Relevant Chapters

• Name of the Rose

• Renaissance & Reformation

• Rosae Crucis

• The Illuminati

• The Asiatic Brethren

• Haskalah

• Occult Revival

The Rose of Sharon

It may have been through their intermarriage with the descendants of Alfonso VI of Leon and Castile that the Plantagenets adopted the Sufi symbol of the rose, which according to the Zohar, written in Toledo during the time of Alfonso X of Castile, known as El Astrologo, symbolizes the “Jewish congregation.” The name “rose of Sharon” first appears in English in 1611. In the Song of Solomon, according to King James Version of the Bible, the beloved—speaking for the mystical Shekhinah—says “I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.” The Zohar opens by stating that the rose and the alternate symbol of the lily symbolize Knesset Yisrael, “the Collective soul roots of Israel… Just as a rose, which is found amidst the thorns, has within it the colors red and white, also Knesset Yisrael has within her both judgment and loving kindness.” The lily came to represent the royal house of France, while the rose became the heraldic symbol of the two competing rival branches of the royal House of Plantagenet involved in the War of the Roses: red rose of the House of Lancaster and the white rose of the House of York.[1] The rose was later adopted by Martin Luther, and then finally the Rosicrucians.

In ancient Greece, the rose was closely associated with the goddess Aphrodite.[2] Following the Christianization of the Roman Empire, the rose became identified with the Virgin Mary.[3] The rose symbol eventually led to the creation of the rosary and other devotional prayers in Christianity.[4] According to Dominican tradition, in 1208, St. Dominic received a vision of the Virgin Mary who taught him to pray the Rosary, telling him to use this weapon to defeat the Cathars. This Marian apparition received the title of Our Lady of the Rosary. Rosa Mystica or “Mystical Rose” is a poetic title of the Virgin Mary. One form of Marian devotion is invoking Mary’s prayers by calling upon her using a litany of diverse titles, and the title “Mystical Rose” is found in the Litany of Loreto. Bernard of Clairvaux said, “Eve was a thorn, wounding, bringing death to all; in Mary we see a rose, soothing everybody's hurts, giving the destiny of salvation back to all.”

In Dante’s Paradisio, his guide Beatrice invites him to contemplate among the heavenly inhabitants, the beauty of Mary, the Mother of God: “Why are you so enamored of my face that you do not turn your gaze to the beautiful garden which blossoms under the radiance of Christ?  There is the rose, in which the divine word became flesh; here are the lilies whose perfume guides you in the right ways.”

No symbol inspired alchemists of the Renaissance more than the rose. Numerous alchemical manuscripts are called Rosarium, Latin for “Rose Garden,” all dealing with the alchemical relationship between the King and Queen. Gilded or golden roses convey the idea of personal perfection, completion of the Great Work, or the invocation of divine powers. The golden rose represents the successful marriage of opposites, the Sacred Marriage, to produce the Golden Child. The white rose is associated with the White Queen, while the red rose is associated with the Red King. The union of the white and red roses symbolizes the birth of the Philosopher’s Child.[5]

The rose has held esoteric significance as a symbol of the yoni.[6] In Freemasonry, the Latin phrase sub rosa, which means “under the rose,” is used to denote secrecy or confidentiality. The Cross of St. George, now the flag of England, is a red cross on a white background, which had been the emblem of the Templars. The “red cross” of the Templars is also a “rose cross.” The rose, according to occult tradition, is of Sufi origin, derived from the Qadiriyya Sufi order, founded by Abdul Qadir al Gilani (1077 – 1166), who claimed to have come into contact with al Khidr, the Muslim equivalent of Saint George.

Lilith 

The Templars were bound by the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, dedicating themselves to the Mere de Dieu, or the Mother of God, esoterically the Shekhinah. According to J. B. Trend, in The Legacy of Islam, the goddess worship of the Sufis was reinterpreted within Christianity as the veneration of the Virgin Mary.[7] Esoterically, the Shekinah of the Kabbalah, like the Virgin Mary, is a stand-in for the ancient pagan goddess, usually referred to as Sophia, Greek for “wisdom.” The Virgin Mary has been crowned Queen of Heaven, described as the Woman of the Apocalypse with pagan symbolism in the Book of Revelation 12:1, “clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.”

The twelfth and thirteenth centuries saw an extraordinary growth of the cult of the Virgin in western Europe, in part inspired by the writings of theologians such as Bernard of Clairvaux, who was one of the most influential churchmen of his time.[8] In the “Sermon on the Sunday in the Octave of the Assumption” he described Mary’s participation in redemption. Bernard’s Praises on the Virgin Mother was a small but complete treatise on Mariology. In a cryptic allusion to Aphrodite, or Venus, Bernard wrote of Mary under the title “Our Lady, Star of the Sea” a translation of the Latin title Stella Maris: “When the storms of temptation burst upon you, when you see yourself driven upon the rocks of tribulation, look at the star, call upon Mary.”[9] The movement found its grandest expression in the French cathedrals, often dedicated to “Our Lady,” such as Notre-Dame de Paris and Notre-Dame de Bayeux among others.[10]

Bernard de Clairvaux identified Mary as the bride of the Song of Solomon.[11] According to the Song of Solomon, the bride, who is identified by Kabbalists as the Shekinah, pleads on her own behalf that, “I am black, but I am beautiful, O ye daughters of Jerusalem.”[12] Egyptian depictions of Isis frequently displayed her holding her child Horus on her lap. Similarly, as reported by Ean Begg, author of The Cult of the Black Virgin, many statues of Mary holding her child—found all over Europe, though mainly clustered in the south of France—were black. Bernard de Clairvaux was also known to have visited several shrines of the Black Madonna, for example at Chatillon and Affligem.

To the Kabbalists, the black virgin is the female demon Lilith, the mother of Cain through Adam. Originally, Lilith was a female demon who can be traced to Babylonian demonology in the female spirit Lilitu.[13] To the Sabians, Lilith-Zahriel is the daughter of the King and Queen of the Underworld whom they give in marriage to the King of Light.[14] A few references to Lilith are found in the Talmud where she is described as a demoness with long black hair and a demoness with identical characteristics is found in apocryphal The Testament of Solomon, which is estimated to have been written between the first and fourth century AD. According to The Alphabet of Ben Sira, a Kabbalistic document of Persian and Arabic origin from the eleventh century, the first man and woman were created at the same time and from the same substance, as the original androgynous being, joined together at the rear. A conflict arose as to the best position for intercourse and Lilith resented Adam’s assumption of superiority and her subjection to a passive role.[15] Sometime in the early Middle Ages, Lilith became identified with Asmodeus, King of Demons, as his queen.[16]

In the Zohar, Lilith is known by as black harlot. She is one of the four mothers of the demons, and the permanent partner of Samael, and queen of the realm of the forces of evil, where she is the counterpart of the Shekinah. Just as the Shekinah is the mother of the House of Israel, so Lilith is the mother of the unholy stock who constitute the “mixed multitude” and rules over all that is impure.[17] According to the Zohar, after the destruction of the Temple and the Exile of the Shekinah, the Bride of God, Lilith offered herself to God in place of his bride. So corrupted was the state of existence that God accepted her offer.[18]

Miracle of the Roses

After her death in 1231, Saint Elizabeth of Hungary  was commonly associated with the Third Order of Saint Francis, the primarily lay branch of the Franciscan Order, which has helped propagate her cult. Elizabeth is best known for what is known as the “miracle of the roses.”

At the age of four, Elizabeth was sent by her mother to the Wartburg Castle to be raised to become consort of Landgrave Ludwig IV of Thuringia (1200 – 1227). Wartburg Castle had been one of the most important princes’ courts in the Holy Roman Empire when it belonged to Hermann I, Landgrave of Thuringia (d. 1217), the second son of Louis II, Landgrave of Thuringia (the Iron), and Judith of Hohenstaufen, the sister of Frederick Barbarossa. Hermann I supported poets like Walther von der Vogelweide and Wolfram von Eschenbach who wrote part of his Parzival there in 1203, and thus figures in Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser.[19] After the death of his first wife in 1195, Hermann I married Sophia, daughter of Otto of Wittelsbach (1117 – 11 July 1183), called the Redhead. By her he had four sons, three of whom was Ludwig IV, Henry Raspe and Conrad I, grand master of the Teutonic Knights.[20]

According to the fable, while Elizabeth was taking bread to the poor in secret, she met her husband Ludwig on a hunting party. In order to quell suspicions that she was stealing treasure from the castle, he asked her to reveal what was hidden under her cloak, which at that moment fell open to reveal a vision of white and red roses, which proved to Ludwig that God was protecting her work.[21] From her support of the friars sent to Thuringia, she was made known to the founder, St Francis of Assisi, who sent her a personal message of blessing shortly before his death in 1226. Upon her canonization she was declared the patron saint of the Third Order of St Francis.

Elizabeth’s sister Violant married James I of Aragon, the son of Peter II of Aragon, who died in the Battle of Muret defending the Cathars, and was the founder of the Order of Saint George of Alfama. Their descendants formed the network of families who intermarried the Lusignans who led the orders that inherited the Templars properties, including the Order of Montesa. Another story of the “miracle of the roses” is told of Elizabeth of Hungary’s great-niece, Saint Elizabeth of Portugal, the wife of Denis I of Portugal, who founded the Order of Christ.

Peter II’s step-brother, Ferdinand II of Leon, the son of Alfonso VII and Berenguela, the daughter of the Templar Ramon Berenguer III, Count of Barcelona, was the founder of the Order of Santiago. Ferdinand II’s son, Alfonso IX of León, married Berengaria of Castile, the daughter of Alfonso VIII of Castile. Their son, Ferdinand III of Castile, through his marriage to Elisabeth of Hohenstaufen, granddaughter of Frederick Barbarossa, was the father of Alfonso X, known as El Astrologo, who married James I’s daughter Violant.

James I’s son, Peter III of Aragon, married Constance II of Sicily, granddaughter of Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, who was declared by Joachim of Fiore to be the fulfillment of the prophecy of Merlin. Three of their children were involved in the survival of the Templars. Frederick III of Sicily, who hired the services of the famous Templar, Roger de Flor, married Eleanor of Anjou, the daughter of Charles II of Naples, who was supposed to have found the remains of Mary Magdalene at Saint-Maximin. Eleanor’s brother Charles Martel, Prince of Salermo, was the father of Charles I of Hungary, who founded the Order of Saint George of Hungary. Eleanor’s sister Blanche of Anjou married Frederick’s brother James II of Aragon, who absorbed the Templar properties into his own Order of Montesa, which merged with the Order of Saint George of Alfama, originally founded by Peter II of Aragon.

James II and Frederick’s sister Elizabeth married Denis I of Portugal, who founded the Order of Christ. Elizabeth of Aragon, more commonly known as Saint Elizabeth of Portugal, was a tertiary of the Franciscan Order and is venerated as a saint of the Catholic Church. Another story of the “miracle of the roses” is told of Elizabeth, who was the great-niece of Elizabeth of Hungary, who likewise was charitable toward the poor, against the wishes of her husband. Caught one day by Denis, while carrying bread in her apron, the food was turned into roses.

Through his marriage to Joan, Countess of Ponthieu, Ferdinand III was also the father of Eleanor of Castile, wife of Edward I of England (1239 – 1307). Edward’s father Henry III of England (1207 – 1272) was the son of the King John of England (1166 – 1216), the son of the son of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II of England. Edward’s mother was Eleanor of Provence, the second daughter of Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Provence (1198 – 1245), who was raised by the Templars with his cousin James I of Aragon. Ramon’s father was Alfonso II, Count of Provence (1180 – 1209), the second son of Alfonso II of Aragon and Sancha of Castile, the only surviving child of Alfonso VII of Castile by his second wife, Richeza of Poland. Alfonso II’s sister Constance was married to Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor. Alfonso II’s other sister Eleanor married the Cathar supporter Count Raymond VI of Toulouse, after he had been married to Joan Plantagenet, the sister of Richard Lionheart, had first been married to William II of Sicily.

Edward I and Eleanor’s son Edward II of England (1284 – 1327) married Isabella of France, the youngest surviving child and only surviving daughter of Philip IV le Bel of France. Philip IV’s father was Louis IX, brother of Charles of Anjou. His mother was Isabella, sister of Alfonso X of Castile’s wife Violant. Philip IV’s wife was Joan I of Navarre. Joan’s parents were Henry III of Champagne (c. 1244 – 1274) and Blanche of Artois, daughter of the then-reigning King Louis IX of France’s brother Count Robert I of Artois. Joan’s brother, Theobald of Navarre, married Violant, the daughter of Alfonso X.[22] Violant’s sister Beatrice was the mother of Denis I of Portugal, founder of the Order of Christ. Violant’s brother was Sancho IV of Castile, whose daughter Isabella married James II of Aragon, founder of the Order of Montesa.

Henry III of Champagne was the son of Theobald IV of Champagne, the son of Blanche of Navarre, Countess of Champagne, and called the Troubadour. According to local legends, souvenirs that Theobald IV of Champagne brought back to Europe in 1240 from the Barons’ Crusade included the rose called “Provins” from Damascus, transporting it “in his helmet,” along with a piece of the true cross, and perhaps the Chardonnay grape which in modern times is an important component of champagne. Theobald IV is said to have started growing the rose in the region of Provins where it spread widely. The rose gardens of Provins soon became famous and the use of the rose, also called the “Apothecary’s Rose” (Latin name rosa gallica ‘officinalis’), was extremely frequent in medicine, in religious and secular ceremonies.

Edmund Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster (1245 – 1296), the brother of Edward I of England, married Blanche d’Artois, widow of Henri III count of Champagne, took the rose as his emblem, becoming known as the red rose of Lancaster.[23] In 1271, Edmund accompanied his elder brother Edward I on the Ninth Crusade to Palestine. Edmund’s grandson, Henry of Grosmont, 1st Duke of Lancaster (c. 1310 – 1361), the kingdom’s wealthiest and most powerful peer, would become a founder of the Order of the Garter. The son of Edmund’s nephew Edward II and Isabella, Edward III of England (1312 – 1377), founded the Order of the Garter in 1348, as “a society, fellowship and college of knights,” inspired by King Arthur and Knights of the Round Table, which contributed to the survival of Templar traditions, although it was his grandfather Philip IV le Bel who had ordered the arrest of the Templars in 1312.

Luther Rose

Saint Elizabeth’s descendant, Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel (1504 – 1567), was a friend of Martin Luther, who used the rose as his symbol. At first, Martin Luther’s challenge to Roman Catholicism was welcomed by Jews who had been victimized by the Inquisition, and who hoped that breaking the power of the Church would lead to greater tolerance of other forms of worship. There were even some, like Abraham Farissol, who regarded Luther as a Crypto-Jew, a reformer bent on upholding religious truth and justice, and whose iconoclastic reforms were directed toward a return to Judaism.[24] Some scholars, particularly of the Sephardi diaspora, such as Joseph ha-Kohen (1496 – c. 1575), were strongly pro-Reformation.[25]

Luther used as his personal seal the symbol of a rose and a cross. The Luther seal or Luther rose is a widely recognized symbol for Lutheranism. It was the seal that was designed for Martin Luther at the behest of John Frederick of Saxony (1503 – 1554) in 1530, while Luther was staying at the Coburg Fortress during the Diet of Augsburg. John Frederick was the son of John, Elector of Saxony (1468 – 1532), known for organizing the Lutheran Church in the Electorate of Saxony with the help of Martin Luther. John assisted his kinsman, Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, in several campaigns. Having assisted in suppressing an uprising during the German Peasant’s War in 1525, John helped Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse, found the League of Gotha, formed in 1526 for the protection of the Reformers.

Wartburg Castle, the site of Elizabeth’s “miracle of the roses” had been owned by the father of Elizabeth’s husband Ludwig IV, Hermann I, Landgrave of Thuringia, who welcomed Walther von der Vogelweide and other Minnesingers, including Walther von der Vogelweide and Wolfram von Eschenbach who wrote part of his Parzival there in 1203, and thus figures in Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser.[26] Ludwig IV’s brother Conrad was Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights.[27]

Elizabeth of Hungary’s second child Sophie of Thuringia married Henry II, Duke of Brabant (1207 – 1248), and became the ancestress of the Landgraves of Hesse, since in the War of the Thuringian Succession she won Hesse for her son Heinrich I, Landgrave of Hesse (1244 – 1308). Elizabeth of Hungary’s body was laid in a golden shrine in the St. Elizabeth’s Church, Marburg, Germany, built by the Order of the Teutonic Knights in her honor, which became one of the main German centers of pilgrimage of the fourteenth and early fifteenth century. Until the sixteenth century, the Landgraves of Hesse were buried in the church. However, Philip of Hesse raided the church in Marburg and demanded that the Teutonic Order hand over her remains, in order to deter pilgrims from the Protestant city of Marburg. Philip took away the crowned agate chalice in which her head rested, but returned it after he was imprisoned by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor.

In 1521, Frederick the Wise (1463 – 1525), brother of John, Elector of Saxony, protected Martin Luther following his excommunication by Pope Leo X by hiding him at Wartburg Castle after the Diet of Worms called by Emperor Charles V. It was during there that Luther translated the New Testament from ancient Greek into German in just ten weeks.[28] It was at the Diet of Worms that Luther first met with Philip of Hesse. Philip embraced Protestantism in 1524 after a personal meeting with the theologian Philipp Melanchthon (1497 – 1560). When Lazarus Spengler sent Luther a drawing of this seal, Luther wrote him a letter to describe how he viewed the symbol an expression of his theology and faith. Luther informed Melanchthon, that the John Frederick had personally visited him in the Coburg fortress and presented him with a signet ring, presumably displaying the seal.[29]

Philipp Melanchthon was Luther’s collaborator and primary founder of Lutheranism after Luther himself, and was the author of the Augsburg Confession, the primary doctrinal statement of the Protestant movement, and the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, a defense of the Confession Melanchthon wrote in 1520, “I would rather die than be separated from Luther,” whom he afterward compared to Elijah, and called “the man full of the Holy Ghost.” Melanchthon exclaimed at Luther’s death, “Dead is the horseman and chariot of Israel who ruled the church in this last age of the world!”[30]

Luther himself, related Louis I. Newman, was interested for a time in the Kabbalah, perhaps under the influence of the works of Johann Reuchlin (1455 – 1522), through Melanchthon who was his great-uncle. Melanchthon was like a son to Reuchlin until the Reformation estranged them. During his second visit to Rome in 1490, Reuchlin became acquainted with Pico di Mirandola at Florence, and, learning from him about the Kabbalah, he became interested in Hebrew.[31] Following Pico, Reuchlin seemed to find in the Kabbalah a profound theosophy which might be of the greatest service for the defense of Christianity and the reconciliation of science with the mysteries of faith, a common notion at that time. Reuchlin’s Kabbalistic ideas were expounded in the De Verbo Mirifico, and finally in the De Arte Cabbalistica, in which he shared with Pope Leo X how he had met with Pico and his circle of philosophers who were reviving the ancient wisdom.

Rosy Cross

Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse was the grandfather of Maurice of Hesse-Kassel (1572 – 1632), who played a leading role in the Rosicrucian movement. The Rosicrucian manifestos appeared around the same time that Maurice’s friend, the German prince Frederick V of the Palatinate (1574 – 1610), began to be seen as the ideal incumbent to take the place of leader of the Protestant resistance against the Catholic Hapsburgs, to be achieved through his dynastic union with Elizabeth Stuart, the daughter of King James I of England. The perceived importance of their marriage was enshrined in occult symbolism in a Rosicrucian tract called The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, published in 1616. The word “chymical” is an old form of “chemical’ and refers to alchemy, for which the “Sacred Marriage” was the goal.

Frederick V’s father was Frederick IV of the Palatinate of the Rhine (1574 – 1610), the grandson of Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse. Frederick’s mother was Louise Juliana of Orange-Nassau, the daughter of William I of Orange (1533 – 1584), known as “the Silent,” and Charlotte de Bourbon-Montpensier. The Principality of Orange was a feudal state in Provence, in Southern France, founded around the year 800, when it was awarded to Guillaume of Gellone—purported son of Rabbi Makhir—for his services in the wars against the Moors and in the reconquest of southern France and the Spanish March.

William the Silent’s grandfather, Henry III, Landgrave of Upper Hesse, was the brother of Louis II, Landgrave of Lower Hesse, the grandfather of Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse. In turn, Philip of Hesse’s grandson was Maurice of Hesse-Kassel (1572 – 1632), a close friend of Frederick V. Maurice’s court in Kassel was a flourishing center for alchemy and Paracelsian medicine, including occultists such as German Jew and alchemist Michael Maier (1568 – 1622), physician and counsellor to Rudolf II Habsburg, who in 1611 left Prague for Hesse-Kassel. In Septimana Philosophica, alchemist Michael Maier wrote:

The rose is the first and most perfect of flowers. The Gardens of Philosophy are planted with many roses, both red and white, which colors are in correspondence with gold and silver. The centre of the rose is green and is emblematical of the Green Lion or First Matter. Just as the natural rose turns to the sun and is refreshed by rain, so is the Philosophical Matter prepared in blood, grown in light, and in and by these made perfect.[32]

Maurice, also called “the Learned,” was a great patron of alchemists and medical men.[33]  An Anglophile, Maurice actively pursued connections with England and maintained a company of English “comedians.”[34] Maurice’s father had been William IV of Hesse-Kassel (1532 – 1592), called “William the Wise,” a notable patron of the arts and sciences and a pioneer in astronomical research, who founded the first European observatory in 1564 in his castle at Kassel, and was on friendly terms with the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. Both manifestos were published by an official printer to Maurice. Maier composed a wedding song for the marriage of Frederick V and Elizabeth, and in 1619 he became Maurice’s physician.

Asiatic Brethren 

According to Rabbi Antelman in To Eliminate the Opiate, the true founders of the Bavarian Illuminati were the Rothschilds. Amschel Mayer Bauer, the founder of the Rothschild dynasty, largely achieved his wealth through his association with the ruling family of Hesse-Kassel, direct descendants of Maurice, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel. Maurice’s direct descendant, Frederick II of Hesse-Kassel (1720 – 1785), was the wealthiest man in Europe, and married Princess Mary of Great Britain, the daughter of King George II of England, who himself was a great-grandson of Frederick V and Elizabeth Stuart. Frederick II’s son, Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel (1744 – 1836), one of three leading figures in eighteenth century secret societies who were descended from the Alchemical Wedding: including Frederick II the Great 1712 – 1786), King of Prussia, and Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orleans (1747 – 1793), who changed his name to Philippe Égalité during the French Revolution.

Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel joined the Illuminati in 1783.[35] Prince Charles and the House of Hesse represent the strongest connection yet between the Rothschild Dynasty and the Illuminati. Mayer Amschel Rothschild was a general agent and banker, and became an agent of Charles’ brother William IX, Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, who on their father’s death in 1785, had inherited the largest private fortune in Europe, derived mainly from the hire of troops to the British government in their fight against the Revolution in the United States.[36]

In 1785, Prince Charles would become the Grand Master of the Asiatic Brethren, a Rosicrucian secret society, whose founders included Jacob Frank’s cousin and successor, Moses Dobrushka (a.k.a. Franz Thomas von Schönfeld, or Junius Frey).[37] A librarian to the Hesse-Kassel family, Marquis de Luchet, exposed the Asiatic Brethren as an Illuminati front in his 1789 work, Essai sur la secte des Illumines. According to de Luchet, their secret goal was “This Order is for the whole of Europe destined to the great goal of union [of Freemasonry].”[38] Prince Charles, who was preoccupied with a search for the “hidden superiors” and the “true secret,” was also an ardent devotee of alchemy, possessing his own laboratory, and was being a student of Comte St. Germain, another member of the Asiatic Brethren, whom he had hosted at his home.[39]

In 1817, Prince Charles granted a charter to the Loge zur aufgehenden Morgenroth (“Lodge of St. John of the Rising Dawn”), known as the Frankfurt Judenlodge.[40]  The lodge, which was founded by the Rothschild banking house’s head clerk, Illuminati member Siegmund Geisenheimer (1775 – 1828), became the headquarters of leaders of the early Jewish Reform movement, known as the Haskalah.[41] Solomon Mayer Rothschild (1774 – 1855) joined the lodge for a short time before he moved to Vienna.[42] Since 1812, the Judenlodge had appointed as its head “Christian Kabbalist” Franz Joseph Molitor, who was a member of the Asiatic Brethren.

Instead he claimed that, unlike the various pretenders of his time, he possessed the “cipher sign of the ‘Initiate’,” and declared that the “Rosicrucian Brotherhood” still existed, only not under any name recognizable by the uninitiated.[43] What he was referring to was the survival of the Asiatic Brethren, many of whom had become initiates of a Jewish Masonic lodge in Germany called L’Aurore Naissante (“Loge zur aufgehenden Morgenrothe”), or “the Nascent Dawn,” known as the Judenlodge, founded in Frankfurt-on-Main in 1807.[44]

Order of the Swastika

The Asiatic Brethren were the inspiration for a number of orders, who represented the core of Western occultism, beginning with the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, which contributed to the emergence of the Golden Dawn and Aleister Crowley’s Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO). These organizations were the product of the Occult Revival of the nineteenth century, whose notion of an “Oriental Kabbalah” eventually gave rise to the New Age, and ultimately spawned the rise of the theories of the Nazis. According to G. van Rijnberk, the Asiatic Brethren adopted a Buddhist doctrine—with Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel being the first to introduce the idea of reincarnation— and used the swastika as their symbol.[45] The swastika was not new to Judaism, as it was found alongside the Star of David in the ancient synagogue of Capernaum in Israel, one of the oldest synagogues in the world, as well as on various Jewish tombs of the third century AD in the south of Italy, and also printed in the Sepher Reziel a thirteenth century book of practical Kabbalah.

According to Godwin, the Occult Revival begins with the formation of a very small group within the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (SRIA), who were recognizable by their use of the swastika, which they identified with the red cross of the Rosicrucians. Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803 – 1873), the pre-eminent personality of the Occult Revival. Bulwer-Lytton was the “Great Patron” of the Masonic research group known as the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (SRIA), which was restricted to high-ranking Freemasons. Bulwer-Lytton however, publicly disavowed any association with the SRIA. Instead he claimed that, unlike the various pretenders of his time, he possessed the “cipher sign of the ‘Initiate’,” and declared that the “Rosicrucian Brotherhood” still existed, only not under any name recognizable by the uninitiated.[46] What he was referring to was the survival of the Judenlodge.[47]

[1] See Black Terror White Soldiers and Terrorism and the Illuminati.

[2] Monica S. Cyrino. Aphrodite. Gods and Heroes of the Ancient World (New York City, New York and London, England: Routledge 2010), pp. 63, 96.

[3] Nora Clark. Aphrodite and Venus in Myth and Mimesis (Cambridge, England: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015), pp. 209–210.

[4] Nora Clark. Aphrodite and Venus in Myth and Mimesis (Cambridge, England: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015), pp. 209–210.

[5] Dennis William Hauck. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Alchemy (Penguin, 2008), p. 66.

[6] Manly Palmer Hall. The Secret Teachings of All Ages: The Fraternity of The Rose Cross (1928).

[7] cited in Shah. The Sufis, p. 358.

[8] Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters. “The Cult of the Virgin Mary in the Middle Ages.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, October 2001).

[9] Hom. II super "Missus est," 17; Migne, P. L., CLXXXIII, 70-b, c, d, 71-a. cited in Doctor Mellifluus 31.

[10] Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters. “The Cult of the Virgin Mary in the Middle Ages.” (www.metmuseum.org).

[11] Malcom Godwin. Holy Grail: Its Origins, Secrets & Meaning Revealed (Bloomsbury, 1994), p. 208.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Scholem. Kabbalah, p. 356

[14] Begg. The Cult of the Black Virgin, p.39

[15] Ibid., p. 37

[16] Howard Schwartz. Lilith’s Cave: Jewish tales of the supernatural (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), p. 7.

[17] Scholem. Kabbalah, p. 358

[18] Zohar, III: 69a. Cited in Schwartz. Lilith’s Cave, p. 19 n. 12.

[19] Dina Stahn. Thüringen (Karl Baedeker Verlag, 2009).

[20] Jonathan R. Lyon. Princely Brothers and Sisters: The Sibling Bond in German Politics, 1100-1250 (Cornell Press, 2012), p. 243.

[21] Charles Forbes René de Montalembert. Hagiography of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary (1839).

[22] Richard P. Kinkade. “Alfonso X, Cantiga 235, and the Events of 1269-1278.” Speculum. Vol. 67 (1992), p. 294.

[23] RHS A-Z encyclopedia of garden plants (United Kingdom: Dorling Kindersley, 2008), p. 1136; “La Rose de Proving.” Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20110705234127/http://www.provins.net/index.php/artisanat-et-produits-du-terroir/la-rose-de-provins.html

[24] “Luther, Martin.” Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd Edition, Volume 13, (Detroit, New York and others, 2007).

[25] “Martin Luther (1483-1546).” Jewish Response to Anti-Semitism. Retrieved from http://www.jewishresponse.com/blog/client/page.cfm/Martin-Luther

[26] Dina Stahn. Thüringen (Karl Baedeker Verlag, 2009).

[27] Jonathan R. Lyon. Princely Brothers and Sisters: The Sibling Bond in German Politics, 1100-1250 (Cornell Press, 2012), p. 243.

[28] “History of the Wartburg.” Wartburg-Stiftung. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20160109103123/http://www.wartburg-eisenach.de/english/geschich/framedef.htm

[29] Martin Luther. Luther’s Works. 55 Volumes (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1957-1986).

[30] Otto Kirn. “Melanchthon, Philipp.” Jackson, Samuel Macauley. New Schaff–Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge. 7 (3rd ed.) (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1910). pp. 282.

[31] Gotthard Deutsch & Frederick T. Haneman. “Reuchlin, Johann von.” Jewish Encyclopedia, (1906).

[32] As cited in Hauck. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Alchemy, p. 66.

[33] Yates. The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, p. 40.

[34] Ron Heisler. “The Forgotten English Roots of Rosicrucianism.” The Hermetic Journal (1992).

[35] le Forestier. Les Illuminés de Bavière et la franc-maçonnerie allemande, pp. 343–88.

[36] Joseph Jacobs, Isidore Singer, Frederick T. Haneman, Jacques Kahn, Goodman Lipkind, J. de Haas & I. L. Bril. “Rothschild.” Jewish Encyclopedia.

[37]  Katz. Jews and Freemasonry in Europe 1723-1939, chapter III.

[38] Marquis de Luchet. Essai sur la secte des Illumines (Paris, 1789)

[39] Christopher McIntosh. Rose Cross and the Age of Reason, The: Eighteenth-Century Rosicrucianism in Central Europe and its Relationship to the Enlightenment (SUNY Press, 2012), p. 170.

[40] “History of Freemasonry in Germany.” The American Freemason’s New Monthly Magazine, Volume 8 (J.F. Brennan, 1856), p. 129; Zur aufgehenden Morgenröthe. Masonic Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://freimaurer-wiki.de/index.php/Zur_aufgehenden_Morgenr%C3%B6the

[41] Antelman. To Elimijnate the Opiate, vol. 1.

[42] Ibid.

[43] Joscelyn Godwin. The Theosophical Enlightenment, (State University of New York Press, 1994), pp. 122-3

[44] Wynn Westcott. “Data of the History of the Rosicrucians.” S.R.I.A. (1916); cited in A. Butler. Victorian Occultism and the Making of Modern Magic: Invoking Tradition (Springer, Jan. 5, 2011), p. 79.

[45] G. van Rijnberk. Épisodes de la vie ésotérique, 1780-1824 : Extraits de la correspondance inédite de J. B. Willermoz, du prince Charles de Hesse-Cassel et de quelques-uns de leurs contemporains (Lyon: Derain, 1948); Novak. Jacob Frank, p. 61.

[46] Joscelyn Godwin. The Theosophical Enlightenment, (State University of New York Press, 1994), pp. 122-3

[47] Wynn Westcott. “Data of the History of the Rosicrucians.” S.R.I.A. (1916); cited in A. Butler. Victorian Occultism and the Making of Modern Magic: Invoking Tradition (Springer, Jan. 5, 2011), p. 79.