The best-known Rosicrucian Orders today are based in the USA; indeed, reading their literature, one could almost be forgiven for thinking that Rosicrucianism is an invention peculiar to the United States; it is so tied…
Tag: occulture
David V. Barrett on Tarot and Petrarch
Many of the original images bear a resemblance to characters and themes in the Triumphs of Petrarch, a series of poems written between 1340 and 1374; the Triumph of Love, the Triumph of Chastity, then…
David V. Barrett on the origins and secrecy of speculative Freemasonry
Whatever its provenance, there is little doubt that Freemasonry was ‘born’ in Scotland rather than England. There were strong romantic links between Scotland, France, Freemasonry, pseudo-chivalry and the Jacobites […]. The creation of a London-based…
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David V. Barrett on speculative Freemasonry & Rosicrucians
It cannot be seriously doubted that that there was some form of causative link, direct or indirect, between the Rosicrucians and the early speculative Freemasons. Freemasonry appeared shortly after the Rosicrucians, who grow out of…
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David V. Barrett on Assassins (& Knights Templar)
Hasan-i-Sabbah was a Persian Twelver who converted to Ismailism and became an enthusiastic missionary for its cause, and a supporter of Nizar. In his youth he studied alongside the future tentmaker, astronomer and poet Omar…
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David V. Barrett on Rosicrucians
Others whom the present-day Orders claim to have been early Rosicrucians, annd who were certainly associated with the ideas of the movement, include the mystic Thomas Vaughan (1621-65); the astrologer William Lilly (1602-81); Sir Kenelm…
David V. Barrett on a ludibrium
Was there actually a body called the Rosicrucians? It seems very unlikely. The life-story of their founder and leader, Christian Rosy Cross, was very obviously allegorical. It has even been suggested that the Fama could…
David V. Barrett on John Dee and the British Museum
His [John Dee’s] donation of 4,000 of his own books to a new national library was later one of the starting points of the British Museum. – A Brief History of Secret Societies: An Unbiased…
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Frank Kermode on the oracular in narratives
Yet all narratives are capable of darkness, the oracular is always there or thereabouts, accessible if only by a sensory failure; and much writing we think of as peculiarly modern is in part a rediscovery…