A Lexicon of Freemasonry - The Masonic Trowel

ROS 417
existence until the middle of the eighteenth century, when they
at length ceased to meet, in consequence of the death of Brun,
their chief. Their association was well organized, being divided
like the society of Jesuits into bodies, having each its particular
chief, with a general chief at the head of all . Their system of
initiation was divided into nine degrees, as follows : 1, Zelator ;
2, Thericus ; 3, Practicus_; d, Philosophus ; 5, Adeptus Junior ;
6, Adeptus Major ; 7, Adeptus Exemptus ; 8, Magister ; 9,
Magus .
Out of this society was formed, in 1777, an association calling
itself "The Brothers of the Golden Rosy Cross," whose system
was divided only into three degrees . This society was very numerous
in Germany, and even extended into other countries, especially
into Sweden . A second schism from the Rosicrucians
was the society of the " Initiated Brothers of Asia," which was
organized in 1780, and whose pursuits, like those of the parent
institution, were alchemy and the natural sciences . In 1785, it
attracted the attention of the police, and two years later, received
a fatal blow, in the revelation of all its secrets by one Rolling, a
treacherous member of the association .
The Rosicrucians, as this brief history indicates, had no connectios
whatever with the masonic fraternity . Notwithstanding
this fact, Barruel,* the most malignant of our revilers, with a
characteristic spirit of misrepresentation, attempted to identify
the two institutions . This is an error, into which others might
unwittingly fall from confounding them with the Princes of Rose
Croix, a masonic degree, pomewhat similar in name, but entirely
different in character . To correct this error where it may have
been committed, is the object of this article, which otherwise
would not have been entitled to a place in a masonic lexicon .t
* Memoirs of Jacobinism .
t The Rosicrucians do not derive their name, like Rose Croix Masons, from
the Rose and Cross, for they have nothing to do with the rose, but from the
Latin rod, dew, and crux, the cross, as a hieroglyphic of light, which Mosheim
as pl%ins as follows : 1 1 Of all natural bodica, dew was esteemed the most pow-