Gustav Meyrink and the Rosicrucians, by Theodor Harmsen

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Gustav Meyrink and the Rosicrucians, by Theodor Harmsen

Postby admin » Wed Jan 17, 2018 2:36 pm

Part 1 of 2

Gustav Meyrink and the Rosicrucians: Rosicrucian imagery in Der weiße Dominikaner and Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster
by Theodor Harmsen
December 17, 2012

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Erwin Tintner’s cover illustration for Der weiße Dominikaner (1921)

In 1890 a significant turn of events changed the life of the struggling banker Gustav Meyer (1868-1932). Already before his bankruptcy and a brief span in a Prague prison Meyer had begun to occupy himself increasingly with theosophy, magic and occultism. [1] At the same time the young dandy began moving in artistic circles in Prague, and later also in Vienna and Munich. The literary career of Gustav Meyrink, as he now styled himself, was launched with the publication of a series of successful satirical and occult short stories for the well-known cultural-satirical journal Simplicissimus. Meyrink was much interested in the modern art scene, the dramatic arts, dance, music, pantomime, puppet theatre, wax museums and cinema and all these interests can be traced in the stories. Contemporary relations with artists and illustrators stem mostly from a year spent in Vienna (1904), when Meyrink worked as chief editor of Der liebe Augustin, a magazine filled with short stories, poems and art work similar to Simplicissimus. Contacts with artists who contributed to both periodicals lasted for a lifetime. Hugo Steiner-Prag illustrated Meyrink’s bestseller Der Golem with a now famous series of lithographs which were also published independently. Fritz Schwimbeck illustrated both Der Golem and Das grüne Gesicht and Emil Preetorius was responsible for most of Meyrink’s book designs published by Kurt Wolff Verlag, from Der Golem to Walpurgisnacht and the Gesammelte Werke. At the outset of his writing career Meyrink became friends with the artist Alfred Kubin, possibly through the author Oscar A.H. Schmitz who married Kubin’s sister and stimulated Meyrink to pursue an artistic career. Mutual artist friends inspired Meyrink to write stories incorporating some of their more remarkable character traits. Thus amongst others Alfred Kubin, Richard Teschner and Franz Sedlacek figure in several of Meyrink’s novels and stories. A number of Sedlacek’s fantastical paintings appear to have been inspired in turn by Meyrink’s stories. [2]

Though many beautifully illustrated editions of Meyrink’s novels appeared over the years, the two last novels, Der weiße Dominikaner and Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster, were not illustrated nor were they reprinted so often as his other works. Their book covers, however, do have interesting stories to tell. Crucial passages in the respective novels will illustrate the main argument of this essay that Meyrink superimposed his ideas about a Rosicrucian Order, at first developed for Der weiße Dominikaner, on the English magical tradition described in his last published novel Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster. Meyrink’s Brotherhood was loosely modelled after the seventeenth-century fictional Brotherhood presented in the Fama Fraternitatis as well as the historical Order of the Gold- und Rosenkreuzer of the late eighteenth century. Contemporary German as well as English modern theosophists and Rosicrucians were trying to find their roots in these movements as well.

As an editor and a translator, Meyrink published a series of magical works entitled “Romane und Bücher der Magie”. These neatly published little volumes were known also for their interesting cover designs by the Austrian artist and illustrator Erwin Tintner (1885-1957). The series was published by Rikola Verlag, the publishing house founded by the influential Austrian businessman Richard Kola in Vienna in 1920 with the idea to make modern works of fantastical literature available in affordable editions at a time afflicted by inflation and general economic malaise. This situation was to last through the next decade when the book trade more or less collapsed completely. Still, Kola’s publications included many interesting titles by such writers as Otto Soyka, Paul Busson, Leo Perutz and Karl Hans Strobl. The economic crisis in 1923-1924 is likely to have caused the demise of Meyrink’s series of magical books as well. Rikola Verlag was to survive until 1926 but liquidation followed in 1929.

The series edited by Meyrink was published in the early twenties after the publication of Der weiße Dominikaner (1921), one of the first books published by Rikola, again with a cover illustration by Tintner. The series comprised fictional works by Franz Spunda and Paschal Beverly Randolph (1825-1875), and a study on Eliphas Levi by R.H. Laarss (Richard Hummel 1870-1938). Dhoula Bel, the Rosicrucian novel by P.B. Randolph (1922) may have influenced the writing of Der weiße Dominikaner, Meyrink’s first modern Rosicrucian novel. Even though he published his novel two years before the Dhoula Bel edition, Meyrink had long pursued his interest in Randolph and his works through the English occultist and Rosicrucian John Yarker (1833-1913), a member of S.R.I.A. and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Some ideas surrounding Randolph and his working with magical mirrors may also have gone into Meyrink’s novel Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster. The American Randolph as well as English members of S.R.I.A. and the Golden Dawn such as John Yarker and Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) have been regarded as occultists working in the Enochian magical tradition of the Renaissance magus John Dee, the subject of Meyrink’s last novel. [3]

Der weiße Dominikaner came out with two variant book covers. One depicts what looks like a Dominican monk spreading out his arms, while the other simply features the title, in German Gothic type. Erwin Tintner’s figurative design could, however, be seen to merge the image of the white-robed Dominican with that of the Rosicrucian brother, the initiated father of the main character Christopher Taubenschlag – the father in turn is conceived as a mirror image or symbol of the son. In the first instance, the novel’s white Dominican is (loosely) based on the legendary character of Raimund de Pennaforte, builder of the local church in the forgotten nameless town of the novel (identified as Wasserburg) who would finally return as the final Pope under the name “Flos florum”. The image also focuses on the troubled relationship between the Catholic Church and esoteric spirituality, the dominant theme of the novel. Rosicrucian elements in the novel have been traced by Eduard Frank and Ralf Reiter. [4] The revelatory image – presented in contradistinction to the legendary Pennaforte and the chaplain’s confusions about his significance – is that of the initiation into the Brotherhood of Christopher Taubenschlag, and it is this moment of initiation that is also hinted at in Tintner’s design.

The Rosicrucian image of the chain of connected Brethren of the Order is first presented in chapter seven, where it is combined with elements from Taoism, magic and alchemy. The Taoist and magical aspects of this complex image appear to be partly inspired by the Taoist studies of a leading nineteenth-century German orientalist scholar, August Pfizmaier:

Wer die Grenzscheide überschritten hat, der ist ein Glied in einer Kette geworden, – einer Kette, gebildet aus Unsichtbaren Händen, die einander nicht mehr loslassen bis ans Ende der Tage: er gehört hinfort einer Gemeinschaft an, in der jeder Einzelne eine nur für ihn bestimmte Mission hat. – Nicht sind auch nur Zwei in ihr die da einander gleich waren, so wie schon unter der Menschentieren der Erde nicht zwei sind, die dasselbe Schicksal hätten. Der Geist dieser Gemeinschaft durchdringt unsere ganze Erde: er ist ihr jederzeit allgegenwärtig er ist der Lebensgeist im großen Holunderbaum. Aus ihm sind die Religionen aller Zeiten und Völker entsprossen sie wandeln sich, aber er wandelt sich nie. Wer ein Wipfel geworden ist und die Wurzel ‚Ur’ bewusst in sich trägt, der tritt unbewusst in diese Gemeinschaft ein durch das Erleben des Mysteriums, das da heißt „die Lösung mit Leichnam und Schwert“. (Der weiße Dominikaner, Kapitel 7, „Das mennigrote Buch“, esp. p. 151)

The Meyrink collector and occultist Lambert Binder was one of the first commentators to discuss this Taoist image in his essay “Die Lösung der Leichname”. [5] For Meyrink, the Taoist way to spiritual enlightenment through schi kiai (die Lösung der Leichname) and kieu kiai (die Lösung der Schwerter) was a kind of transformation from the physical body to a spiritual body and this could be seen to parallel the physical-alchemical process of transmutation, guided the adept towards the Philosopher’s Stone and spiritual change. This theosophical-alchemical orientation was also dominant in the Rosicrucianism from the seventeenth century onwards. In Der weiße Dominikaner, in the chapter entitled “Einsamkeit”, the alchemical process is explained. Taubenschlag, looking for his Ophelia, turns to the author of the introduction. Taubenschlag, we are reminded, is not the character dreamed up by his “author” when he started writing his fictional tale, but an invisible entity (a symbol even, p. 11), a doubled spiritual guide or a metaphysical or divine aspect of the self that has taken over his narrative expressed in the diary of an invisible one (“Tagebuch eines Unsichtbaren”):

Das tiefste Geheimnis aller Geheimnisse und das verborgenste Rätsel aller Rätsel ist die alchemistische Verwandlung der – Form. Das sage ich dir, der du mir die Hand leihest, zum Danke dafür, daß du für mich schreibst! Der verborgene Weg zur Wiedergeburt im Geiste, von dem in der Bibel steht, ist eine Verwandlung des Körpers und nicht des Geistes. […] Die Formveränderung, die ich meine, wird für das äußere Auge erst sichtbar, wenn der alchemistische Prozess der Umwandlung seinem Ende zugeht; im Verborgenen nimmt er seinen Anfang: in den magnetischen Strömungen, die das Achsensystem des Körperbaues bestimmen, – die Denkart des Menschen, seine Neigungen und Triebe wandeln sich zuerst, ihnen folgt die Wandlung des Tuns und mit ihm die Verwandlung der Form, bis diese der Auferstehungsleib des Evangeliums wird (pp. 194-195).

In chapter 12, the crucial chapter on death and spiritual rebirth entitled “Jener muss wachsen, ich aber schwinden”, his dying father tells Christopher of the secret order but not without warning him about the dangers of occultist and magical entities (pp. 240-241):

Er faßte mich an der Hand und verflocht seine Finger auf eine besondere Weise mit den meinigen. „Auf diese Art“, setzte er leise hinzu, und ich hörte, daß sein Atem wieder zu stocken begann, „hängen die Glieder der großen unsichtbaren Kette zusammen; ohne sie vermagst du wenig; bist du aber eingeschaltet, so kann dir nichts widerstehen, denn bis in die fernsten Räume des Weltalls helfen dir die Mächte unseres Ordens. Höre mich an: Mißtraue allen Gestalten, die dir entgegentreten im Reiche der Magie! Jegliche Form können die Mächte der Finsternis vortäuschen, sogar die unseres Meisters; auch den Griff, den ich dir gezeigt habe, können sie äußerlich nachahmen, um dich irre zu führen, aber zugleich unsichtbar bleiben – das können sie nicht. […] „Merke dir ihn gut, den Griff! Wenn sich dir eine Erscheinung aus der andern Welt naht, und solltest du sogar glauben, ich sei es: immer verlange den Griff! Die Welt der Magie ist voll von Gefahren.“

This is followed in chapter 14, “Die Auferstehung des Schwertes”, by a misleading apparition of an old man who invites Taubenschlag to join his father’s order (pp. 274-275). But when the old man requires blind obedience (which may, incidentally be a critical reference to an important tenet of the Gold- und Rosenkreuzer), Christopher remembers to ask for the handshake his father told him about. The grey apparition is not what he appears to be but rather advocates an occult and treacherous perversion of spiritual truth. The image finally reveals itself in the shape of a demon impersonating John the Baptist (pp. 277-282).

In the last chapter Christopher Taubenschlag experiences the spiritual change of his body:

Ich breite die Arme aus: unsichtbare Hände fassen die meinen mit dem „Griff“ des Ordens, gliedern mich ein in die lebendige Kette, die in die Unendlichkeit reicht. Verbrannt ist in mir das Verwesliche, durch den Tod in eine Flamme des Lebens verwandelt. Aufrecht stehe ich im purpurnen Gewand des Feuers, gegürtet mit der Waffe aus Blutstein. Gelöst bin ich für immer mit Leichnam und Schwert.

(Der weiße Dominikaner, Kapitel 15, „Das Nessoshemd“)

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Heinrich Hussmann: cover and illustration (on pastedown and flyleaf) to Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster (1927)

Meyrink’s second and last Rosicrucian novel, Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster, also came out with two variant cover designs, the first a pen drawing of a young girl’s portrait in green ink designed by the graphical artist and illustrator Heinrich Hussmann (1899-1982). Friedrich Alfred Schmid Noerr, Meyrink’s co-author for this novel, was not at all appreciative of the design, as appears from his copy of the book now in the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach. Schmid Noerr cancelled the cover of his copy by drawing a red line across it and adding the comment “Pfui!” Did he perhaps object to it for other than aesthetic reasons? We know that Schmid Noerr and Meyrink used other working titles for the novel (John Dee and Baphomet); both men disliked the final title chosen by the publisher. The title Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster was clearly drawn from the crucial first appearance of the little girl and the green angel to John Dee and Edward Kelley. Thus the image refers to the relevant passage in Meric Casaubon’s edition of Dee and Kelley’s angel conversations.

Meyrink and Schmid Noerr’s first source was the booklet which the German theosophist and occultist Carl Kiesewetter (1854-1895) wrote on Dee. In a later account of their literary cooperation Schmid Noerr remembered picking it up and handing it to Meyrink as possible material for a new novel. Kiesewetter consulted Meric Casaubon’s edition of John Dee, A true and faithful relation of what passed for many years between Dr. John Dee and some spirits (1659) as well as the biography of Dee (1707) by the English Nonjuring scholar and librarian Thomas Smith (1638-1710). Apart from Kiesewetter, Casaubon and Smith, no other sources (apart from such alchemical reference works such as Schmieder’s Geschichte der Alchemie, 1832) were easily available to Schmid Noerr and Meyrink when they were looking for materials on the lives of Dee and Kelley. A modern English monograph by Charlotte Fell Smith had appeared in 1909 but it is not clear whether this work was known to the novelists. [6]

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Even though they owe a lot to Kiesewetter’s use of both Casaubon and Smith, the novelists obviously did not need to follow the (legendary) history and the characters of Dee and Kelley. In the end the characters in the novel are part of the thematic structure and fictional reality of the novel. The angel in the novel appears in the wake of a seven-year-old girl. The child’s name, Madini (or Madimi) refers to the first (female) angel appearance in Casaubon’s edition of Dee’s angel conversations. The following vision occurred in May 1583:

Suddenly, there seemed to come out of my Oratory a Spirituall creature, like a pretty girle of 7 or 9 yeares of age, attired on her head with her hair rowled up before, and hanging down very long behind, with a gown of Sey […] changeable green and red, and with a train she seemed to play up and down […] like, and seemed to go in and out behind my books, lying on heaps, the biggest […] and as she should ever go between them, the books seemed to give place sufficiently. [7]

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Thomas Smith, Vitae quorundam eruditissimorum et illustrium virorum, London [Amsterdam] 1702, including the “Vita Joannis Dee, Mathematici Angli”

Another relevant passage, in which the angel presents Dee with the scrying stone in the west window was not published in Casaubon’s edition. Kiesewetter could only have found the reference in Thomas Smith’s biography of John Dee. Smith had access to Dee’s unpublished diaries for this information and referred to a male angel (a young boy). Kiesewetter worked Smith’s note on this event into his main narrative. Information about the event was originally taken by Smith from Dee’s diaries. [8] From Smith’s note in his Vita it appears that he consulted the original “Mysteriorum libri” recovered by Elias Ashmole, though he does not explicitly list these unpublished diaries in his bibliography at the end of his book. This is Dee’s description of the event (1582) in Book IV:

Thow shalt preuayle with it, with Kings, and with all Creatures of the world. Whose beauty (in virtue) shall be more worth then the Kingdomes of the earth. Loke, if thow see it: But styr not, for the Angel of his power is present. E[dward] K[elley] loked toward my west window, and saw there first uppon the matts by my bokes a thing, (to his thinking) as bigg as an egg: most bright, clere, and glorious: and an angel of the heath of a little chylde holding up the same thing in his hand toward me: and that Angel had a feyrey sword in his hand &c. [In margin: An angel holding up the stone.] …

I went toward the place, which EK pointed to: and tyll I cam within two fote of it, I saw nothing: and then I saw like a shaddow on the grownd or matts hard by my bokes under the west window. The shaddow was rowndysh, and less then the palm of my hand. I put my hand down uppon it, and I felt a thing cold and hard which, (taking up, I) perceyued to be the stone before mentioned. [9]

The German occultist Kiesewetter also noted that the boy was four years old, a detail that is not in the original manuscript nor in Smith’s account. This boy-angel appeared to Dee and Kelley about half a year earlier in 1582. In the novel, the apparition of the angel in the west window subsequently takes on huge dimensions, and this angel is identified as Il, “der Bote vom westlichen Tor” (p. 186). Later descriptions of the angel’s appearance, bedecked with gold and jewels, also owes to the description of Dee’s female angel Galvah who is associated with precious stones (and at one time also appears in the west window). In the novel the sexual identity of the angel in the west window is left undetermined, whereas in Dee’s conversations Madini and especially Galvah focus on the aspect of gender in relation to moral and spiritual (angelic or demonic) wisdom. Dee’s texts contain references to the magical works by Johann Trithemius, one of Dee’s most important sources.

The angel then disturbingly commands Dee and Kelley to sleep with each other’s wives both in the published angel conversations and in the novel. Even though issues of gender, Christian morality and sexuality (including the cross-matching) certainly play a part in the novel, this cross-matching is only briefly referred to and not fully worked into the novel’s overall structure. Issues of sexuality concentrate rather on sexual magic and are reflected more emphatically and explicitly in the person of Fürstin Chotokalungin, a magical figure of sexual temptation resembling a modern decadent femme fatale (cf. Aglaja, wife of Adonis Mutschelknaus, in Der weiße Dominikaner) and in the cult of Isaïs. The doubled character of Dee / Baron Müller will have to overcome this sexual temptation on the way to his spiritual initiation, which is the final resolution of the novel.

In this scheme the enigmatic and unreliable Lipotin can to some extent be regarded as Kelley’s modern double (though he is mostly paired with Mascee). Many issues and themes are woven into the complex structure of the novel to address questions of the meaning of human life and death, human consciousness, time and timelessness, reality and immortality, hatred, hope, love, morality, sexuality, magic, spirituality and fate. Towards the end of the novel, the cynical Lipotin identifies himself as an enigmatic and untrustworthy Tibetan Dugpa monk (cf. the equally untrustworthy vision of the old man in Der weiße Dominikaner). Further associations with dehumanising Tibetan sexual magic follow: Vajroli Tantra, Yoga and Vajroli Mudra and related magical practices are associated with Dee and Kelley’s search for the Philosopher’s stone. Finally, Dee / Müller appears to have survived the poison of Tibetan magic that Kelley / Lipotin brought to him. [10]

British theosophists and occultists took an interest in Smith’s biography of Dee. The British theosophist, alchemist and a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, William Alexander Ayton (1816-1909), produced a biography of John Dee in 1908, in fact a translation of Thomas Smith’s Latin text. [11] Ayton knew H.P. Blavatsky when she was in London and Meyrink corresponded with English theosophists such as George Mead, Blavatsky’s secretary, as well as Rosicrucians and members of the Golden Dawn. Meyrink exchanged many letters with John Yarker about the writings of the American Rosicrucian and sex magician P.B. Randolph as well as about Yarker’s involvement in secret societies, their rituals and their organization. Through his interest in Randolph, Meyrink might also have known about Ayton, who was an important figure in the English Rosicrucian movement. Be that as it may, considering Ayton’s foreword to his translation of Smith’s text, his approach to the occult experiences of Dee and Kelley was quite similar to Meyrink’s and Schmid Noerr’s when they were preparing their novel. Modern and practical occultists, especially members of S.R.I.A. and the Golden Dawn, were highly intrigued by angelology and demonology, while they were perhaps not always as conscientious as Dee’s biographer Thomas Smith in evaluating the historical importance of the scholar and political adviser Dee. They were rather more interested in the magus’s practice of Enochian magic. [12]

Whether Meyrink in any way meant to reflect the practice of Enochian and/or sexual magic in occult movements of his day such as the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) of Theodor Reuß and Aleister Crowley is an interesting question. [13] During the 1920s Crowley apparently tried to contact Meyrink but whether they ever met in person is not clear. Meyrink may have heard about Crowley through such esoteric writers and contacts as Henry Birven or Heinrich Tränker (1880-1956). Meyrink was aware of Crowley’s attempt in Thüringen in 1925 to take over Tränker’s Rosicrucian Pansophia movement (or to incorporate it into his Astrum Argenteum Order) which had been founded in Munich in 1923. [14] In a letter to his friend, the Prague publisher Oldrich Neubert, Meyrink was very cricital of Tränker’s Collegium Pansophicum, whose members he regarded as “fürchterliche Kleinkram-Spiessbürger”. His attitude to the controversial Crowley, who resided mostly in Sicily and in Paris in those years, remained ambivalent: “Dass Crowley ein unmoralischer Mensch ist, will ich gern glauben, aber das ist öfter als man denkt kein Hindernis – am Anfang – des Weges zur Hochmagie, besonders wenn man damit vergleicht, dass sehr hohe Moralität durchaus nicht davor schützt, dass man ein unbewusstes Werkzeug schwarzmagischer Kräfte wird.“ Meyrink was aware of Crowley’s publications and regarded him as an authority on the practice of yoga. Richard Deacon discusses the influence of Dee’s and especially Kelley’s magical practices on the modern magician Crowley who adopted Dee’s Enochian magic and identified himself with Kelley. Crowley published his experiences with Dee’s magical system in his periodical The Equinox in 1911. [15] One wonders whether Meyrink and Schmid Noerr did not also have Crowley in mind when they wrote Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster.

It was never Meyrink’s or Schmid Noerr’s intention, despite the latter’s historical research on the Elizabethan period and John Dee’s biography in preparation of the book, to write a biographically or historically accurate novel. The main interest in the novel is not the sixteenth century as such but the continuity of a spiritual quest and the dangers which beset the undertaking, which is both human and universal. Structure, characterization, imagery and plot of Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster are consistently dualistic. This duality also required that the Elizabethan Empire and all its colonial ambition, its science and natural philosophy, its politics and ideology, its need of religious reform as well as its rather urgent sense of the apocalypse be quite deliberately reflected in the dangerously occult mirror of western Renaissance occultism and Tibetan black magic. The mirroring served to reveal something of the poisonous state which Europe found itself in, politically, economically, socially, in the late twenties of the twentieth century. [16] However, much of this mirroring of worlds is subservient to the final resolution of the novel.

The image of the Dominican spreading out his arms reappears as a revelatory image in the Rosicrucian resolution to Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster:

Vor mir steht Theodor Gärtner wieder und nennt mich: Bruder. Ich höre ihn sprechen, und wenn auch viele Worte untergehen in dem Brausen des Jubels, der in mir ist, so verstehe ich doch alles, was er sagt und befiehlt. – Ich fühle: von mir dehnt sich die güldene Kette von Wesen des Lichts, und ein Glied wird gelöst, um mich, das neue Glied, einzufügen. Ich weiß auch: es ist kein symbolischer Ritus, wie er als Abglanz von den Menschen des irdischen Schattenreichs da und dort in Konventikeln als „Mysterium“ vollzogen wird, sondern es ist ein wirkendes, lebendiges, lebenspendendes Begebnis in einer andern Welt.
– – „Aufgenommen, berufen, erwählt wirst du sein, John Dee!“ – so schlagen im ruhigen Gesang meines Blutes die Pulse. – – –
„Breite die Arme aus, Aufrechtstehender!“
Ich breitete die Arme waagrecht.
Gleich darauf sind Hände da, von rechts und von links, die nach den meinen fassen, und ich spüre mit hohem Glück, wie die sichere Kette sich schließt. Zugleich mit diesem Glücksgefühl erfahre ich tief im innersten Gewissen seinen Grund: wer in dieser Kette steht, ist unverletzbar; ihn trifft kein Hieb, ihn drängt keine Not, daß nicht Ungezählte in der Kette von diesem Hieb und von dieser Not mitgetroffen würden. […] Weiße Gewänder umhüllen mich. Ein Lichtstrahl trifft von unten her auf meinen gesenkten Blick: auch mein Gewand trägt auf der Stelle der Brust die golden blitzende Rose. Freund Gardener ist bei mir, und ringsum in dem geisterhaft hohen Saal ist ein leises Summen wie von Bienenschwärmen. Weißleuchtende Gestalten umziehen mich, von der Ferne näherdringend. Deutlicher, rhythmischer, tönender wird das Summen und Rauschen im Raum. Dunkler Gesang wird Stimme und Chor. (ed. 1995, pp. 510-11)

After his Rosicrucian alchemical wedding with Queen Elizabeth, Dee / Müller has become a member of the chain of the spiritual Brotherhood and, like Dee, he is regarded as a helper of humanity. His wife Jane, however, through her sacrifice has reached the realm of eternal life. After a long spiritual quest in a doubled world as well as in a doubled state of being, the character of Dee / Baron Müller is taken up into this mystical brotherhood and initiated into a spiritual life, where the historical Dee and Kelley had failed (also in the context of the novel). Their relations with the angel from the west window, who turns out to be a harbinger from the western realms of fear and death, finally come to an end. It would be better for humanity if no such angel ever materialised again.

The denouement takes the novel into Rosicrucian spheres. The historical association of Dee and the classical Rosicrucian reform movement in Germany, as argued (mistakenly) by Frances Yates, cannot be considered to be relevant here. In fact it is much more difficult to see how the complex of John Dee’s life and magic is combined (contrasted) or doubled with the modern occult world and the Rosicrucian resolution of the novel. [17] An eighteenth- and nineteenth-century context for Rosicrucianism and especially the combination of alchemical and Christian Hermetic ideas of this historical phenomenon as well as Meyrink’s personal awareness of modern Rosicrucian and theosophical thought as published amongst others by Franz Hartmann, G.W. Surya, Rudolf Steiner, Heinrich Tränker, Willy Schrödter and Max Heindel appear to offer the relevant context here. Possibly Carl Kiesewetter’s Rosicrucian affiliation – this influential occultist owned his great grandfather’s collection of manuscripts – and his early work on the Rosicrucians were also relevant. [18] The works of physicians and alchemical practitioners such as Alexander von Bernus, Franz Freudenberg, Ernst Kurtzahn, Alfred Müller-Edler and Ferdinand Maack provide a cultural context for Meyrink’s fictional as well as practical-alchemical pursuits. Of these, Von Bernus, Müller-Edler and Meyrink were close friends. Kurtzahn published his study Der Tarot (Leipzig 1920) which he dedicated to Meyrink. Maack was an independent esoteric writer and the founder of a Rosicrucian order in Hamburg in 1923. Their interest in the eighteenth-century Gold-und Rosenkreuzer can be traced in several of their publications fairly easily. [19]

The Rosicrucian theme, like the interest in Taoism and in hatha yoga, had already been introduced in Der weiße Dominikaner (especially chapters 7 and 15) and the two novels are closely related both in this thematic sense and in their use of imagery. This time major images and motifs are the (christian-cabbalistic) tree of life, the rose garden, the interconnected chain of spiritual beings or guides, the ancestors (the tree of forebears: the Jöcher family and John Dee’s Welsh forebears), the magical and theo-alchemical marriage, a mystical union, and finally the formation of the invisible brotherhood. The fictional “Brotherhood of the Golden Rose” in Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster and one of its members, the novelistic double figure of Robert Gardener / Theodor Gärtner as well as the spiritual resolution of the novel have significant theo-alchemical and modern (18th-19th-century) Rosicrucian connotations.

The overall Rosicrucian scheme and resolution of the novels Der weiße Dominikaner and Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster (as identified before by Eduard Frank and Ralf Reiter) were not developed from the materials on John Dee but must in the end be attributed mainly to Meyrink’s and possibly to a lesser extent also Schmid Noerr’s more general reading of alchemical and Rosicrucian texts available to them. [20] In a sense the crisis of John Dee and Edward Kelley overcome in the novel by the double character of Dee / Baron Müller, is also the crisis of the novel, the point where the reader is either convinced by the success of the mystical novel or where he/she feels the communication of author(s) and reader is lost in an esoteric vision superimposed on the fantasy of the English Renaissance alchemical magicians Dee and Kelley. This crisis and its complex imagery as realized in the structural concept of the novel evidently point to Meyrink’s literary and esoteric concerns rather than to the medieval and mystical orientation of Schmid Noerr in the novels he published later under his own name.

It is likely, therefore, that Schmid Noerr’s considerable contribution lay in the workmanship, i.e. in the preparation and adaptation of the historical sources and the composition of text for the novel. On the other hand, Schmid Noerr’s mystical preoccupations, e.g. with the mystical self (Ich) could easily have merged with Meyrink’s theme. It would require much more study to fully work out the history of the composition of Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster but an understanding of the mythological, occult, theosophical, Christian-Hermetic, Rosicrucian and fantastical thought of both authors would be a prerequisite for such a history, apart from the long overdue analysis of the extant working manuscript of the novel (in Schmid Noerr’s hand), Schmid Noerr’s scheme (Exposé) and the many notes for the novel now in the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach. In the end such an exercise would be useful for the interpretation of the novel as written by both novelists. [21]

Meyrink’s similar resolution for both of his novels is worked out by means of the concept of a Rosicrucian Brotherhood, a brotherhood of invisible true Rosicrucians working for the spiritual initiation of those individuals that were called upon to join independent of the actual realisations of Rosicrucian or Masonic societies that were visible in the world as we know it. The imagery connected with his theme could be linked to the related English magical tradition from Dee and Kelley to the magical practitioners of the Golden Dawn. English Rosicrucians based the organization of their order as well as their degrees of initiation on the eighteenth-century German Gold- und Rosenkreuzer but also worked in the tradition of English occultism from Roger Bacon via John Dee, Edward Kelley and Elias Ashmole to their own modern (Enochian) systems of magic. Meyrink’s imagery was indebted rather to the German tradition of theosophical Rosicrucianism. In this tradition, ever since Blavatsky’s foundation of the Theosophical Society, English-German relations were central as theosophy and occultism initially moved from the United States and England to the German-language area of central Europe. German theosophists merged the new theosophy with Rosicrucian ideas and became known as “Moderne Rosenkreuzer”. In this respect Meyrink, working in a modern German theosophical and Rosicrucian context, was finally responsible for the theme and resolution of Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster.
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Re: Gustav Meyrink and the Rosicrucians, by Theodor Harmsen

Postby admin » Wed Jan 17, 2018 2:36 pm

Part 2 of 2

II. Homer’s golden chain: Rosicrucian revelatory imagery

Wenn ihr nicht verstehet, was irdisch ist?
Wie wollet ihr verstehen was himmlisch ist?
(Aurea Catena Homeri, 1738)

Image
Julius Sachse’s manuscript of the Geheime Figuren der Rosenkreuzer (1895)

In Gustav Meyrink’s day occultists, theo-alchemists and the so-called “Moderne Rosenkreuzer” were looking for ways to continue and develop the Hermetic and Rosicrucian ideas concerning man’s relations with nature (earth), the cosmos and God. Meyrink was generally well aware of occult movements and secret societies and will certainly have known about Rosicrucian societies founded at the time in Berlin, Leipzig and Munich. Friends and mystics such as Alois Mailänder, Franz Hartmann, Heinrich Tränker, Henry Birven, Alexander von Bernus were especially interested in the idea of a Brotherhood of men united in their Christian, theosophical and theo-alchemical interests. Meyrink corresponded with Von Bernus about the possibilities of parallel yogic and alchemical explorations of spirituality and with Schmid Noerr he studied the history of alchemy. [22] German theosophists and occultists such as Ferdinand Maack and Franz Hartmann saw themselves as modern Rosicrucians and regarded spiritual alchemy next to Christian ideas as an increasingly relevant aspect not only of the eighteenth-century Gold- und Rosenkreuzer, the so-called “Neue Rosenkreuzer” (as opposed to the original seventeenth-century movement), but also of their own modern (theosophical) Rosicrucian movement. Meyrink’s thematic image of the chain of brothers is in the end an image of Rosicrucian continuity, a revelatory image that fits the worldview that was being developed by German esotericism at the turn of the twentieth century.

Although Meyrink has been critical of certain Rosicrucian organizations, his spiritual ideas as developed in his last two esoteric novels both find Rosicrucian resolutions in a kind of syncretistic and abstracted idea of the (invisible or transcendent) Brotherhood. This concept can be situated in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century tradition of German Rosicrucianism as well as in the Christian theosophical (and alchemical) works of such early Romantic mystics as Karl von Eckartshausen (1752-1803) and Ivan Vladimir Lopukhin (1756-1816) and their concepts of spiritual rebirth, the inner church and man’s invisible connection to the divine order. Eckartshausen’s description of Bensalem as an enlightened Brotherhood is indeed close to that of theosophists such as Paul Zillman [23] as well as to the idea of such a brotherhood in Meyrink’s fiction. Interesting in the context of Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster is the fact that for Eckartshausen the angelic intermediary world was a reality and he also claimed to have received revelatory messages from the angels. Lopukhin was especially associated with the movement of the Gold- und Rosenkreuzer and their influence in Russia. [24]

At the beginning of the twentieth century the eighteenth-century Geheime Figuren der Rosenkreuzer (Altona 1785-1788) were reproduced several times in textual editions together with varying esoteric comments and interpretations. The German theosophist and Rosicrucian Franz Hartmann and the theosophist or – in the years following his break with theosophy (1913) and his founding of the Anthroposophical Society – theosophical Rosicrucian and anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner, commented on the Rosicrucian tradition and were especially intrigued by the inspirational and metaphysical figure of Christian Rosencreutz. Steiner regarded the Geheime Figuren as another historical manifestation of the workings of Christian Rosencreutz. Hartmann reproduced the secret symbols in an extensive edition including his theosophical commentary in 1888 [25] and various anthroposophical editions of the Geheime Figuren also followed. [26] What would long be regarded as the standard edition, the facsimile reprint by Barsdorf Verlag, came out in Berlin in 1919.

An American friend of Hartmann’s, Julius Friedrich Sachse (1842-1919), in his study The German Pietists of Provincial Pennsylvania (1895) reproduced Rosicrucian imagery from a manuscript that may have come to the pietist and Böhmist movement in Pennsylvania, perhaps fairly early on in the eighteenth century. Sachse relates the history of this religious community in Pennsylvania which had its roots in Germany. The German mystic and pietist Johannes Kelpius (1673-1708) was a follower of the nonconformist and Böhmist Johann Jacob Zimmermann (1644-1693). Zimmermann planned to take his group of followers to Pennsylvania where he hoped to found a settlement. He was already negotiating with William Penn to buy land but his death in Rotterdam prevented the group from crossing the ocean. Kelpius was chosen as his successor and the new leader of what was called the Hamburg group and they settled in Wissahickon Creek, Pennsylvania in 1694. Descendants of Kelpius are said to have founded a Rosicrucian movement at Ephrata, Pennsylvania, in 1732 but recent research cannot confirm this. There was, however, the pietist and Böhmist community of Johann Conrad Beissel. [27]

To Sachse the manuscript of the Geheime Figuren clearly showed Böhmist influences which would make it of considerable interest to the religious community of “The Society of the Woman in the Wilderness” as it was also known, or its successor movements. However, the manuscript, known as “Physica, Metaphysica et Hyperphysica” was an heirloom in Sachse’s family and some of the plates in it can be dated at the earliest to the beginning of the eighteenth century (ca. 1730-1740). The manuscript copy itself is possibly of a somewhat later date. By placing the manuscript in the seventeenth-century context of Pennsylvanian pietism, Sachse’s antiquarian method proved too freely associative. We do not know how and when Sachse or his family came by it, nor do we know its present location (if the manuscript survives). Although Sachse gives no specific information as to its provenance – he merely indicates it was similar to other works used by the Wissahickon and Cocalico communities – it may nevertheless have been taken to Pennsylvania by the later German emigrants (or visitors) of what became known as the Ephrata cloister or community. [28]

Will-Erich Peuckert (1895-1969) in his pioneering study on the Rosicrucians, published as Die Rosenkreuzer in 1928, described the imagery in a manuscript (the same version as the Sachse manuscript) he had come across in the University Library of Wroclaw (then Breslau). [29] Curiously, Peuckert at that time does not seem to have been aware of the published Geheime Figuren der Rosenkreuzer (Altona 1785-1788; facsimile reprint Berlin 1919). In an appendix he dated the manuscript to the second half of the seventeenth century but this is again too early. Whereas Peuckert paid attention to the symbols of the Rosicrucians, especially the Rose and the Cross, and many other commentators before and after him pursued the various origins of this imagery, the analysis of the manuscript remained indecisive. The revised edition of Peuckert’s study was left unfinished but published posthumously (1973) and contains additions concerning the eighteenth-century Rosicrucians. From the published additions on the eighteenth-century Rosicrucians it does not become clear whether Peuckert had succeeded in providing the proper historical context of the Breslau manuscript.

The editions and interpretations of the Geheime Figuren by Hartmann and Sachse were then studied and commented on by the American occultist Manly Palmer Hall who prepared a new edition of a manuscript version which looked much like the Sachse manuscript. Hartmann and Hall were possibly the last scholars to see Sachse’s manuscript in the home of his daughter Emma Sachse. Hall visited her in 1935 and he collated the two copies. Hall also reproduced some of Sachse’s plates, but criticized the latter’s association of the manuscript with the American pietist settlements. Hall also established the link with the German mystic Jacob Böhme, wondering if the controversy concering Böhme’s Rosicrucian affiliation was in any way relevant to the origins of the manuscript Geheime Figuren. [30]

Image
J.H. Kirchweger, Aurea Catena Homeri, 1723

From the 1760s onwards the Gold- und Rosenkreuzer began to organize their visible order, i.e. a highly organized network of lodges in the real world of Southern Germany which expanded and moved in a northern direction. These Rosicrucians were associated with Freemasonry and later opposed a related Masonic order, the Order of the Illuminates (Illuminaten). In the hierarchical structure of the Order the highest grades were formed by brethren that were unknown (and thus invisible). Towards the politically and ideologically troubled end of the eighteenth century the Gold- und Rosenkreuzer, after three decades of activity in the organization of the Order including a publishing programme causing a wave of new editions of older theo-alchemical and magical source texts and studies, were finally forbidden as a secret society. [31]

Modern nineteenth- and twentieth-century German theosophists and Rosicrucians subsequently relied on the ideas of the Gold- und Rosenkreuzer for their understanding of the Rosicrucian movement and tradition and the organization of their own groups and societies. Thus more than one author reprinted Samuel Richter’s rules for an order of “Gold- und Rosenkreuzer” first published in Breslau in 1710 (and again in 1714) and modern Rosicrucian societies developed their own initiatory systems modelled after the grades developed by the Freemasons and the Gold- und Rosenkreuzer during the second half of the eighteenth century.

Meyrink’s modern Rosicrucian novels, though clearly part of this theosophical Rosicrucian context, slowly build up a sense of this spiritual force in the world without going into the history of the various Rosicrucian organizations or the detailed alchemical and Rosicrucian visualisations through complex secret symbols. Nevertheless, this Rosicrucian worldview that was based on a long tradition of images and texts adapted and developed from alchemical, Christian cabbalist and Christian theosophical traditions can be seen to define the double realities of both novels.

It was Ferdinand Maack (1860-1930) [32] , the physician, occultist and Rosicrucian from Hamburg, who in 1905 published a guide to the Golden chain of Homer or the Catena Aurea Homeri: Die goldene Kette Homers. Ein zum Studium und zum Verständnis der gesamten hermetischen Litteratur unentbehrliches Hilfsbuch. Like most eighteenth-century Rosicrucians had tried to do before, Maack reached back further into Rosicrucian history when in 1913 he reprinted the seventeenth-century Rosicrucian manifestos ascribed to Johann Valentin Andreae. [33] Maack published widely on occultism, alchemy, magic, spiritism and mediumism, alternative medicine, magnetism and occult sciences. He was well aware of Rosicrucian printed books from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and knowledgeable on the work being done on Rosicrucian and alchemical studies by such scholars as Hermann Kopp and Carl Kiesewetter, especially also with reference to Andreae’s Chymische Hochzeit, a likely source also for Meyrink’s Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster. Maack may have known Meyrink (possibly through Alfred Müller-Edler, the Hamburg alchemist, who was Meyrink’s model for Baron Müller in Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster). [34] Maack pursued and closely defined many of the complex meanings of the secret symbols of the Rosicrucians in various studies and articles.

Thus for his own concept of the Rosicrucian phenomenon, Maack was also looking to establish a continuity with the eighteenth-century Gold- und Rosenkreuzer, and through them to a certain extent also to the Rosicrucians of the (sixteenth and) seventeenth centuries. Maack explained in his Zweimal gestorben. Die Geschichte eines Rosenkreuzers aus dem XVIII. Jahrhundert (1912) his ideas about the impersonal character of spiritual truth independent of the egos or identities of human individuals. [35] This concept may seem contradictory to Meyrink’s idea of finding the Ich (the self), but Meyrink’s spiritual Ich, which was to be found through a personal turning inward of each individual, was in the end not the same as one’s personal psyche or identity (or one’s soul as conceived by orthodox Christians). Maack’s studies Elias Artista redivivus. Das Buch vom Salz und Raum (1913), Das Wesen der Alchemie (1920) and Das Rosenkreuz (1923) all show a close affinity with the ideas of the eighteenth-century Rosicrucians.

The image or motif of the golden chain exists in the tradition of alchemy as well as in (theosophical) Rosicrucianism of Meyrink’s day. In both orientations the image refers to a specific understanding of created nature and its relation to metaphysical truth or revelation. The idea of Homer’s golden chain or Plato’s ring, the alchemical concept as developed by the Gold- und Rosenkreuzer, though first published by Kirchweger in 1723, [36] was elaborated on with theosophical, magical and cabbalistic symbols in later eighteenth-century versions. The overall complex symbol as developed by Ferdinand Maack does not contain any direct reference to the theosophical-Rosicrucian brotherhood (though such references exist in the Geheime Figuren which Maack also worked with) but may nevertheless (indirectly) be associated with Meyrink’s presentation and concept of the Order of the Golden Rose. Meyrink’s literary image is a fictional reflection of the possible existence of such a Rosicrucian Brotherhood [37] of invisible Brethren interconnected through a chain of hands in Der weiße Dominikaner and in Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster. These Brethren, like the seventeenth-century Rosicrucians, are not to be met in the cities and streets of this world. At one time they were, but now they are taken up in the chain of true (“echte” or “wahre”) Rosicrucians, and they can be helpers of mankind and do physical (medicinal) and spiritual good in a Hermetic world, a doubled world as conceived of in Meyrink’s esoteric novels.

In his introduction to Die goldene Kette Homers (1905), Maack explained the Hermetic idea of the chain of being from a natural philosophical and theo-alchemical perspective:

Die Idee, dass alles Geschaffene, welcher Art auch immer, unter einander auf das Innigste „verkettet“ und verknüpft ist; dass durch die ganze Natur ein tiefer geheimnisvoller Zusammenhang geht; eines sich auf das andere bezieht und von einander abhängig ist; sowie die Idee, dass dieser verborgene Zusammenhang sich in Form eines „Auf“ und „Ab“, eines „Hinweg“ und „Wieder-zurück“, in der Form eines ewig wechselnden Kreislaufes abspielt – diese „vielleicht phantastische“ Doppel-Idee war es, welche Goethe nach seiner eigenen Aussage an der Aurea Catena Homeri besonders gefallen hat. Und diese grandiose naturphilosophische Idee war es auch, welche einen übrigen weiten Leserkreis unseres Buches ein Jahrhundertlang in ihren Bann schlug. (p. 2)

Referring to the collections of Rudolf Johann Friedrich Schmidt, a physician and alchemist also from Hamburg, and to the previous editions of the work (1723, 1739, and finally 1781), Maack provided a textual history of this seminal work. Maack subsequently described the chain and its spiritual-alchemical meanings and reproduced a fold-out version of the catena aurea which can be traced back to the Gold- und Rosenkreuzer edition of A.J. Kirchweger’s famous and often reprinted work [38] as well as to the magical-alchemical-cabbalistic representations in the Geheime Figuren der Rosenkreuzer (1785), mainly the symbols entitled Scala Philosophorum Cabalistica Magia atque arbor aurea, the Poculum Pansophiae, Aus Gott und der Natur. In fact, Maack probably combined these sources into one new complex symbol. He quoted extensively from the foreword of the 1781 edition and clearly supported the Hermetic ideas of the Gold- und Rosenkreuzer editor “Phlebochron”’, which were inspired by Pythagoras, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa and Robert Fludd. Other secret symbols or elements from these symbols may have been adopted by Maack from the Geheime Figuren. For a more detailed interpretation of these symbols an insight into the composition of this Hermetic-Rosicrucian compendium and a comparison with the various manuscript versions that still exist today will be necessary.

Image
Ferdinand Maack, Die goldene Kette Homers (1905)

The Gold- und Rosenkreuzer regarded the work as a further commentary on the mediaeval Emerald Table, the Tabula Smaragdina of Hermes Trismegistus, which was also reproduced in the printed edition of the Geheime Figuren (Drittes Heft), and offered it as a main course book on the true philosophy of nature (Naturlehre) to the brothers of the Order. The so far unidentified editor of the 1781 edition, Phlebochron, saw the Gold- und Rosenkreuzer as the only true heirs of the original author of the Catena Aurea.

The physician and theosophist Franz Hartmann (1838-1912) [39] was part of the circle around the mystical and Rosicrucian visionary Alois Mailänder (1844-1905), together with Gustav Meyrink, Nikolaus Gabele, Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden (the founder of Theosophical movement in Germany and the editor of the periodical Sphinx); this circle was part of the wider theosophical and occult movement in Germany towards the end of the nineteenth century. Other leading figures (most of whom knew or knew about Mailänder) were Rudolf Steiner, Max Dessoir, Friedrich Eckstein, Eduard von Hartmann, Carl du Prel and Carl Kiesewetter. [40] Mailänder practised meditation and mystical Böhmist i.e. Christian theosophical exercises and acted as a kind of spiritual advisor. The centrality of the Christ figure in the theosophy of Böhme and the Rosicrucian Mailänder is an aspect that returns in Meyrink’s later texts as well. Meyrink’s work can perhaps most fruitfully be considered in comparison with the theosophical-Rosicrucian-magical orientation in the works of Franz Hartmann.

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From the Secret symbols (Geheime Figuren der Rosenkreuzer, 1785)

In Hartmann’s story An adventure among the Rosicrucians, Boston 1887 (Ein abenteuer unter den Rosenkreuzern, Leipzig 1899), which was meant to introduce the ideas of Carl du Prel and his story “Das westliche Kloster” in England and America, could be seen in the tradition of fantastical Rosicrucian literature from J.V. Andreae via Eckartshausen to Gustav Meyrink. In this fictional account Hartmann introduces the Geheime Figuren der Rosenkreuzer. In part V “Das alchemistische Laboratorium” it is the character of Theodorus [Theophrastus Paracelsus?] who presents the eighteenth-century book of secret symbols to the narrator (pp. 111-112):

Mit diesen Worten reichte mir Theodorus ein Buch, das eine Anzahl farbiger Tafeln mit Symbolen und Zeichen enthielt. […] „Wenn du den Inhalt dieses Buches praktisch verstehst,“ sagte Theodorus, „wirst du nicht nur wissen, wie man Gold aus niederen Metallen macht, das ist eine der geringsten, unbedeutendsten und verhältnismäßig wertlosesten Teile unserer Kunst, sondern du wirst die Mysterien der Rose und des Kreuzes kennen; du wirst wissen, wie man in den Besitz des Steins der Weisen kommt und auch des Lebenselixiers, das dem Besitzer die Unsterblichkeit verleiht. […] du wirst sehen, wie man aus einem Tiere einen Menschen und aus einem Menschen ein himmlisches Wesen, Gott machen kann. Dieser letzte alchemistische Vorgang ist der eine, der not tut, und im Vergleich zu ihm sind alle andern Künste nur Spielereien. Was nützt es uns, äußerlichen Dingen nachzulaufen, die mit der Zeit entschwinden, wenn wir in uns selbst das erlangen können, was ewig und wahrhaftig ist?“

Even though Manly P. Hall termed Hartmann’s novel and edition of the Geheime Figuren a hoax to boost the sales of his own edition of the work, [41] the story shows some interesting parallels with Meyrink’s Rosicrucian novels especially towards the end when it works out the idea of the foundation of a theosophical monastery for the development of spiritual wisdom in this community of the wise. This would not be an easy task to accomplish, Theodorus warns the narrator, for obstacles in theology, science as well as in human nature would have to be overcome. The narrator subsequently (nearly) succumbs to a temptation of beautiful water nymphs in a visionary experience through the inhaling of a powder brought to him by a monk who claims to be Theodorus’s pupil (cf. Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster), but later finds a letter by Theodorus which shows him the right way again (once more cf. Theodor Gärtner in Der Engel). He also finds a copy of the Bible and opens it at the passage in St. Paul’s second epistle (ch.12) to the Corinthians about a man in Christ who was taken straight into heaven (12; 117-9; 135-7; 147).

To Rudolf Steiner, Christian-Rosicrucian initiation was a process within his newly founded movement of anthroposophy. He felt that the Rosicrucian texts, both written and printed, were incomplete and of necessity corrupted. Real or true Rosicrucians could only be known (to each other) through oral succession. The historical movements were not the same as the real Brethren. Whereas Steiner concentrated more on the importance of Christian Rosencreutz, Hartmann comes close to Meyrink’s description of the Brotherhood in his novels. He defined the Rosicrucian Brotherhood in his Im Vorhof des Tempels der Weisheit, enthaltend die Geschichte der wahren und falschen Rosenkreuzer (1924):

Daraus geht hervor, dass die „Rosenkreuzer“, wenn sie von ihrem Orden sprechen, etwas ganz anderes meinen als eine irdische und äußere Organisation von Personen, die sich aus diesem oder jenem Grunde „Rosenkreuzer“ nennen. Vielmehr meinen sie eine geistige Vereinigung, eine Harmonie göttlicher und geistig übereinstimmender, aber gleichwohl individueller Kräfte (als welche zum Beispiel die Engel gedacht werden, die nichts zu tun haben mit einer Geschichtsschreibung, die sich mit den Albernheiten des äußeren Lebens befaßt). [42]

Hartmann’s theosophical and Rosicrucian thought belongs to the German tradition of theosophy. Like Maack and Hartmann, Meyrink, Heinrich Tränker, Rudolf Steiner, G.W. Surya and Max Heindel developed their ideas about Rosicrucianism and the Rosicrucian Order from German theosophical roots. Significantly, all steered clear of practical, political and ideological – and certainly (proto-) fascist and racist systems. Following Hartmann’s presentation, Heindel’s Rosicrucian Fellowship and its students (Schüler) should also not be regarded as identical with the spiritual Rosicrucian “Vereinigung”. The foundation of this spiritual Rosicrucian order goes back to the Fama Fraternitatis. [43] The international modern Rosicrucian movement of the Lectorium Rosicrucianum grew out of Max Heindel’s Fellowship. [44] Its publishing house, De Rozekruis Pers, published Meyrink’s novels in Dutch translation, as well as more recently a translation of Die Verwandlung des Blutes.

Theodor Harmsen
BPH, Amsterdam

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"Der magische Schriftsteller Gustav Meyrink" publication by The Ritman Library's In The Pelikaan Publishing House. See Web Shop.

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Notes:

[1] On Meyrink and his works, see Theodor Harmsen, Der magische Schriftsteller Gustav Meyrink, Amsterdam: In de Pelikaan 2009, including a full description of the Meyrink collection of the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, Amsterdam; Hartmut Binder, Gustav Meyrink. Ein Leben im Bann der Magie, Prague 2009.

[2] On Franz Sedlacek and his connection to Meyrink, see Elisabeth Hintner, Franz Sedlacek. Werk und Leben 1891-1945, Vienna 1998 (1990).

[3] Cf. John Patrick Deveney, Paschal Beverly Randolph. A nineteenth-century black American spiritualist, Rosicrucian, and sex magician, Albany, NY 1997; Marco Pasi, “Crowley, Aleister”, in: Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism (and literature cited). On John Yarker, see Horst E. Miers, Lexikon des Geheimwissens.

[4] On the publications of Eduard Frank, see T. Harmsen, Der magische Schriftsteller Gustav Meyrink; Ralf Reiter, Das dämonische Diesseits. Phantastisches Erzählen in den Romanen Walpurgisnacht und Der weiße Dominikaner von Gustav Meyrink, Wetzlar 1997; Ibid. “Die Selbstschau des Esoterikers. Gustav Meyrinks Roman Der weiße Dominikaner“, in Quarber Merkur, 86 (1998), pp. 93-106.

[5] August Pfizmaier, Die Lösung der Leichname und Schwerter, ein Beitrag zur Kenntnis des Taoglaubens, Wien 1870; Lambert Binder, “Die Lösung der Leichname“, in: Quarber Merkur, 51 (1979), pp. 42-44.

[6] Meric Casaubon, ed., A true and faithful relation of what passed for many years between Dr. John Dee and some spirits, London 1659; Thomas Smith, Vitae quorundam eruditissimorum et illustrium virorum, London [i.e. Amsterdam] 1707; Carl Kiesewetter, John Dee, ein Spiritist des 16. Jahrhunderts, Leipzig 1893; Charlotte Fell Smith, John Dee (1527-1608), London 1909.

[7] Casaubon, p. 1; Cf. Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster, 1927, p. 184; Kiesewetter, pp. 33-38.

[8] Mysteriorum libri quinti or, five books of mystical exercises of Dr. John Dee. An angelic revelation of cabalistic magic and other mysteries occult and divine, revealed to Dr. John Dee and Edward Kelly A.D. 1581-1583 (i.e. the volumes preceding those published by Meric Casaubon) which was not published until 1985 but the manuscript was copied and studied by Elias Ashmole in 1672. Ashmole added a preface explaining how he obtained the original and how it was saved from the Great Fire of London; this copy may also have been consulted by Smith. The original manuscript studied by Smith is a Sloane MS and probably came to the British Library ca. 1730-40 when the famous antiquarian collector Sir Hans Sloane was expanding his alchemical collections. British Library, MS Sloane 3188; folio 59b contains the description of Dee receiving the stone from the angel at the west window. Ashmole’s copy of the manuscript is MS Sloane 3677 and came to the British Library in 1740. John Dee, Mysteriorum libri quinti, or, Five books of mystical exercises of Dr. John Dee, ed. Joseph Peterson, Felindenys, Silian 1985; and Christopher Whitby, ed. John Dee’s actions with spirits, New York 1988.

[9] John Dee, Mysteriorum libri quinti, or, Five books of mystical exercises of Dr. John Dee, ed. Joseph Peterson, Felindenys, Silian 1985, p. 121; Peterson’s revised edition, Boston 2003, p. 253.

[10] Cf. Marianne Wünsch, “Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Wirklichkeit. Zur Logik einer fantastischen Welt”, in: Meyrink, Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, 1993, for a literary analysis of the character-doubles. Wünsch links Mascee with Lipotin but also points to parallels between Lipotin and Kelley (especially pp. 532-536, 556).

[11] William Alexander Ayton, The life of John Dee. Translated from the Latin of Dr. Thomas Smith, London: The Theosophical Publishing Society 1908, reprinted in First Impressions Series, vol. 12 (1992). Ayton did not include Smith’s bibliography of Dee’s printed and ms works. On Ayton as an alchemist, see Tried and Tested. The appreciation of Hermetic and alchemical manuscripts from the 15th-20th centuries, online exhibition catalogue BPH, Amsterdam 2004, pp. 59-61, 66.

[12] See Meyrink’s edition of Dhoula Bel with his foreword on Randolph’s attempt on Blavatsky’s life through magic. Dhoula Bel as a Rosicrucian novel influenced Meyrink’s own fiction in the twenties. Especially the use of magical optical mirrors by Randolph (and used by John Dee) interested Meyrink, who tried to obtain one from Randolph’s widow. Cf. Harald Lamprecht, Neue Rosenkreuzer. Ein Handburch, Göttingen 2004, pp. 44, 87; John Patrick Deveney, Paschal Beverley Randolph. For the magical practices of English Rosicrucian movements S.R.I.A. and the Golden Dawn, cf. Joscelyn Godwin, The theosophical enlightenment, Albany NY 1994; Alex Owen, The place of enchantment. British occultism and the culture of the modern, London and Chicago 2004.

[13] For this context, see Wouter J. Hanegraaff and Jeffrey J. Kripal, eds., Hidden intercourse. Eros and sexuality in the history of western esotericism, Leiden 2008.

[14] In his series Pansophia, Tränker published Crowley’s Wege zum Sanktuarium. Das magische Werk der “Großen weißen Bruderschaft”. Nach authentischen Quellen als Kommentare zur “Botschaft der Meister”. Ausgewählt und übertragen vom “Collegium Pansophicum” i.A. Fra.: (Saturn)us (d.i. Karl Johannes Germer), Leipzig 1925. Tränker also translated parts of Dee’s diaries. See Peter-R. König, ed., Das Beste von Heinrich Tränker, Munich 1996.

[15] Letter Gustav Meyrink to Oldrich Neubert, 20.9.1926 (Prague, private collection); Cf. Deborah E. Harkness, John Dee’s conversations with angels, Cambridge 1999, pp. 115-6. Richard Deacon, John Dee, scientist, geographer, astrologer and secret agent to Elizabeth I, London 1968, chapters 11, 14; Marco Pasi, “Crowley, Aleister” in: Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism. On Heinrich Tränker, see Horst E. Miers, Lexikon des Geheimwissens.

[16] Social and political issues as well as reflections on the rise of anti-Semitism, totalitarianism and the rise of Ariosophy through the movements of Guido von List and Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels, may play some part (though indirectly) in the general sense of crisis in Meyrink’s novels. Meyrink, who was regarded as a Jewish writer by völkisch nationalist critics at the time, distanced himself from Ariosophy and List and was never part of the List Society, like some of the theosophists that also joined Mailänder. For this context, see Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, The occult roots of Nazism, 2009 (1985). Florian Marzin’s interpretation of a passage in Der weiße Dominikaner as fascist has been sufficiently disproved by Ralf Reiter. Marzin, Okkultismus und Phantastkik in den Romanen Gustav Meyrinks, Essen 1986, p. 98; Reiter, Das dämonische Diesseits, pp. 97-98.

[17] For interpretations of the novel, see e.g. Marianne Wünsch, „Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Wirklichkeit“ (Nachwort zu Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster), Frankfurt am Main, Berlin 1993; for Rosicrucian imagery in the novel, see especially Angela Reinthal, ‘Alchemie des Poeten’ John Dee (1527-1608) in Gustav Meyrinks Roman „Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster“ (1927)“, in: Wolfgang Müller-Funk, Christa Agnes Tuczay, Hgg., Faszination des Okkulten. Diskurse zum Übersinnlichen, Tübingen 2008, pp. 235-255. Will-Erich Peuckert’s studies on the Rosicrucians, Die Rosenkreuzer, and the posthumous expanded edition Das Rosenkreuz, appeared 1928 and reprinted in 1973. The latter edition contains additions on the Gold- und Rosenkreuzer. Also cf. Karl H. Frick, Licht und Finsternis, vol. 2 (1978).

[18] Carl Kiesewetter, „Die Rosenkreuzer, ein Blick in dunkele Vergangenheit“, in: Sphinx, 1. Jg, 1 (1886), pp. 42-54.

[19] Ernst Kurtzahn, Die Rosenkreuzer, Lorch 1920; On Kurtzahn (1879-1939), see Horst E. Miers, Lexikon des Geheimwissens. Franz Freudenberg, Aus der älteren Geschichte der Rosenkreuzer (n.p., ca. 1919).

[20] A German edition of Andreae’s Die chymische Hochzeit by Ferdinand Maack (1913) was available. This Rosicrucian text reproduced John Dee’s Monas symbol. However, the Monas does not appear to play a role in Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster. For the importance of Die chymische Hochzeit as a possible source for the novel, see Angela Reinthal (note 17). For the Rosicrucian interest in Der weiße Dominikaner, see Ralf Reiter, “Die Selbstschau des Esoterikers. Gustav Meyrinks Roman Der weiße Dominikaner“, in Quarber Merkur, 86 (1998), pp. 93-106.

[21] Angela Reinthal argues for a more comprehensive analysis of the novel but leaves out the role of Schmid Noerr altogether (note 17). See T. Harmsen, “The occult adventures of a ghostwriter. The mystical novelist Friedrich Alfred Schmid Noerr (1877-1969) and the composition of Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster (1927)“ (forthcoming).

[22] See e.g. Alexander von Bernus, Das Geheimnis der Adepten. Aufschlüsse über das Magisterium der Alchymie, die Bereitung der grossen Arkana und den Weg zum Lapis Philosophorum, Sersheim 1956; Heinrich Tränker, Die Pansophie der hermetischen Bruderschaft vom Rosenkreuz, die besonderen Aufgaben ihrer Helfer-seelen und mystischen Grundlagen in Ewigkeit und Zeit, Munich 1923.

[23] Cf. Karl von Eckartshausen, Aufschlüsse der Magie (1788-1792); Willy Schrödter, Die Rosenkreuzer [1939], pp. 34-38; on Paul Zillmann and Ferdinand Maack: Goodrick-Clarke, pp. 25-26. Zillmann published Eckartshausen and also reproduced the Geheime Figuren in his periodical Neue Metaphysische Rundschau, 8. Jg., 12 (1905), pp. 41-8, 92-8.

[24] On Eckartshausen, see Jacques Fabry in: Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism (and literature cited); T. Harmsen, “Karl von Eckartshausen (1752-1803): “Die innere Kirche entstünd …”, online exhibition, http://www.ritmanlibrary.nl/c/p/h/bel_16.html. On Lopukhin, see Antoine Faivre, in: Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism (and literature cited).

[25] Franz Hartmann, Cosmology, or universal science. Cabala Alchemy. The mysteries of the universe, regarding God, Nature, Man, the macrocosm and the microcosm, eternity and time. Explained according to the religion of Christ, by means of the secret symbols of the Rosicrucians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Boston 1888.

[26] Cf. Steiner’s reading of “Die chymische Hochzeit des Christian Rosenkreutz“, in: Das Reich (1917-1918); See e.g. Paul M. Allen, ed., A Christian Rosenkreutz anthology, Blauvelt, NY, 1968, 3rd rev. ed. 1981; Viktor Stracke, Das Geistgebäude der Rosenkreuzer. Wie kann man die Figuren der Rosenkreuzer heute verstehen?, Dornach 1993.

[27] Johann Conrad Beissel (1691-1768) emigrated in 1720 and founded his community at Ephrata, Pennsylvania ca. 1728-1732. Its continuity with Kelpius’s community, however, has not been established unambiguously. Beissel contacted Kelpius’s successor Conrad Matthai (1678-1748) on arrival in Pennsylvania. Modern Rosicrucian movements such as Harvey Spencer Lewis’s AMORC have traced their origins back to the earliest American immigrant communities of Kelpius and Beissel. Cf. Lamprecht, Neue Rosenkreuzer, pp. 80-81; Frick, Licht und Finsternis, vol. 2, p. 417; Jeff Bach, Voices of the Turtledoves: the sacred world of Ephrata, 2006 (2002). Bach finds no Rosicrucian influences at Ephrata.

[28] So far I have not succeeded in tracing the Sachse manuscript. Sachse’s Ephrata collections are in Pennsylvania State Archives, Harrisburg (Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission) Ms Group 351; Sachse presented the manuscript as one of the relics of the German pietists. Sachse, p. 7-10. M.P. Hall dated the Sachse Ms ca. 1700-1750, “nearer 1700” (Codex, p. 38), which is somewhat too early. This version of the Geheime Figuren was ready to be printed in 1766. Hall in his edition of another manuscript copy of the same work criticizes Sachse’s association of the Pennsylvanian pietist settlements and Rosicrucianism. Manly P. Hall, Codex Rosae Crucis. D.O.M.A. A rare and curious manuscript of Rosicrucian interest, now published for the first time in its original form, Los Angeles 1938 (1971).

[29] Peuckert worked on an expanded edition, published posthumously as Das Rosenkreuz in 1973, which, however, leaves out the illustrations of the Breslau manuscript. Also see his Pansophie. Ein Versuch zur Geschichte der weißen und schwarzen Magie, Stuttgart 1936, with a reproduction of the Arbor Pansophiae, p. 421; On Peuckert, see Horst E. Miers, Lexikon des Geheimwissens.

[30] Manly P. Hall, Codex Rosae Crucis.

[31] For the Gold- und Rosenkreuzer, see e.g. Renko Geffarth, Religion und arkane Hierarchie. Der Orden der Gold- und Rosenkreuzer als Geheime Kirche im 18. Jahrhundert, Leiden 2007.

[32] On Ferdinand Maack, see Lamprecht, Neue Rosenkreuzer, pp. 183-191; Corinna Treitel, A science for the soul. Occultism and the genesis of the German Modern, Baltimore 2004, pp. 172-181. A selection of his works was published as Hermetische Schriften (Auswahl) von Dr. Ferdinand Maack, Owingen 2005.

[33] The manifestos were published by Hermann Barsdorf Verlag as the first volume in the series Geheime Wissenschaften edited by Antonius von der Linden. Barsdorf Verlag also published a facsimile edition of the Geheime Figuren der Rosenkreuzer (Berlin 1919).

[34] Alfred Müller-Edler, “Ein Alchmyistischer Test“, in: Alchemistische Blätter, 1. Jg., Nr. 10-12 (1928), pp. 111-115, describes Maack’s edition of Kirchweger’s Catena Aurea.

[35] Cf. Ferdinand Maack, Zweimal gestorben! Die Geschichte eines Rosenkreuzers aus dem XVIII. Jahrhundert, Leipzig 1912.

[36] The alchemical image of the Catena Aurea goes back to late medieval alchemical tradition. Cf. a manuscript also containing the Rosarium philosophorum in the British Library, MS Sloane 2476, f. 10v, reproduced in Gareth Roberts, The mirror of alchemy. Alchemical ideas and images in manuscripts and books from antiquity to the seventeenth century, London 1994, p. 49.

[37] An actual Rosicrucian Order of the Golden Rose, Ordo Rosae Aurae (ORA) was established by Martin Erler in 1957. It succeeded a “Gustav Meyrink Loge”, a group studying Meyrink’s works in Munich after the war. Cf. Lamprecht, Neue Rosenkreuzer, p. 151.

[38] Copies of the editions 1723 (First edition), 1728, 1738, 1757, 1757 (Latin edition), and finally the Gold- und Rosenkreuzer edition of 1781, are in the BPH, Amsterdam.

[39] On Franz Hartmann, see Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke in: Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism (and literature cited); Lamprecht, Neue Rosenkreuzer, pp. 172-181; Horst E. Miers, Lexikon des Geheimwissens, pp. 275-277.

[40] On Mailänder, see Emil Bock, Rudolf Steiner. Studien zu seinem Lebensgang und Lebenswerk, 1967; on Steiner and Rosicrucianism, see Lamprecht, Neue Rosenkreuzer, pp. 191-205.

[41] Hall’s critical evaluation appeared in his edition of Codex Rosae Crucis, pp. 29-32; Hartmann’s Boston edition of the novel contained a prospectus and an advertisement for an edition of the Geheime Figuren.

[42] This work first appeared in English (In the pronaos of the temple of wisdom containing the discovery of the true and the false Rosicrucians, Boston 1890) and was translated by Heinrich Tränker (pseud. Br. Recnartus) whose edition came out in the series Pansophia, München: Otto Wilhelm Barth, 1924; this edition, pp. 27-28. Tränker, following Hartmann, planned further publications of the Geheime Figuren, to be published by Otto Wilhelm Barth. He advertised the vols. in Alchemistische Blätter (1927-1930); Maack, Hartmann, Meyrink’s friends Franz Spunda and Alfred Müller-Edler contributed to this periodical. Cf. Cis van Heertum, “Exploring alchemy in the early 20th century, Alchemical periodicals II”, http://www.ritmanlibrary.nl/c/p/h/bel_19.html. Meyrink published his essay on alchemy with Barth Thomas von Aquino. Abhandlung über den Stein der Weisen (1925); it was reviewed by Ferdinand Maack in Alchemistische Blätter, 1. Jg, Nr. 3 (1927), p. 48. One letter by Tränker to Meyrink survives in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich.

[43] See Lamprecht, Neue Rosenkreuzer, pp. 221-222. The symbol of the Rosicrucian Fellowship was first used by Franz Hartmann: Lamprecht, Neue Rosenkreuzer, pp. 243-244.

[44] See Lamprecht, Neue Rosenkreuzer, pp. 250-286.
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Re: Gustav Meyrink and the Rosicrucians, by Theodor Harmsen

Postby admin » Wed Jan 17, 2018 2:43 pm

Uncovering the Secret of “THE M”: The Adept Behind the Western Tradition
by Richard Cloud
Mystica Aeterna, the Rosicrucian Tradition Website
July 7, 2017

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Image


Capesius (arriving, approaches her):
I know an old friend will not ask in vain
For leave to stay and rest awhile with thee
Since now, e'en more than any former time,
He needs what in thine house so oft he found.

Felicia:
When thou wast still far off, thy wearied step
Told me the tale which now thine eyes repeat;
That sorrow dwelleth in thy soul today.

Capesius (who has seated himself):
Even of onetime 'twas not granted me
To bring much merriment into thy home;
But special patience must I crave today
When, heavy-hearted and of peace bereft,
I force my way unto the home of peace.

Felicia:
We were right glad to see thee in the days
When scarce another man came near this house,
And thou art still our friend, despite events
That came between us, e'en though many now
Are glad to seek us in this lonely glade.

Capesius:
The tale is true then which hath reached mine ears,
That thy dear Felix, so reserved of yore,
Is nowadays a man much visited?

Felicia:
'Tis so; good Felix used to shut us off
From everyone —; but now the people throng
To question him, and he must answer them.
His duty bids him lead this novel life.
In former days he cared not to impart,
Save to his inner self, the secret lore
Concerning spirit-deeds and nature's powers
By rock and forest unto him revealed.
Nor did men seem to value it before.
How great a change hath now come o'er the times!
To many men lending a willing ear
To what they counted folly in the past,
Greedy for wisdom, Felix can reveal.
And when my dear good husband has to talk

(Felix Balde comes out of the house.)

Hour upon hour on end, as oft he doth,
I long for those old days of which I spake.
How oft would Felix earnestly declare
That in the quiet heart enshrined, the soul
Must learn to treasure up the spirit-gifts
From worlds divine in mercy sent to her.
He held it treachery to that high speech
Of spirit, to reveal it to an ear
That was but open to the world of sense.

Felix:
Felicia cannot reconcile herself
To this much altered fashion of our life.
As she regrets the loneliness of old,
So she deplores the many days that pass
In which we have but few hours for ourselves.

Capesius:
What made thee strangers welcome to a house
That shut them out so sternly heretofore?

Felix:
The spirit-voice which speaks within my heart
Bade me of yore be silent; I obeyed.
Now that it bids me speak I show myself
Equally faithful unto its command.
Our human nature undergoes a change
As earth's existence gradually evolves.
Now are we very near an epoch's close;
And spirit-knowledge therefore must in part
Be now revealed unto every man
Who chooseth to receive it to himself.
I know how little what I have to tell
Is in agreement with man's current thought;
The spirit-life, they say, must be made known,
In strict and logical thought sequences,
And men deny all logic to my words.
True science on a firm foundation based,
Cannot, they say, regard me otherwise
Than as a visionary soul who seeks
A solitary road to wisdom's seat,
And knows no more of science than of art.
Yet not a few declare it worth their while
The tangle of my language to explore,
Because therein from time to time is found
Something of worth, to reason not opposed.
I am a man into whose heart must flow,
Untouched by art, each vision he may see.
Nought know I of a knowledge lacking words.
When I retreat within mine inmost heart
And also when I list to nature's voice,
Then such a knowledge wakes to life in me
As hath no need to seek for any words;
Speech is to it as intimately linked
As is his body's sheath to man on earth;
And knowledge such as this, which in this wise
Reveals itself to us from spirit-worlds,
Can be of service even unto those
Who understand it not. And so it is
That every man is free to come to me
Who will attend to what I have to say.
Many are led by curiosity
And other trivial reasons to my door.
I know that this is so, but also know
That though the souls of just such men as these
Are not this moment living for the light,
Yet in them have been planted seeds of good
Which will not fail to ripen in due time.

Capesius:
Let me, I pray thee, freely speak my mind.
I have admired thee now these many years;
Yet up till now I have not grasped the sense
Which underlies thy strange mysterious words.

Felix:
It surely will unfold itself to thee;
For with a lofty spirit dost thou strive —
And noble heart, and so the time must come
When thou thyself shalt hear the voice of truth.
Thou dost not mark how full of rich content
Man, as the image of the cosmos, is:
His head doth mirror heaven's very self:
The spirits of the spheres work through his limbs
And in his breast earth-beings hold their sway.
To all of these opposed, in all their might
Appear the demons, natives of the Moon,
Whose lot it is to cross those beings' aims.
The human form as it before us stands,
The soul through which we live and feel and strive,
The spirit that illuminates our path:
All these, full many gods have worked to mould
Throughout the ages of eternity;
And this their purpose was: to join in one,
Forces proceeding out of all the worlds
Which should, in combination, make mankind.

-- Scene 5, The Soul's Probation, by Rudolf Steiner


Much speculation has gone into uncovering the real identity of Steiner’s M. According to one Rosicrucian Order in Germany, they know the identity of this unnamed ‘Master.’

Why is this so significant? According to Steiner’s teachings ‘the M’ must have been the present day incarnation of Christian Rosenkreutz during that time. Here I reveal the name of this person and share the journey of what I found. These discoveries were surprising to say the least.

Firstly, it must be said we’ll draw upon published materials to evaluate this claim. Anyone can cross reference these statements and look at the facts. As a student of Rudolf Steiner I have always been fascinated by the identity of who the Master was and wanted to know more. My research here in no way attempts to diminish the work of Dr. Steiner. On the contrary, it is my love for this great teacher of humanity that caused me to undertake this attempt at clarification.

In 1907 Rudolf Steiner wrote a brief autobiographical sketch known as the “Barr Document”. In this famous document Steiner mentions his first meeting with “the M”. Since that time speculation has swirled around the identity of this individual, and no wonder. Unlike other Rosicrucian founders like Harvey Spencer Lewis or Max Heindel, who made claims of inheriting the Rosicrucian tradition, followers of Anthrosophy actually believe Steiner encountered C.R.C face to face!

Steiner himself never identified this person. He wrote and spoke extensively on the legend of Christian Rosenkreutz but never again specifically addressed the M. We know only that an agent of the M met and befriended the young Steiner before their physical meeting could occur. He says, “I did not meet the M. immediately, but first an emissary who was completely initiated into the secrets of plants and their effects, and into their connection with the cosmos and human nature.” [1]

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FELIX KOGUZKI

Due to the inestimable work of Emil Bock it has been determined with certainty that the identity of this messenger of the M was a Swabian herb gatherer by the name of Felix Koguzki (1833-1909).

This humble gatherer of medicinal herbs from Vienna played such a significant role in Steiner’s life that he was later immortalized by Steiner in the four Mystery Plays as the character “Felix Balde”. What relation did Koguzki have to the M? There is a clue hidden in the description of him being “initiated into the secrets of plants and their effects, and into their connection with the cosmos and human nature.” This is important, as you’ll see below.

In considering the identity of the M we must bear in mind what Steiner said about the timing of such things: “The temptation for people to fanatically idealize a person bearing such authority is too great, which is the worst thing that can happen – it would be too much like idolatry. This silence, however, is essential if we wish not only to avoid the egoistic temptations of ambition and pride (which we could probably overcome), but above all to avoid the occult, astral attacks that would be directed constantly at an individual of that level. That is why it is essential that a fact such as this not be mentioned until after a hundred years.” [2]

Steiner believed CRC to be physically incarnated during his time[3] and that the identity of this individual can only become known after a hundred years have passed, which places us precisely within the time frame wherein his identity may be publicly stated.

Upon sharing these thoughts with a friend, he informed me of an oral tradition kept among a small Pansophic Circle still active in Germany which knew the name of the Elder Brother of Rudolf Steiner. He deferred to his own initiator, who approved the sharing of this name. The timing was uncanny.

My friend then told me that Alois Mailander was ‘not only the Elder Brother of Steiner but was known as “THE Elder Brother” during that time,’ most recognizing him as the Great Adept.[4]

It caught my curiosity so I decided to look further into it, not knowing what I’d find.

It turns out: I did actually find reference to:

1. Alois Mailander being called ‘the M’ in that period.
2. An extremely strong indication that he was in fact C.R.C returned.

Everything hereafter is my own research, found after the lead was provided by my friend.

Image
ALOIS MAILANDER

Alois Mailander (1843-1905) was an illiterate factory worker from the turn of the 19th century in Kempton. Yet despite his inability to read, not only was he Lionized in Kempten but many flocked from all around to hear his Bohemian sermons, said to have been given in the form of Christian-Sophianic mysticism. What’s more, he taught ‘Kerning exercises, by which Mailander was able to communicate with animals.’[5]

His own mentor was a Rosicrucian named Prestel which we’ll get to later.

An easy Wikipedia search showed that many leading occultists and theosophists made pilgrimages to Mailander and his Circle of Pansophists, known as the “Association of Promise” which he later opened in Dreieichenhain near Frankfurt.[6]

Among the most well known members are Gustav Meyrink, Franz Hartmann, Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden, Franz Gustav Gebhard, and Karl Weinfurter. Many powerful influences came from Mailander. Could this be the source for the occult revival?

Even Madam Helena Blavatsky once said of Mailander ‘that there was only one initiate in Germany and that he lived in Kempten, but that he did not belong to her school.’ [7] According to Willy Schroedter, however, Madame Blavatsky did in fact belong to Mailander’s school.[8] Steiner actually stated it was Blavatsky who broke away from the Rosicrucian Master she was associated with.[9]

One has to ask, how is it possible that Blavatsky proclaimed such high praise for the ‘only one initiate in Germany’ and yet Steiner remained entirely silent? This was despite the fact Steiner’s own friends were studying with Mailander. This silence in itself speaks in volumes unless Steiner referred to Alois Mailander in some other way or as another name? In fact, it seems he did –

Mailander was also known as “Brother John” among the initiates of the Pansophic Circle. It was believed John the Evangelist spoke through him, or more precisely, that ‘he spoke as John.’ [10] But why is this so important? Some of you will immediately know.

Students of Anthroposophy are well aware that Rudolf Steiner taught that Lazarus and John were the same individual and that he has incarnated continually throughout history. One of the most significant of his incarnations occurred when John incarnated as Christian Rosenkreutz in the 14th century.[11]

This connection is so important I’ve provided the original quote here:

“Sie sind die Überzeugung, das durch Mailänder von Zeit zu Zeit Johannes selbst spräche. Mailänder Können den Zustand bewusst herbeiführen. Er wurde, Bruder Johannes ‘genannt.” [Google translate: They are convinced that from time to time Johannes himself speaks through Milanese. Milanese can consciously bring about the state. He was called Brother Johannes.](See Friedrich Eckstein als Okkultist; Rolf Speckner).[12]/[13]


This startling bit of information immediately brought to mind the Barr Document and Steiner’s meeting with “the M”. If Mailander was known as “The Elder Brother” and “Brother John” among the Pansophists, is it possible that Steiner’s “M” stood in fact for Mailander?

Actually, I found proof of this. However naming him ‘the M’ was only natural. His own initiator Prestel was also called ‘the P’ by the Pansophists.[14] ‘The M’ only shows continuation of that tradition.

But before providing the final nail in the coffin let’s examine a few curious threads that connect Steiner and Mailander for those who want to know the full story.

First, there is Felix Koguzki, the messenger of the M. We know Koguzki was especially interested in the writings of the German mystic Joseph Ennemoser. He was a physician and mystic from south Tyrol, and an advocate of Franz Anton Mesmer’s animal magnetism. Steiner tells us Ennemoser was Koguzki’s “dearest reading”.[15] The fact that Ennemoser was from south Tyrol gains significance when we learn that Anna Mailander (Alois Mailander’s mother) is from the very same province.[16]

As mentioned, Steiner depicts Koguzki as knowing the secrets of plants. This would make sense because in Mailander’s circle there was a teaching known as “Formenlehre” (Morphology), which was a doctrine of forms wherein “each letter of the alphabet, plant, or animal had a certain symbolic value” and has been described as “a kind of primitive derivation of Jakob Bohme’s theosophy.” [17]

Yet another link between Rudolf Steiner and Alois Mailander is the teaching that Christ’s return would occur etherically and not physically. Mailander-John’s letters (usually dictated by him to followers) are full of reverence for the Christ and speak often of his return being an etheric manifestation.[18]

This delicate connection continues to strengthen when we learn of other known occultists who were intimately familiar with both Steiner and Mailander at the same time. One such person was Friedrich Eckstein. Steiner once wrote to Eckstein that there were two events in his life that “I counted so very much to be the most important of my existence, and I would be completely different if they had not entered. I must be silent about the one, but the other is the fact that I got to know you. What you are to me, you know better than I do myself; but I know I must thank you infinitely.”[19]

The essential key here is that Eckstein was in fact Mailander’s own student.[20]/[21] We have to question, was the other great event of Steiner’s life the meeting of CRC in Mailander?

The exercises taught by Mailander from the Kerning operations actually provide a source for Steiner’s own occult practices. Mailander prescribed exercises using formulations of the word IAO with other letters of the alphabet, applied with the aim of permeating and transforming the body.[22]

The prominent Theosophist and occultist Wilhelm Hubbe-Schleiden was another individual acquainted with both Steiner and Mailander. Hubbe-Schleiden was the president of the German branch of the Theosophical Society of which Steiner was to become General Secretary, and in 1902 handed over the Presidency of the branch to Steiner. Hubbe-Schleiden later fell out with the German Pansophists, one reason being because he would not do the work prescribed to him by “Brother John.”

Mailander attempted many times to get Hubbe-Schleiden to perform the mental exercises necessary for his advancement but Hubbe-Schleiden would not perform the them as prescribed. This resulted in Mailander eventually telling him:

“I have had a look at your bodily condition according to your wish, but have received a completely different result from your view… the fact that your work is not spiritually successful or that the strength for it has disappeared is not true and rests more on a morbid imagination.” [23]

Finally, the most revealing discovery is the diary entry of theosophist Clemens Driessen on September 26, 1891. In this entry Driessen is speaking of Hubbe-Schleiden’s progress with Mailander and mentions that Hubbe-Schleiden was not satisfied, but “This too appears to me that he’s in opposition to the approach of the M(ailander), who is critical towards him, but perhaps only as far as the intellectual creative-imagination teachings are concerned..’

When I saw that, I was blown away. Here is the original quote:

“Dies tritt, scheint mir, auch darin zu Tage, dass er sich mit dem M.[ailänder] in Widerspruch setzt, zu ihm sich kritisch verhält – vielleicht allerdings nur was die intellektuellen Vorstellungsbilder angeht”. [24]

Here we have proof of Mailander being specifically referred to as “the M” by occultists around him.

But he wasn’t only called the M’ – he spoke as John, who was C.R.C according to Steiner.


In light of all these facts I am obliged to think my friend’s oral tradition is correct and that Steiner’s “M” may very well have been Alois Mailander. It has been over a hundred years since his death so I believe there is no harm in speculation on these matters, and after all its revelation from the Pansophists is rather timely.[25]

May the Roses Bloom upon your Cross.

Richard Cloud
richard.cloud9 <at> gmail.com

_______________

Notes:

[1] GA 262, Rudolf Steiner and Marie Steiner-von Sivers: Correspondence and Documents 1901-1925

[2] The Secret Stream, Rudolf Steiner, pg 135

[3] “Christian Rosenkreutz is incarnated again today.” IBID

[4] Mailander was the disciple of Prestel, a Rosicrucian of remarkable psychic ability. The Pansophists of Germany today claim to be the last surviving thread of the Prestel-Mailander lineage. My friend many of you know well.

[5] ‘Rosicrucian Notebook’ by Willy Schroedter pg 132. Bear in mind that if Mailander was illiterate how then did he know the Kerning exercises if not by a strong oral tradition and instruction period, or unless he provided them in his prior incarnation 100 years before.

[6] Bund der Verheisung

[7] Friedrich Eckstein as Occultist, by Rolf Speckner, pg 10.

[8] in ‘Rosicrucian Notebook’ by Willy Schroedter pg 131-132 that Blavatsky was a member of his school.

[9] “The fact is that Blavatsky was prompted from a certain direction, and as a result of this she produced all the things which are written in Isis Unveiled. But by various machinations Blavatsky for a second time fell under outside influence, namely of eastern esoteric teachers propelled by cultural tendencies of an egoistic nature. From the beginning a biased policy lay at the basis of the things they wished to achieve through Blavatsky. It included the desire to create a kind of sphere of influence — first of a spiritual nature, but then in a more general sense — of the East over the West, by providing the West’s spirituality, or lack of it if you like, with eastern wisdom. That is how the transformation took place from the thoroughly European nature of Isis Unveiled to the thoroughly eastern nature of Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine.” From ‘History of the Anthroposophical Movement’ Steiner 1923 http://southerncrossreview.org/88/stein ... ent-5.html

[10] Life and Times of Rudolf Steiner, Emil Bock, Vol. 1, pgs 202 – 211.

[11] See ‘Temple Legend’ of Rudolf Steiner, also taught by Heindel.

[12] Meyrink also mentions that he was called ‘Johannes’ Gustav Meyrink: Fledermäuse. München 1981, S. 241f u. 410

[13] You also have to consider that the I-Am activity founded by Guy Ballard, under his pseudonym Godre Ray King in the 1930’s was actually a plagiarism of ideas taught by Mailander. The real source for those I-Am statements were originally from Kerning, and several Theosophist encountered them through Mailander who taught the Kerning work. Another in carnation of John-CRC was also Saint Germaine according to Steiner, which is why Guy Ballard attributed them to Germaine, in mistaking their source, having believed they in fact came from Mailander who was the last incarnation.

[14] ‘However, we are interested in someone else who belonged to this group, one P., a Rosicrucian. He was named Prestel and had the ability to convert base metals into noble ones.’ A Rosicrucian Notebook, Willy Schreodter, pg 132 here drawing upon the letters of Meyrink.

[15] Rudolf Steiner, GA 192

[16] Alois Mailander, Wikipedia

[17] Life and Times of Rudolf Steiner, Emil Bock, Vol. 1, pgs 202 – 211

[18] IBID

[19] Rudolf Steiner to Friedrich Eckstein. November 1890. In: Rudolf Steiner. Letters Vol. II. G.A.39. Dornach, 1987, pg 50

[20] Eckstein has also had contact with another spiritual teacher, who may have pointed him to Kerning. It is the Weaver Alois Mailänder (1844-1905), who was originally based in Kempten. Rudolf Steiner an Friedrich Eckstein. [Ende] November 1890. In: Rudolf Steiner. Briefe Bd. II. G.A.39. Dornach 1987. S. 50-51.

[21] Bock writes: “Friedrich Eckstein has often been with him.” [1] Emil Bock. Rudolf Steiner. Studies on his life and work. Stuttgart 1961, p.180-186.. ‘ In addition to Wilhelm’s long-standing or temporary pupils, Wilhelm Hübbe Schleiden (Munich), Franz Gustav Gebhard (Elberfeld), Bernhard Hubo (Hamburg), Franz Hartmann (Vienna / Kempten ), Gustav Meyrink (Prague), Günter Karl Wagner (Hanover), Paula Stryczek (Hanover), Carl Count zu Leiningen-Billigheim (Vienna). Bock writes; ‘A small group of followers had gathered around him. They were convinced that through Milan, from time to time, John himself was speaking. Milan was able to deliberate the state consciously. He was called ‘Brother John’. Since he could not write, someone had to write his letters, often his brother-in-law Nikolaus Gabele. A great part of the prominence of the Theosophical Society piloted to Kempten and became a student of this Christian seer. Helena Blavatsky had also said that in Germany today there is only one initiate and he lives in Kempten. But he does not belong to her school.’

[22] Interestingly, the founder of the OTO, Carl Kellner, also utilized these operations as Mailander was his teacher as well. It’s certain Steiner didn’t get them from Kellner, who went on to develop them and Kremmerz continued the work. Mailander appears to be a hidden source for the occult revival.

[23] Life and Times of Rudolf Steiner, Emil Bock

[24] See Hubbe-Schleiden’s Indian Diaries 1894/1896, page 17, wherein a footnote is inserted with the diary entry from Clements Dreissen.

[25] It must be mentioned that had I not been told Mailander was the Elder Brother I wouldn’t have known where to look. In future this group will reveal more information according to my friend. It is a matter of fact that my contact did not know of these details drawn from related materials. My own Rosicrucian informer actually knows very little of Steiner, despite knowing this amazing piece about Mailander. The Pansophists today embody a lineage of the pre-Steiner representation of this current, and consider theirs the original teaching that Blavatsky and Steiner had encountered. Still today they do not mix it with Anthroposophy, keeping the teaching in its original form in the Pansophic Order.

ENDNOTE: For further proof of Steiner’s involvement with Mailander’s Pansophic circle see the book Hypostasierung – die Logik mythischen Denkens im Werk Gustav Meyrinks nach 1907: Eine Studie zur erkenntnistheoretischen Problematik eines phantastischen Oeuvres (Hamburger Beiträge zur Germanistik) – Quoted by Helmut Zander in footnote 203 on page 840 in his informative book ‘Anthroposophie in Deutschland: Theosophische Weltanschauung Und Gesellschaftliche Praxis 1884-1945 (“Blavatsky habe sich zeitweise als Rosenkreuzerin verstanden, Hartmann und Gustav Meyrink sollen in die »rosenkreuzerischen Schulee von Johannes [i.ee. Alois] Mailänder (die Steiner gekannt habe), gegangen sein”).
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Re: Gustav Meyrink and the Rosicrucians, by Theodor Harmsen

Postby admin » Wed Mar 01, 2023 2:01 am

The death of smoker Schmel: The sleepy story
by Gustav Meyrink
[English version by Google Translate]

What distinguishes de Guignes's research on the Samaneens from that of his predecessors is his use of Asian sources. We recall that La Croze's synthesis only mentioned a poetry lexicon, an ancient language book, and (with a question mark) the Civavakkiyam as "books of the Samaneens" (La Croze 1724:494-95). None of these texts is currently associated with Buddhism. By contrast, de Guignes from the outset based his view on two specific texts. He devoted the entire second part of his 1753 paper to their analysis and included partial translations from the Arabic and Chinese (de Guignes 1759:791-804). The first of these texts, the so-called Anbertkend (sometimes also spelled Ambertkend), is today known as the Amrtakunda (Pool of Nectar), a Hatha Yoga text of Indian origin that has nothing to do with Buddhism. Carl W. Ernst called it "one of the most unusual examples of cross-cultural encounter in the annals of the study of religion" on account of its complex synthesis of Indian, Islamic, gnostic, and Neoplatonic influences and the fact that no other literary source on yoga was so widely disseminated among Sufis (Ernst 1996:9-11). The use of this text by de Guignes is a hitherto unexplored facet of this interesting cross-cultural encounter. For him the Anbertkend was an important text of the so-called "Indian religion" that "contains the principles admitted by the Yogis, particularly those related to magic" (p. 791)." The second text discussed by de Guignes is presented as "the work of Fo himself that includes all the moral teachings he bequeathed to his disciples" (p. 791). While this second text is well known under the title Forty-Two Sections Sutra and is extant in Chinese, the Anbertkend or Amrtakunda is not exactly a household word. De Guignes described it as an Indian book that was "translated into the Persian language by the Imam Rokneddin Mohammed of Samarkand who had received it from a Brahmin called Behergit of the sect of the Yogis" and was subsequently translated into Arabic by Mohieddin-ben-al-arabi.12 [Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi (1165–1240)] D'Herbelot's Bibliotheque Orientale features the following information under the heading "Anbertkend" (1697:114):

Book of the Brachmans or Bramens which contains the religion and philosophy of the Indians; this word signifies the cistern where one draws the water of life. It is divided into fifty Beths or Treatises of which each has ten chapters. A Yogi or Indian dervish called Anbahoumatah, who converted to Islam, translated it from the Indian into Arabic under the title Merat al maani, The Mirror of Intelligence; but though it was translated, this book cannot be understood without the help of a Bramen or Indian Doctor.


Four decades after d'Herbelot, Abbe Antoine BANIER (1673-1741) widely disseminated the idea that the four Vedas contain "all the sciences and all religious ceremonies" whereas the Anbertkend "contains the doctrines of the Indians" (Banier 1738:1.128-29). De Guignes also thought that "this book is not at all the Vedam of the Indians" but regarded it as "a work of the contemplative philosophers who, far from accepting the Vedam, reject it as useless based on the great perfection they believe to have attained" (de Guignes 1759:791-92). This description very much resembles the one given by Bartholomaus Ziegenbalg and La Croze of the Gnanigol [Ganiguels] and their (Tamil Siddha) literature including the Civaviikkiyam. According to de Guignes, the Anbertkend is a "summary of the contemplatives of India" (p. 796) that advocates that "to become happy one must annihilate all one's passions, not let oneself be seduced by the senses, and be in the kind of universal apathy that is so much recommended in the book of Fo" (p. 793). Apart from this, the only apparent connection to Fo or Buddha is a mantra connected with the contemplation of the planet "Boudah or Mercury" (p. 800)....

In his discussion, de Guignes throws all kinds of data from India and Tibet (from Giorgi's Alphabetum Tibetanum; p. 65) into the mix and quotes La Croze on the Gnanigols and the Anbertkend as well as Dow on Yogic practices (pp. 69-70). Everything seemed to support his idea that these practitioners were trying hard to achieve total concentration on God (p. 70).

-- The Birth of Orientalism, by Urs App


If anyone believes that the secret teachings of the Middle Ages died out with the witch trials, or that they are even based on conscious or unconscious deception - he is badly mistaken.

No one understood this better than Amadeus Veverka, who had today been promoted to "superior inconnu" in the occult order of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor under symbolic pomp and now pensively -- shuddered by the teachings of the Book of Ambertkend -- on a hewn block of stone on the hillside sitting on the "Nusler Stiege" and yawning sleepily into the blue night.

The young man lets all the strange images pass by in his mind that had come before his eyes this evening -- -- he still hears the monotonous voice of the Arch-Censor Ganesha as if from afar: "The first figure about which one pronouncing the word Hom shows up under a black and yellow mixed color, she is in the house of Saturn When our mind is occupied solely with that figure, when our eyes are fixed on her and we pronounce the name Hom to ourselves , thus the eyes of the mind are opened, and one acquires the secret -- -- --"

And the brethren of the order stood about, with the blue ribbon slung over their foreheads, and their staves garlanded with roses. -- Free explorers who fathom the depths of the deity, dressed in masks and white robes, so that no one knows the other and no one knows about the other. -- (But when you meet on the street, you recognize each other by the handshake.) -- Yes, yes -- such institutions are often inscrutable and wonderful.

Amadeus Veverka reaches under his waistcoat to see if he still has the badge of his new dignity, the golden coin with the enamelled grape seed, and wallows in the feeling of proud superiority over these sleeping people in the sea of ​​houses at night, who know nothing better than the mysteries of magistrate decrees and how to eat well and drink a lot.

Counting on his fingers, he repeats everything that is to be kept top secret from now on.

"If things go on like this," whispers that vile inner self that enthusiastic German poets so beautifully cloak under the symbol of the "black knight on the left", "then I'll eventually have to keep the multiplication tables secret."

Naturally he kicked that devil back into his dark world with a vigorous kick, as befits a young superior inconnu, and as the Brotherhood expects of him. --

The last streetlamp in its vicinity has been strangled, and only the dim light of the stars flickers over the hazy city. -- They blink boredly at the gray Prague and sadly think back to the old days when the Wallensteiner still looked up at them broodingly from his castle on the Lesser Town. -- And how Emperor Rudolf's alchemists cooked and murmured in their swallows' nests on the Daliborka at night and put out the fire in fright when Mars came close to the moon. -- The times of reflection are over, and Prague lies and snores like a drunken market woman. Hilly country all around. -- Seriously and mysteriously, the Nusler valley is silent before the dreamy secret disciple, -- in the far background the massive deep dark forests, in whose clearings the thugs sleep who have not yet found employment as detectives with the Prague police.

White fog dances on the wet meadows -- from far away the dreamy whistle of the locomotive evokes a sick longing.

Amadeus Veverka thinks and thinks: How did it say in the old manuscript on the promised revelations of the inner nature that Brother Sesostris had read during the informal discussion?:

"If you are looking at the night sky and want to get the vision, fix your gaze on a point that you think is far away and move it farther and farther away from you until you feel the shoulders of your eyes no longer cut.-- Then you will see with the eyes of the soul: serious, sad and comical things -- as they are written in the book of nature --; things that cast no shadow.-- And your seeing will follow merge with thought."

The young man looks out into the cloudless darkness until he forgets his eyes. -- Geometric figures stand in the sky, growing and changing, darker than the night.

Then they disappear and implements appear, such as banal life needs: a rake, a watering can, nails, a shovel. -- And now an armchair upholstered in green rep and with a broken backrest.

Veverka struggles to replace the old backrest with a new one. -- In vain. -- Every time he thinks he has reached his goal, the image melts away and returns to its old form. -- Finally it disappears altogether, the air seems like water, and huge fish with luminous scales and golden dots swim along. -- As they move the purple fins, he hears it roaring in the water. -- Frightened, Amadeus flinches. Like someone waking up suddenly. -- A monotonous singing penetrates the night. -- He gets up: A few people from the common people. -- Slavic singsong. Those who talk about it and yet have never heard it call it melancholy.

Happy the mortal who never heard. --

The Palais des Selchers Schmel rises to the west.

Who does not know him, the highly deserving one! His fame rings out across the land to the blue sea. -- Gothic windows proudly look down into the valley. --

The fish have disappeared and Amadeus Veverka once again searches for the field of vision in infinity. A bright spot, circular, which widens more and more, lights up. Pink figures come into focus, microscopic and yet as sharp as if seen through a lens. -- Beset by dazzling light, -- and the bodies cast no shadow.

An unforeseeable train marches up, rhythmically to the beat -- it shakes the earth. It's pigs -- pigs! Pigs walking upright! -- First of all the noblest among them, the first in the course of the transmigration of souls, who were already the bravest on earth -- and now wear violet Cerevis caps and couleur bands, so that everyone can see in which form they will one day reincarnate.

The fifes of the minstrels shrill -- the pink figures push ever wider, and in their midst shakes a dark, stooped, human shape, bound hand and foot. -- It goes to the place of execution, -- two crossed ham bones mark the place. Heavy chains of sausages hang down on the prisoner and drag him along in the whirling dust. -- The fifes have fallen silent, the canteen rises:

This is the Selcher Schmel,
This is the Selcher Schmel,
this is the leather Selcher Schmel,
sa, sa
What a shame.
This is the Selcher Schmel!


Now they have stopped, gather in a circle and await the verdict. The prisoner should say what he has to say in his defence. Every swine knows that you have to tell the accused all the points of accusation. Just like in an officer's honor council. -- A giant boar with a bloody apron delivers the defense speech.

He points out that the defendant thought he was acting in the best of faith and with a flaming enthusiasm for the local industry when he delivered thousands and thousands of theirs to the stomachs of the big city.

All for free. -- The pigs who are appointed judges are not deterred by the provisions of the law book and mercilessly pull the already prepared judgments out of their pockets. As they have seen so many times in their lifetime, and as is the custom on earth. --

The condemned man raises his hands imploringly and collapses.

The image freezes -- disappears and reappears again. -- So the revenge rolls out, until the last swine is avenged.

Amadeus Veverka springs out of his slumber, he has hit his head on the handle of his cane, which he is holding in both hands. His eyes close again and confused concepts dance in his brain.

This time he'll make a note of everything so he'll know when he wakes up.

He can't get the melody out of his head:

"Who comes there from on high,
Who comes there from on high?
who comes there from the leather hill,
sa, sa
leather high,
Who comes from on high?"


and you can't fight it.


******************************

Gustav Meyrink
Der Tod des Selchers Schmel
Die schlaftrunkene Geschichte
[German Version]

Wenn einer glaubt, daß die geheimen Lehren des Mittelalters mit den Hexenprozessen ausgestorben sind, oder daß sie gar auf bewußter oder unbewußter Täuschung beruhen, -- ist er arg im Irrtum.

Niemand hatte das besser begriffen als Amadeus Veverka, der heute im okkulten Orden der Hermetischen Brüderschaft von Luxor unter symbolistischem Gepränge zum "superieur inconnu" erhoben worden war und jetzt nachdenklich -- durchschauert von den Lehren des Buches Ambertkend -- auf einem behauenen Steinblock am Abhange der "Nusler Stiege" sitzt und schlaftrunken in die blaue Nacht hinausgähnt.

Der junge Mann läßt alle die fremdartigen Bilder im Geiste an sich vorüberziehen, die heute abend vor sein Auge getreten waren -- -- er hört wie aus weiter Ferne noch die eintönige Stimme des Arch-Zensors Ganesha: "Die erste Figur, über welche man das Wort Hom aussprechen muß, zeiget sich unter einer schwarz und gelb gemischten Farbe, sie ist in dem Hause des Saturn. Wenn unser Geist einzig mit dieser Figur beschäftigt ist, wenn unsere Augen fest auf sie geheftet sind und wir uns selbst den Namen Hom aussprechen, so öffnen sich die Augen des Verstandes, und man erwirbt sich das Geheimnis -- -- --"

Und die Brüder des Ordens standen umher, das blaue Band um die Stirn geschlungen und die Stäbe mit Rosen bekränzt. -- Freie Forscher, die die Tiefen der Gottheit ergründen, mit Masken und weißen Talaren angetan, damit keiner den andern kenne und keiner vom andern wisse. -- (Wenn man sich aber auf der Straße begegnet, erkennt man sich am Händedruck.) -- Ja, ja -- solche Institutionen sind oft unerforschlich und wunderbar.

Amadeus Veverka greift unter seine Weste, ob er das Abzeichen seiner neuen Würde, die goldene Münze mit dem emaillierten Traubenkern, noch habe und schwelgt im Gefühle stolzer Überlegenheit über diese schlafenden Menschen im nächtlichen Häusermeer, die nichts Besseres kennen, als die Mysterien der Magistratserlässe und wie man gut esse und viel trinke.

Er wiederholt sich, an den Fingern zählend, all das, was von jetzt ab streng geheim zu halten sei.

"Wenn das so fortgeht", flüstert ihm jenes niederträchtige innere Ich zu, das begeisterte deutsche Poeten so schön unter dem Sinnbild des "schwarzen Ritters zur Linken" verhüllen, "so werde ich schließlich noch das Einmaleins geheim halten müssen."

Selbstverständlich jagte er mit einem energischen Fußtritt diesen Teufel in seine finstere Welt zurück, wie es einem jungen Superieur inconnu geziemt, und wie es die Bruderschaft von ihm erwartet. --

Die letzte Straßenlaterne in seiner Nähe hat man erdrosselt, und über der dunstverhüllten Stadt flimmert nur das schwache Licht der Sterne. -- Sie blinzen gelangweilt auf das graue Prag und gedenken trübselig der alten Zeiten, da noch der Wallensteiner von seinem Schlosse auf der Kleinseite grübelnd empor zu ihnen blickte. -- Und wie die Alchymisten Kaiser Rudolfs in ihren Schwalbennestern auf der Daliborka nächtlich kochten und murmelten und erschreckt die Feuer löschten, wenn der Mars in Mondesnähe kam. -- Die Zeiten des Nachdenkens sind um, und Prag liegt und schnarcht wie ein betrunkenes Marktweib. Ringsum hügeliges Land. -- Ernst und geheimnisvoll schweigt das Nusler Tal vor dem träumerischen Geheimjünger, -- im fernen Hintergrunde die massigen tiefdunklen Wälder, in deren Lichtungen die Strolche schlafen, die bei der Prager Polizei noch keine Anstellung als Detektive gefunden haben.

Weiße Nebel tanzen auf den nassen Wiesen, -- aus tiefer Ferne ruft das verträumte Pfeifen der Lokomotive eine kranke Sehnsucht wach.

Amadeus Veverka denkt und denkt: Wie stand es doch in dem alten Manuskript über die verheißenen Offenbarungen der inneren Natur, das während der zwanglosen Besprechung Bruder Sesostris vorgelesen hatte?:

"Wenn du in den Nachthimmel siehst und willst das Schauen erlangen, so richte deinen Blick auf einen Punkt, den du dir in weiter Ferne denkst, und schiebe ihn immer weiter und weiter von dir weg, bis du fühlst, daß die Achseln deiner Augen sich nicht mehr schneiden. -- Dann wirst du mit den Augen der Seele sehen: ernste, traurige und komische Dinge, -- wie sie im Buche der Natur aufgezeichnet sind --; Dinge, die keinen Schatten werfen. -- Und dein Sehen wird mit dem Denken verschmelzen."

Der junge Mann sieht hinaus in das wolkenlose Dunkel, bis er seine Augen vergißt. -- Geometrische Figuren stehen am Himmel, wachsen und verändern sich, dunkler als die Nacht.

Dann schwinden sie und Geräte erscheinen, wie sie das banale Leben braucht: ein Rechen, eine Gießkanne, Nägel, eine Schaufel. -- Und jetzt ein Sessel mit grünem Rips bezogen und mit zerbrochener Lehne.

Veverka quält sich ab, die alte Lehne durch eine neue zu ersetzen. -- Vergebens. -- Jedesmal, wenn er glaubt, am Ziele zu sein, zerrinnt das Bild und fährt in seine alte Form zurück. -- Endlich verschwindet es ganz, die Luft scheint wie Wasser und riesige Fische mit leuchtenden Schuppen und goldenen Punkten schwimmen einher. -- Wie sie die purpurnen Flossen bewegen, hört er es im Wasser brausen. -- Erschreckt zuckt Amadeus zusammen. Wie ein jäh Erwachender. -- Ein eintöniges Singen dringt durch die Nacht. -- Er steht auf: Ein paar Leute aus dem Volke. -- Slawischer Singsang. Schwermütig nennen es die, die davon erzählen, und es doch nie gehört haben.

Glücklich der Sterbliche, der es nie vernommen. --

Im Westen ragt das Palais des Selchers Schmel.

Wer kennt ihn nicht, den Hochverdienten! Sein Ruhm klingt über die Lande bis an das blaue Meer. -- Gotische Fenster schauen stolz hinab ins Tal. --

Die Fische sind verschwunden, und Amadeus Veverka sucht von neuem das Sehfeld in der Unendlichkeit. Ein heller Fleck, kreisrund, der sich mehr und mehr weitet, leuchtet auf. Rosa Gestalten treten in den Brennpunkt, mikroskopisch klein und doch so scharf, wie durch eine Linse gesehen. -- Von blendendem Licht beschieden, -- und die Körper werfen keinen Schatten.

Ein unabsehbarer Zug marschiert heran, rhythmisch im Takt, -- es schüttert die Erde. Schweine sind es -- Schweine! Aufrecht gehende Schweine! -- Voran die edelsten unter ihnen, die ersten im Zuge der Seelenwanderung, die schon auf Erden die tapfersten waren -- und jetzt violette Cereviskappen tragen und Couleurband, damit jeder sehe, in welcher Gestalt sie sich dereinst wiederverkörpern werden.

Es schrillen die Querpfeifen der Spielleute -- immer breiter drängen die rosa Gestalten, und in ihrer Mitte wankt ein dunkler, gebückter, menschlicher Schemen, gefesselt an Händen und Füßen. -- Es geht zum Richtplatz, -- zwei gekreuzte Schinkenknochen bezeichnen die Stätte. Schwere Ketten von Knackwürsten hängen an dem Gefangenen nieder und schleppen ihm nach in dem wirbelnden Staube. -- Die Querpfeifen sind verstummt, es steigt der Kantus:

Das ist der Selcher Schmel,
Das ist der Selcher Schmel,
das ist der lederne Selcher Schmel,
sa, sa
Selcher Schmel.
Das ist der Selcher Schmel!


Jetzt haben sie halt gemacht, sammeln sich im Kreise und harren des Urteils. Der Gefangene soll sagen, was er zu seiner Verteidigung vorzubringen hat. Jedes Schwein weiß doch, daß man dem Beschuldigten alle Anklagspunkte zu nennen hat. Genauso wie in einem Offiziers-Ehrenrate. -- Ein riesiger Eber mit blutiger Schürze hält die Verteidigungsrede.

Er weist darauf hin, daß der Angeklagte nur im besten Glauben und in flammender Begeisterung für die heimische Industrie zu handeln vermeinte, als er tausende und abertausende der ihrigen dem Magen der Großstadt überlieferte.

Alles umsonst. -- Die zu Richtern ernannten Schweine lassen sich durch die Bestimmungen des Gesetzbuches nicht beirren und ziehen erbarmungslos die schon vorbereiteten Urteile aus den Taschen. Wie sie es so oft bei Lebzeiten gesehen haben, und wie es Sitte auf Erden. --

Der Verurteilte hebt flehend die Hände empor und bricht zusammen.

Das Bild erstarrt -- verschwindet und kehrt von neuem wieder. -- So rollt die Vergeltung ab, bis auch das letzte Schwein gerächt ist.

Amadeus Veverka fährt aus dem Schlummer, er hat sich mit dem Kopf an dem Griff seines Stockes gestoßen, den er in beiden Händen hält. Wieder fallen ihm die Augen zu und wirre Begriffe tanzen in seinem Hirn.

Diesmal wird er sich alles genau merken, damit er es weiß, wenn er erwacht.

Die Melodie will ihm nicht aus dem Kopf:

"Wer kommt dort von der Höh,
Wer kommt dort von der Höh?
Wer kommt dort von der ledernen Höh,
sa, sa
ledernen Höh,
Wer kommt dort von der Höh."


und dagegen läßt sich nicht ankämpfen.
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