Tradition
Rosicrucianism
A current of Western esoteric thought announced by anonymous early-seventeenth-century manifestos describing a secret brotherhood of physician-philosophers, and continued today by several public bodies that claim its lineage.
Rosicrucianism is less a single organisation than a current of Western esoteric thought rooted in three anonymous texts published in the German-speaking world between 1614 and 1616: the Fama Fraternitatis, the Confessio Fraternitatis, and The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz. The texts described a hidden brotherhood, founded centuries earlier by a German philosopher named Christian Rosenkreuz, dedicated to the spiritual and material reform of Europe.
No verifiable seventeenth-century brotherhood matching the manifestos has ever been documented. Several modern public organisations — among them AMORC, the Rosicrucian Fellowship, and SRIA — trace lineages from later eighteenth- and nineteenth-century revivals.
