic retreat, the other weekend they go to a "spiritual healer" who leads them through their "past lives", the next week they go to a dynamic meditation workshop or join the latest lecture about maya culture or conspiracy theories.
But for what? Only to empower their feeling of, alas, being superior over others - not knowing that hypocrisy and spiritual pride are the greatest hindrances on the path and lead to nothing except self-delusion.
But that is just the "mainstream" side of it.

When people are especially interested in magic and occultism, most of them dismiss the Golden Dawn as "outmoded". There are mainly three different lines of argumentation. The one fraction says that its system is outmoded because Crowley initiated a new aeon with his Liber Al (which is, in my estimation, only an adress from Crowleys own higher to his lower self, so purely individual), and not knowing that Crowley would not have been what he was unless having been trained by the Golden Dawn, they turn to the O.T.O.
The other fraction says that the Golden Dawn is merely a "right hand path", that is a path that mainly concerns itself with the exploration of divine hierarchies in order to adopt divinity and transcend the ego as opposed to the "left hand path" on which the aspirant seeks to work on and master the qlippothic or unbalanced forces of the universe in order to become truly godlike in his own right. This is underlined by confuse speculations about the loss of ego and literal death of the initiate when crossing the Abyss that divides the three uppermost and supernal Sephiroth from the seven lower.
So fraction two turns to saturnian and satanic brotherhoods, in order to bath their egos in the glory of a dark and broody magician, not knowing that the Golden Dawn regards itself as neither right nor left, but rather embraces both paths in a coherent workable system.
The third fraction says that the system is outmoded because its an illusion to think that enlightenment, that which is ineffable, can be attained by successive initiations and working on grade curricula and following a certain dogma, and that all is about simply attaining heightened states of awareness, and that this can be achieved by any means, and so they turn to Chaos Magick, neglecting the fact that when trying to use and train consciousness one must first employ certain tools with which to find out how this consciousness works.

But although every person out there in this world who tries to transform his personality and is interested in spiritual development has all my respect, no matter what or what not system he/she may follow, by the danger of simply sounding polemic and causing many magicians to turn their head angrily at me, i think that many of these debates about right or left are just an excuse for laziness and in very special cases it may also be the unconscious fear of truly attaining something, the fear of change.
Ora, lege, lege, lege, relege, labora et invenies ("Pray, read, read, read, re-read, work and you will find") was the advice of alchemists given to Neophytes in ancient times and i think that still holds true today.
Magic is a precise science that has to be conquered.
Magical attainment is something that comes gradually and usually the dawning of light on consciousness is hard-won.
I do not want to say that other systems apart from that which the Golden Dawn has to offer lead to failure.
There are many ways leading to Rome and there certainly is not only one way that is superior over others.
And i also do not think that working on magical or esoteric systems is the only possibility for human beings to gain insights into the mysteries of Nature and thereby reach some sort of spiritual perfection. Who were i to know?

But when choosing a system, i would consider that different systems have different advantages in regard to the socialisation of the individual and i guess few of them are out there who want to dedicate their whole life-time to one system only, or at least till they gain some strikingly results in terms of personal development.
And being a spiritual searcher for all my life i know that there came a time in my life where i realized that without the help of some school or guidance i could not progress.
Nature unaided fails is another axiom of ancient alchemy.

In my estimation, the hermetic path should be regarded as a life-long endeavour, seeing that the transformation of ones self comes in very little steps only, hardly recognizable and subtle at the beginning, and it certainly never ends.
Therefore, every true and earnest searcher for the light of occult knowledge should consider his choice and reflect about his motives when joining this or that organisation or school of knowledge.

Just like Christian Rosencreutz, who at the beginning of the second chapter of this timeless novel, stands at the crossroad, thinking about what path to choose. And he has a hard time in making his decision!
But finally, the light of reason dawns upon him, just like the Neophyte at the first initiation ceremony of the Golden Dawn is guided by the Kerux.
He chooses the second path, which has side tracks although they do not lead into offside.
This is symbolized by the ascent of the initiate on the kabbalistic Tree of Life.

The hermetic student cannot achieve the beauty of Tiphareth, unless he has undergone the elemental initiations of Malkuth (Earth), Yesod (Air), Hod (Water) and Netzach (Fire), which are seen as the "lower" constitutions of the kabbalistic Ruach, the ego-personality. The Microcosm must be studied before the Macrocosm can be comprehended.
The opposing counterparts of ones self must have reached a certain amount of balancing and the auric field and astral body of the candidate must have reached a certain rate of vibration in order to attract a ray of the Divine, because "it is in vain that the wine of Gods is poured into broken vessels".

To transcend the ego may be possible when being raised and trained by buddhistic monks in an asian monastery, secluded from the profane world, but not when living in an ego-dominated world like ours. Unlike with buddhistic practises, the magician in the western and hermetic tradition does not seek to transcend the ego with experience of Nothingness, but rather tries to transform the ego and subtle bodies to a shining tower of light that will hopefully transmit the knowledge of the One Truth, which is and stays ineffable and at the same time remains to be very individual.
The goal of both the eastern and western systems may be the same, but the approach fundamentally differs.

The tablet on the tree says that the second path is plane and easy, as long as you stick to your compass, and turn neither right nor left.
The compass is the Law of Equilibrium, which is stressed throughout the grades of the Golden Dawn.
It is the straight and narrow path between the opposites that create the dynamic interaction out of which our world is born. The Law of Equilibrium is expressed in many rituals in symbolic form, in many different and brilliant ways, but surely most simple and salient in the placement of the newly admitted Neophyte between the black and the white pillar of Hermes and Salomo, when receiving his final purification and consecration by Water and by Fire.

This being said, i close by again citing three ancient proverbs that strike me deeply with their simplicity and meaningfulness. The first two supposedly were written over the portals in the forecourt of the ancient initiation temple of Apollo in Delphi. The third one was displayed at the last page of the original "Chymische Hochzeit".


Gnothis Seauton - Know Thyself.

Meden Agan - Nothing in Excess.

Festina Lente - Make haste slowly.


Summa Scientia Nihil Scire,
Frater L.