The Rosicrucian Fellowship (TRF) ("An International Association of Christian Mystics") was founded in 1909 by Max Heindel with the aim of heralding the Aquarian Age and promulgating "the true Philosophy" of the Rosicrucians.Cf. «Rosicrucian Societies in America», in Rays from the Rose Cross, vol.88, nº4, July/August 1996, p.38 It claims to present Esoteric Christian mysteries or esoteric knowledge, alluded to in Matthew 13:11 and Luke 8:10, to establish a meeting ground for art, religion, and science and to prepare the individual through harmonious development of the mind and the heart for selfless service of humanity.Article by The Rosicrucian Fellowship: Rosicrucian Fundamentals in Questions and Answers
The Rosicrucian Fellowship conducts Spiritual Healing Services and offers correspondence courses in esoteric Christianity, philosophy, "spiritual astrology" and Bible interpretation.Article: How the Rosicrucians Heal the Sick Members of the Rosicrucian Fellowship are vegetarian and abstain from alcohol, recreational drugs and tobacco.Chryssides, George D. (2012). Historical Dictionary of New Religious Movements. Scarecrow Press. p. 296. Its headquarters are located on Mount Ecclesia in Oceanside, California, and its students are found throughout the world organized in centers and study groups.Heindel, Max, Our Work in the World (issued 1912), in Teachings of an Initiate (posthumous work), Its declared mission is to promulgate a scientific method of development suited particularly to the Western people whereby the "Soul body" may be wrought, so that humanity may hasten the Second Coming.Article: Eastern and Western Spiritual AlternativesErhi Uyota, Of serpents and doves, Lagos, Nigeria, November 15, 2008 Religious scholars classify the Rosicrucian Fellowship as a new religious movement.David G. Bromley. (2007). Teaching New Religious Movements. Oxford University Press. p. 346. Hammer, Olav; Rothstein, Mikael. (2012). The Cambridge Companion to New Religious Movements. Cambridge University Press. p. 241.
Origins and foundation
In 1908 Max Heindel started, in New York City, the work of rewriting a previous draft in German of teachings ostensibly written under the instruction of Elder Brothers in their temple near the border of Bohemia and Germany.Ger Westenberg. Max Heindel en The Rosicrucian Fellowship. (Translation by Elizabeth C. Ray). 2009 STICHTING ZEVEN, The Hague, The Netherlands. Heindel moved to Buffalo, New York, where he finished the typescript about September 1908. The work, called The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, was revised and printed in November 1909.
The first edition of 2500 copies, printed in Chicago, was exhausted in six months but it was learned that 2000 of these had been given by the publisher as payment of the debts of the publishing house to other publishers. Immediately, a large second edition was ordered: a first payment was made to the printer with the help of Augusta Foss,Ger Westenberg. Max Heindel en The Rosicrucian Fellowship. (Translation by Elizabeth C. Ray). 2009 STICHTING ZEVEN, The Hague, The Netherlands. who would become Max Heindel's wife. This time two booksellers bought one-third of the imprint before it was off the press.«Origin of The Rosicrucian Fellowship», in Echoes from Mount Ecclesia, No. 13, June 10, 1914
The Rosicrucian Fellowship's formal constitution occurred on August 8, 1909, in Seattle, Washington, at 3:00 p.m. The first Rosicrucian study center had been already previously formed in Columbus, Ohio, on November 14, 1908, where Heindel lectured and taught for a number of months. After each lecture he distributed free mimeographed copies to the audience; those twenty lectures were printed in 1909, along with the first edition of Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, under the title The Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures. The Columbus Center was followed by centers in North Yakima, Washington (November 1909), Portland, Oregon, and Los Angeles, California (February 27, 1910), the city where Heindel reencountered his theosophist friend Augusta Foss. In Los Angeles, Max Heindel gave conferences three times a week to audiences of nearly one thousand people from November 29, 1909, till March 17, 1910.
On October 28, 1911, the organisation's international headquarters, still used today, were opened at Mount Ecclesia in Oceanside, California. The ceremony of ground-breaking consisted in planting a large Cross with the initials C.R.C. (for Christian Rosenkreuz, the legendary head of the original order) painted in gilt letters on the three upper ends and with a climbing rose. The Rosicrucian Fellowship Temple, called The Ecclesia, was erected for the purpose of affording more powerful means for the healing of disease, and dedicated on December 25, 1920. Spiritual Healing meetings are held there each day.
According to Max Heindel, the invisible Order of the Rose Cross exists in the inner worlds, was founded in 1313 and is composed of twelve great adepts presented as belonging to human evolution but already advanced far beyond the cycle of rebirth.Article: The Brothers of the Rose Cross Their mission is explained as aiming to prepare the whole wide world for a new phase in religion that includes awareness of the inner worlds and the subtle bodies and safe guidance in the gradual awakening of man's latent spiritual faculties: "to prepare a new phase of the Christian religion to be used during the coming age now at hand."Article: The Rosicrucian Interpretation of Christianity
Admission into the Rosicrucian Fellowship is free of fees and is funded by donation. The Fellowship recognizes seven grades, but its study is primarily based upon a system of three grades: regular student, probationer and disciple.Beryl Hamilton, The Rosicrucian Way: the Voice of the Rose , in Rays from the Rose Cross Magazine, January/February, 1996 After a two-year term of being a Regular Student of the Fellowship, a person who abstains from all flesh food, tobacco, mind-altering drugs, and alcohol may apply for probationership. When the Probationer has complied with the necessary requirements and completed the term of probation he may send request for individual instruction. Access to the Disciple grade is granted upon merit;Heindel, Max, Christian Rosenkreuz and the Order of Rosicrucians (Initiation), 1909 once admitted into discipleship subsequent Spiritual unfoldment of the advanced soul within the Order of the Rose Cross is conducted through the process of the nine Lesser Initiations.Heindel, Max, Freemasonry and Catholicism (Chapter VIII: The Path of Initiation),
Teachings The school's teachings hold that a human being is a Spirit with all the powers of God, powers that are being slowly unfolded in a series of existences (rebirths) in a gradually-improving body, a process under the guidance of exalted Beings ordering one's steps in a decreasing measure as one gradually acquires intellect and will. For this purpose humans live many livesDiagram by Max Heindel: An Average Human Life Cycle of increasingly fine texture and moral character. Through the "Law of Cause and Consequence" one constantly set new causes into operation which will create new destiny to balance and improve the old destiny brought from the past. All causes set into action in one life cannot be ripened within one existence but "Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap".
Constitution of man
The human being is seen as a threefold Spirit, possessing a mind, by means of which he governs the threefold Body. This threefold body he transmutes into a threefold Soul upon which he nourishes himself "from impotence into omnipotence".
The Ego (not as defined by Freud) is the threefold Spirit, the God Within, which uses these vehicles to gather experience in the school of life. The three aspects of the Spirit are (from highest to lowest aspect): the Divine Spirit aspect; the Life Spirit aspect; the Human Spirit aspect.
The Mental body functions like a mirror, reflecting the outer world and enabling the ego to transmit its commands as thought and word, and also to compel action.
The threefold body consists of; a Dense body, which is the visible instrument he uses here in this world to fetch and carry (the body we ordinarily think of as the whole man). a Vital body, which is made of ether and pervades the visible body as ether permeates all other forms, except that human beings specialize a greater amount of the universal ether than other forms. The ethereal body is our instrument for specializing the vital energy of the sun and is seen by clairvoyant vision to extend about an inch and a half outside our visible body. a Desire body, which is our emotional nature and this finer vehicle pervades both the vital and dense bodies (it is seen by clairvoyant vision to extend about 16 inches outside our visible body, which is located in the center of this ovoid cloud as the yolk is in the center of an egg).
The threefold soul consists of; Conscious Soul: extracted as pabulum from the dense body (which was emanated from the Divine Spirit aspect). Intellectual Soul: extracted as pabulum from the vital body (which was emanated from the Life Spirit aspect). Emotional Soul: extracted as pabulum from the desire body (which was emanated from the Human Spirit aspect).
Bible teachings enable us to become aware that Jesus Christ must be born within. There is a distinction between the Christ which is born within us, our true Saviour, and the Cosmic Christ, the Christ without. The latter helps us in the task of having Christ born within; however, it is our task to form the Christ within, the "Soul Body" which is the vehicle humanity will need to live in the Sixth Epoch, the New Galilee.Heindel, Max, How Shall We Know Christ at His Coming?, May 1913 (stenographic report of a lecture, Los Angeles),
The "Astral body" is a vehicle evolved from a work of transmutation upon the etheric body (the two superior ethers), not to be confounded with the "desire body" since during astral projection the desire body molds itself readily into this prepared matrix and, when the individual returns to the physical body, the effort of will whereby he enters automatically dissolves the intimate connection between the desire body and the Astral or Soul body. The term "Astral body" was, it is said, employed by the mediaeval Alchemists because of the ability it conferred upon the one who has it to traverse the "starry" regions. The "Astral body" is regarded as the "Philosopher's Stone" or "Living Stone" of the alchemist, the Golden "Wedding Garment" that Christ speaks of in the Gospel of Matthew,Cf. the "Soul Body" [soma psuchicon] that Paul mentions in the First Epistle to the Corinthians or the "Diamond Soul" spoken of in some of the ancient philosophies. It will eventually be evolved by humanity as a whole.