All right skeptics, here’s an exercise in faith... Try to imagine an old stone Gothic house some-where along the German-Austrian border. In this house live 12 wealthy and mysterious brothers, seven of whom hold down positions of distinction and responsibility in the community, while the other five have never been out of the house. Every night at midnight these twelve brothers gather under the leadership of a thirteenth member who has never been seen by human eyes and goes by the curious name of Christian Rose Cross, and what they do is to attract into their bodies all the hate, envy, greed, lust, and malice which has transpired in the previous 24 hours. So much evil would kill ordinary men like you and me, but as you can see, these are no ordinary men... these are the Elder Brothers of the Rose Cross. They have been alive for hundreds of years — at least since the 14th Century — and if it weren’t for them, light and truth would have disappeared from the earth long ago. You may be wondering what the source of their power is. In fact, their secret lies in a second spinal cord which they grew from the lower love-ray of Venus, and which has gained dominion over the first spinal cord — the one you and I have — which is ruled by the spirits of Lucifer. With this power they are able to live forever, creating a new body before the old one dies... Is this beginning to sound like Marvel Comics? O ye of little faith.

SIGH... I don't want to ridicule anything anybody believes in as long as it gives them strength and doesn’t hurt anybody else, but I guess I'm probably like you — I don't believe. However, the point here is that the followers of this weird sect believe, and that's mystery enough for me. They're here among us. their world center has been in Oceanside for the last 60 years, and curiosity absolutely demands that we go take a look at them.

Lee Waldman

The Rosicrucian Fellowship International Headquarters is located on top of Mount Ecdesia. just outside of downtown Oceanside. It’s a garden spot in an otherwise gritty town that makes its living hustling Marines. The panorama from the Headquarters includes the old glistening mission of San Luis Rey to the East, a Catholic priory on the next hill to the north (“Sabe, monjes catholicos?" asked the Mexican gardener who pointed it out to me), the Pacific Ocean to the west, and to the south, the local palace of the philistines, the Carlsbad Plaza Shopping Center.

I met a kindly old gentleman in the lobby of the Visitors Center at the Fellowship. He had just moved out from the East Coast with his wife (she had to drive the whole way because he doesn't trust his reflexes anymore) and they’re living upstairs at the Center now in a small pink hotel-like room that smells of Ivory soap. This gentleman had that passion for conversation that people develop some time after 60, and we dealt quite thoroughly with the subject of autopsies and how they might be avoided before he offered to show me around the Fellowship grounds.

“I first became interested in the Fellowship in 1938 — possibly early '39. I had a friend in San Diego who’d been taking astral trips with his sister since they were five. He was starting some kind of organization down there, and he said to come out and take a look at some land he was thinking about buying — he's now passed on to the inner levels where I hear he’s doing excellent things. These palms here were planted by Max Heindel's wife I understand,” he said, pointing to a large half-circle of fine old palms. “Isn’t that a labor of love. Anyway... first time I came to the Fellowship it was my birthday. I was walking up the steps to the Visitors Center when a young lady I'd never seen before stopped me and said. ‘Happy birthday.' I have no idea how she knew it was my birthday — and she asked me to take a walk with her. Well, I led her to a little summer house I discovered as we went, and she told me it was called the Leo House. My sign is Leo, you see. The summer house is no longer standing, but I think it's wonderful that I found it on my own, on my birthday. I'd like to take you there now."

We headed down a dark and narrow path overgrown with an arc of shrubbery. Part way through we came across one of those odd and unexplainable things — there was a green rubber ogre mask lying in the path. At first my imagination ran rampant, and I thought we'd found some kind of demon caught and melted by the sunrise — No! Destroyed by the Elder Brothers in last night's midnight session! I turned it over with the toe of my shoe to examine it more carefully, but it seemed to be just an ordinary rubber mask. My guide never even saw it, or pretended not to see it, and kept walking. Some kind of gag? Neighborhood kids? I have no idea.

We took an old side path. I'd swear nobody had trod there since he had in 1930-whatever-it-was. We had to pick our way through huge spiny cacti to the exact spot where the summer house had stood. “I understand Max Heindel used to come here and write,” he said thoughtfully. We stood on the edge of the ridge and stared down into the canyon, perplexed by the burnt beauty that must have once been California, while a cool breeze wafted up into our faces. “Something magic about a canyon,” he said.

He led me to the Temple, sitting magnificently like some Turkish mosque on a green ridge of the hilltop. He pointed out its stained glass windows, and explained that it was twelve-sided to represent the twelve sides of the Zodiac. It’s a pleasing mysterious building, somehow ages away from Oceanside and the violent commerce below.

He led me around the gardens to the tiny Chapel with its sad and unconvincing mission facade with little niches for imaginary bells, by the pastel-stucco resident quarters, by the old Rose Cross Lodge, battered and awkward-looking in its final years. It was clear that whatever the Rosicrucian Fellowship was, it was not wealthy, and had prospered little by the rash of mysticism that had been breaking out in Southern California since the turn of the century. The feeling of the place was that whatever had happened here happened years ago. My guide and I talked as we strolled. At moments it seemed like a normal conversation, and then he would slip in references to “the inner planes,” and “invisible helpers,” and such. He just assumed I knew the lingo. “How does this healing service work?" I asked on our way back to the Visitors Center. “Oh, you haven’t attended a healing service yet?" “No. Just curious, though. You know.” “Quarter to nine in the morning. See for yourself." He insisted on taking me up to his room to show me a photograph of the summer house before it was torn down perhaps to prove even to himself that it once existed. It had, although much smaller than I'd imagined. Just a gazebo, really.

The healing service was something of a disappointment... but wait a minute. I think I'm getting a little ahead of myself. Perhaps it’s time for a word about Max Heindel. First of all, his real name wasn’t Max Heindel, it was Carl Louis Von Grasshoff, a German obviously. He was born in 1865 and made his living as a ship engineer. In the early 1900s he visited California and somehow or other became interested in the Theosophical Society and later became a student of astrology. Before long he was traveling around the country delivering lectures on mysticism, when his heart condition would allow it. He returned to Europe in 1907, and it was then that he had his first visitation by the Elder Brothers of the Order of Rosicrucians. He claims that one of them came to him in his room and instructed him on certain occult points he’d been having difficulty with. Later he was invited into their strange household where he was taught the secrets of the Rosicrucian Order. He recorded this information in his book, The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, had it published, and from there developed what is now the Rosicrucian Fellowship.

Max Heindel moved to the 50 acres on Mount Ecclesia in 1911 and began to build the Headquarters. He added a little at a time over the years, applying the rather strange mixture of Spanish, Byzantine, and California Hotel architecture that is peculiar to the Fellowship. He decided on Oceanside because “Southern California offers exceptional opportunities for spiritual growth because of the ether atmosphere being denser than anywhere else in the world..." I tried to follow up on that, and as near as I could tell from the explanations given, it means he liked the weather.

All of this info on Max Heindel can be found in the Fellowship literature. What I was able to discover for myself, mostly from studying old photos of the man and his followers, and from browsing through his books, is that he had gifts of vision, imagination, ambition, and a Wizard of Oz ability to involve people around him in his personal fantasies. He churned out endless tons of literature on such topics as Astro-Diagnosis — A Garden of Healing, Mysteries of the Great Operas, and Freemasonry and Catholicism. These are thought of by his followers as being rather remarkable pieces of brilliance to be quoted and re-read continually. Max Heindel was quite certain that these books would appeal to man's logic rather than his emotions and superstitions, but if there’s any logic in them. I'm unable to find it. They all seem to begin with the strange and proceed to the bizarre with that relentlessly dull and inimitable style of a turn-of-the-century theosophist.

But I wanted to know if the man was original. Is it possible that these ideas came before Max Heindel? So I went to the Fellowship library, and there at the end of a dark corridor, in a room full of dusty old green and black bound books full of fantastic medieval astrological charts and demented paintings that tell stories of demonology, alchemy, and the godhead of the nether world, I found that Rosicrucianism bloomed right out of the Dark Ages.

I went right to the heart of the matter. What is this Ancient Order of Rosicrucians? I found out that nobody really knows, there are several theories, but it comes down to this: There either was or was not a medieval society of alchemists known as the Brotherhood of the Rose Cross, supposedly organized by a semi-mythical figure known as Christian Rose Cross. They are clearly derived from the ancient Masons — originally a secret society of stonemasons who trace their craft of masonry and geometry to Egypt, Babylonia, and beyond. Some consider the first Rosicrucians to be a group of scholars and holy men such as the Mahatmas of India. At any rate, they seem to have been a blend of Eastern mysticism, Christianity, and Egyptian Cabalism. They were highly exclusive — no one could join the Rosicrucians, you had to be chosen as a disciple — and were known as the most learned philosophers, writers, astronomer-astrologers, and free-thinkers of their time. Their body of thought, which Max Heindel seems to have either borrowed, or as he says, received instruction in, was nothing less modest than a description of the clockwork of the cosmos, the godhead, the natural history of the earth, the evolution of man, the life of Christ, the nature of spirits, astrology, and prophecies of the future... But stop grinding your teeth, hardhearted non-believers, because there’s more. It seems Rosicrucianism was something of a fad in the 17th Century. They were first heard of around 1614 and quickly splintered into several organizations, some seeking to perpetuate the doctrine, but others obviously run for financial gain by charlatans and opportunists. Their first literature seems to be traceable to a man named Johann Valentin Andrea, a Lutheran theologian, perhaps. There is a theory that this man Andrea was just a pen name for Sir Francis Bacon.

Let's see, I think I was going to tell you about the healing service... At 8:45 sharp I was met at the door of the healing chapel by an elderly lady who said nothing but waited for me to declare my purpose. “I understand there’s a healing service this morning.”

I guess that did it, because she smiled and said, “Come this way, please." She led me into a small, round room painted in pastel blues and pinks. On the ceilinp was a large stained-glass in the design of a gold star with a bouquet of roses in the center. (This might be a good time to mention that in Christian iconography roses often represent the blood of Christ.) “Sit anywhere you like,” she said, and left. There were already three or four other elderly ladies wailing for the service to begin. I could hear an organ playing somewhere. The chapel smelled of dampness, talc, and church women. On the altar was an ancient Bible opened to Saint John and surrounded by thick candles still wrapped in cellophane.

One of the ladies initiated a prayer, and the others followed aloud. Then the leader read a list of several hundred names of people who were ill. Most of them had Spanish surnames. It took several minutes to read the list, followed by a few minutes of silence and meditation. At some point I became aware that a light was shining through the stained glass on the ceiling and reflecting on the wall. I wondered suspiciously if the meeting had been timed for the exact moment the sun would strike the glass. I couldn't restrain my curiosity and looked up... There was a light bulb on the other side. So much for the mysteries of the rose glass. I was disappointed.

I thought maybe it was time to talk with the man who had the answers. He is known rather modestly as Mr. Parsons, and he is Secretary of the Board of the Rosicrucian Fellowship — a position he was elected to by the voting members. His office is in a large yellow room with only a desk and two chairs for furniture. On the wall is a picture of Max Heindel, and as Mr. Parsons was telling me some of his background — how he came from a family of pipe organ builders, and how he had investigated dozens of churches — I noticed that he had an incredible likeness to the man in the picture. He had the same broad face with the grayish hair swept back, the flat nose, the spectacles, the same glowing enthusiasm. He was the man in the picture! But he just laughed when I pointed out the similarity and said, “I just wish I resembled him in other ways.”

I asked him if the Fellowship was growing.

“All over the world.” (Later he showed me photos of black Rosicrucians in Ghana, their blond teacher looking like a ghost among mortals.) “Keep in mind that all things seem to go in cycles, but our cycle is on the upswing.”

“I haven’t been able to find any figures on the size of the Fellowship.”

“No. All numbers would be erroneous. You see, we’re not a church. Our philosophy is that all people are born into the niche they belong in, and that they should remain with their own churches. I, for example, am an Episcopalian. We recognize the light of all churches. Many people aren’t able to find satisfaction in their own churches, however. Too many questions are left unanswered. Our concepts of reincarnation and astrology satisfy these needs. We perform a real function to these people. We are a Christian organization, we believe in the King James Bible even with its errors, we are also spiritualists but we don’t hold seances or perform other psychic phenomena. We feel that is a negative side of spiritualism. You see, if you use spiritualism for your own inquisitiveness, you lose it.”

“I understand there are other Rosicrucian organizations.”

“There are at least seven Rosicrucian schools in the U.S. with which we have no association. I don’t know too much about them, but from what I’ve seen I'm led to believe that at least some of them aren’t Christian but perhaps trace their teachings from Egypt.”

“I’ve been reading about Christian Rose Cross and the Elder Brothers. Is this to be taken literally, or is it a myth, like, oh say, Adam and Eve?”

“No. It is to be taken literally. Christian Rose Cross came in 1313 A. D. and his mission was to form a group of Elder Brothers who would blend Christian religion with mystic masonry and spiritual alchemy. The Elder Brothers are with us today. Some of them are connected with positions in science and government. Booker T. Washington, for example, was one of the Elder Brothers come to help the black race as Christ came to the Jews. Mesmer too.”

“Mesmer?”

“You’ve heard of mesmerism? Many people think mesmerism is hypnotism, but this isn't so. In the 18th Century Mesmer taught of animal magnetism which is a form of healing.”

“Hmm. Would you explain the healing you do here?”

“Well we don’t claim to do any healing. ‘When the man is ready to be healed, he will be healed.’ This is why so many forms of healing are successful. All healing comes from God, and when we pray, we say, ‘Not my will, but Thine be done.’ Do you know about the Invisible Helpers?”

“No.”

“An invisible helper is a person during the day, but functions out of the body at night. They perform many duties on the inner plane — counseling, putting vital organs back in place, binding wounds. Many people who have been healed say they were aware of hands working inside them to heal. And many students of ours recall functioning as helpers on the inner plane.”

We seemed to be drifting slowly into the fantastic — the same problem I had in talking with all of the Rosicrucians. “Mr. Parsons, doesn’t it all come down to whether or not you believe? I know Max Heindel felt that Rosicrucianism appealed to logic, but it’s my understanding that logic begins with something you know to be true and proceeds to demonstrate the validity of something else. What do you begin with as true?”

“Max Heindel said to accept these truths as probable truths until you can prove them yourself.”

“We're talking about faith then.”

“Well, faith is a high form of understanding, but some of us want answers. The purpose of our teachings is to awaken faculties within you that allow you to prove it yourself.”

I glanced over at the picture of Max Heindel on the wall, and then back at Mr. Parsons. Between the two of them I was outnumbered. They could see through me and into my skepticism the same as I saw through their stained glass ceiling to the light bulb on the other side. But I had one more question. I asked Mr. Parsons if he’d heard of this theory that Rosicrucianism was started by Sir Francis Bacon and that he’d ghost-written the plays of Shakespeare to perpetuate Rosicrucian thought.

“I have no doubt that Bacon influenced Shakespeare,” he said. The jig was up. He'd told all he was going to tell to a non-believer.

“I was led into a printing room where I was loaded up with pamphlets — “The Aquarian Age.” “Rebirth and the Bible,”“Why I Am a Rosicrucian.” I kept trying to refuse them politely, but apparently Mr. Parsons thought I needed to go back and start over with the fundamentals. The room was filled with retirement-aged people working conscientiously. I tried to picture even one of them wearing the green rubber ogre mask I’d found on the path a couple days before, but couldn't. It looks like some things will remain mysteries.