The Rosicrucian

The Rosicrucian Manifestos were two documents of unknown authorship written in the early 17th century in Europe. They purported to announce the existence of a hitherto unknown esoteric order, the Brotherhood of the Rose Cross, to the world. The Fama Fraternitatis and the Confessio Fraternitatis as they were known, caused an immense furore across Europe with their esoteric imagery and call for a universal spiritual and cultural reformation across the continent. To this day controversy continues whether they were a hoax, whether the Order of the Rose Cross really existed as described in the Manifestos, or whether the whole thing was a metaphor or ludibrium disguising a movement that really existed, but in a different form. Since their publication and translation into several different languages the idea of the Rosicrucian movement and the image of the Rose Cross itself have never gone away with many modern Rosicrucian organizations claiming spiritual filiation with the original Order, such as the Rosicrucian Fellowship and the Lectorium Rosicrucianum, or claiming an historical heritage, such as AMORC.