A very old fashioned book

"The True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order" by Paul Foster Case claims to reveal the true message of the mysterious brotherhood known as Rosicrucians. The present version of the book was originally published in 1953. The book is still being promoted by a small group in California, Builders of the Adytum, founded by Case himself. It has no connections to the much larger and more well-known Rosicrucian group AMORC.

The question of which Rosicrucian group is the "true" one is moot. None of them are. The designation has been used by a variety of groups since the 17th century, when the original Rosicrucian manifestoes were first published. Case is simply one of many claimants to the mantle of the Rosy Cross.

Case's book contains little that is really sensational. It's a rehash of the same ideas that later, in a more commercial package, became known as New Age. Various Hindu groups operating in the Western nations also have a similar message. Frankly, we have heard all this before! God is an impersonal, pantheist force. Our true self is identical with God thus conceived. Death is simply a passing stage in an eternal round of existence. The universe is perfectly just, and there really is no evil, just good forces that are misunderstood by the unenlightened. God needs humans to become aware of himself. Nothing ever happens by chance, and meditation is the path to spiritual enlightenment. Everyone can become like Christ, who has simply a highly evolved being. And so on.

"The True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order" feels extremely old fashioned. Its bland message is presented as an esoteric form of Christianity, backed up by Bible quotations. It's wrapped in all kinds of numerological, quasi-Qabbalistic and Masonic mumbo jumbo. The true Rosicrucian order turns out to have innumerable grades and "paths", and the wisdom of each grade is symbolized by various Tarot cards. However, if read carefully, each grade has essentially the same message! The meditation techniques are never explained, but we learn that they are hard and that it takes a long time to get results. These days, everyone can read a book by some Hindu guru containing exactly the same message but without the mysterious paraphernalia, and more efficient meditation techniques can be learned at week end courses (although presumably not entirely for free). It's not clear why anyone would need Case's true order?

Here and there, some more remarkable ideas can be found as well. Thus, Case believes that the Rosicrucian founder, Christian Rosenkreuz, never really existed at all. Rather, the name is an allegory for Jesus Christ. Well, the name "Christian Rosenkreuz" (= a Christian of the Rose Cross) certainly sounds symbolical, but I suspect this might rub the other pretenders the wrong way! After all, Rosenkreuz is supposed to be a real historical character according to most Rosicrucians orders (the false ones?). Case also claims that certain forms of meditation change our physical bodies, and that some of them might make us near-immortal in our physical states, like the famed Taoist sages.

To an outsider like myself, many of these new agey ideas sound like a sick parody of reductionist materialism. The idea that everything is strictly predetermined, that death, disease and suffering are inevitable and actually serve a higher good, and so on, sound like a bleak religion indeed. Occasionally, Case actually gets obnoxious, as when saying that death is necessary to weed out the weaklings among men. And what are we to make of a book published in 1953, which claims that all evil is only apparent? As in Auschwitz and Gulag?

For those interested in how a secretive, occultist order puts forward its message, "The True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order" might be of some interest, although the reader will probably be bogged down pretty soon in all the numerology and the various grades and paths.

But others have said it much simpler and more to the point!