Zanoni Book Three: Theurgia: The Magical Antiquarian Curiosity Shoppe, A Weiser Books Collection

By Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton and Lon Milo DuQuette

Master of modern occultism, Lon Milo DuQuette, (author of Enochian Vision Magick and The Magick of Aleister Crowley) introduces the newest Weiser Books Collection—The Magical Antiquarian Curiosity Shoppe. Culled from material long unavailable to the general public, DuQuette curates this essential new digital library with the eye of a scholar and the insight of an initiate.

An ancient manuscript and hidden occult powers all tangled into a love story, Zanoni is one of the most unsung novels of its time. Written in 1842 by Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, most known for the classic introductory line: "It was a dark and stormy night." Rosicrucians, 'Dwellers on the Threshold' and power of love thickens the plot.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red Wheel Weiser
• Release date: Aug 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781619401112

Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873) was an English author of poetry, plays, and novels. He served under Queen Victoria as Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1858-1859. He is famous for having written the phrase "It was a dark and stormy night" as well as "The pen is mightier than the sword" and "pursuit of the almighty dollar." Among his many works of fiction, he wrote The Coming Race which drew heavily on his interest in the Occult, contributing to the birth of the Science Fiction genre. His story The Haunters and the Haunted, or, The House and the Brain, was immensely popular in 1859, but was largely forgotten until the 1920's when H.P. Lovecraft made mention of it.

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Introduction to Third Installment

The plot certainly thickens as we begin part III of Zanoni. We become more intimately acquainted with the immortal character who seems to have supernatural powers and a spiritual and political agenda that sounds suspiciously like the ideals of the Enlightenment—the very ideals that sparked the American and French Revolutions. There is little doubt that Lytton has based the characterization of our story's adept on the personage of the Count of St. Germain (1712?–1784?).¹

St. Germain is indeed a mysterious character, and speculation on just who he was (or still is—after all he's immortal) and what he was (is) up to continues to be argued out in today's electronic coffeehouses. Various Rosicrucian organizations of the nineteenth, twentieth, and now twenty-first centuries claim St. Germain as their own, and so I feel it would be helpful for the readers of Zanoni who might not be familiar with the word Rosicrucian to have a brief historical sketch. I offer below an article written (by all indications) in the late nineteenth century and still published today in the online Catholic Encyclopedia. While the article is obviously not sympathetic to what it perceives as the Rosicrucian cause, it is nonetheless a surprisingly objective collection of the historical facts. I hope you enjoy it; and I hope you enjoy the next installment of Zanoni.

The Rosicrucians

²

This is the original appellation of the alleged members of the occult-cabalistic-theosophic Rosicrucian Brotherhood, described in the pamphlet Fama Fraternitatis R.C. (Rosae crucis), which was circulated in manuscript as early as 1610 and first appeared in print in 1614 at Cassel. To the first two additions were prefixed the tract Allgemeine und Generalreforation der ganzen weiten Welt, a translation of Fr. Boccalini's Dei Ragguagli di Parnasso, 1612. Beginning with the fourth edition in 1615, the third Rosicrucian rudiment, Confessio der Fraternitat, was added to the Fama.

According to these, the Rosicrucian brotherhood was founded in 1408 by a German nobleman, Christian Rosenkreuz (1378–1484), a former monk, who while travelling through Damascus, Jerusalem, and Fez had been initiated into Arabian learning (magic), and who considered an antipapal Christianity, tinged with theosophy, his ideal of a religion. Concerned above all else that their names should appear in the Book of Life, the brothers were to consider the making of gold as unimportant—although for the true philosophers (Occultists) this was an easy matter and a paragon. They must apply themselves zealously and in the deepest secrecy to the study of Nature in her hidden forces, and to making their discoveries and inventions known to the order and profitable to the needs of humanity. And to further the object of the said order they must assemble annually at the Edifice of the Holy Spirit, the secret headquarters of the order, cure the sick gratuitously, and whilst each one procured himself a successor, they must provide for the continuance of their order. Free from illness and pain, these Invisibles, as they were called in the vernacular, were supposed to be yearning for the time when the church should be purified.

For two hundred years, while the world never had the least suspicion of their existence, the brotherhood transmitted by these means the wisdom of Father Rosenkreuz, one hundred and twenty years after the latter's burial, until about 1604 they finally became known. The Fama, which effected this, invited all of the scholars and rulers of Europe openly to favour the cause, and eventually to sue for entrance into the fraternity, to which, nevertheless, only chosen souls would be admitted. The morbid propensity of the age for esoterism, magic, and confederacies caused the Fama to raise a feverish excitement in men's minds, expressed in a flood of writings for and against the brotherhood, and in passionate efforts to win admission to the order, or at least to discover who were its members.

All of these endeavours, even by scholars of real repute like Descartes and Leibniz, were without results. From the manifestly fabulous and impossible History of the brotherhood, it was apparent that it depended upon a mystification. This mystification was directly explained by an investigation by the author, who appears unquestionably to have been the Lutheran theologian of Württemberg, John Valentin Andrea (1586–1654). According to his own admission, Andrea composed in 1602 or 1603 the Rosicrucian book, Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosenkreuz 1459, which appeared in 1616. This book, called by Andrea himself a youthful literary trifle in which he intended to ridicule the mania of the times for occult marvels (Life, p. 10), bears the closest intrinsic relation to the Fama, which, in the light of this, is undoubtedly a later work of Andrea's or at least of one of the circle of friends inspired by him.

Alchemistic occultism is mocked at in these works, and in the General-Reformation, the follies of the then untimely reformers of the world are openly ridiculed. The fantastic form of the tracts is borrowed from contemporary romances of knighthood and travel. The Rosy Cross was chosen for the symbol of the order because, first, the rose and cross were ancient symbols of occultism and, secondly, occur in the family arms of Andrea. It recalls Luther's motto: Des Christen Hertz auf Rosen geht, wenn's mitten unter'm Kreuze steht (Hossback, 121). As a result of his satirically meant but seriously accepted works, which soon gave rise to occult humbuggery (opposed by him) in new Rosicrucian raiment, Andrea openly renounced Rosicrucianism and frequently referred to it as a ridiculous comedy and folly. In spite of this, the Rosicrucian fraud, which served in many ways as a model for the anti-Masonic Taxil-Schwindel, has continued effective until the present day.

In the seventeenth century Michael Maier and Robert Fludd were its champions. Pseudo-Rosicrucian societies arose, falsely claiming descent from the genuine fraternity of the Fama. After 1750 occult Rosicrucianism was propagated by Freemasonry, where it led to endless extravagant manifestations (St. Germain, Cagliostro, Schropfer, Wollner, etc.). In the system of high degrees in Scottish Freemasonry, especially in the Rosendruez degree, the Rosicrucian symbols are still retained with a Masonic interpretation. Finally, since about 1866 there have existed in England and Scotland (London, Newcastle, York, Glasgow) and in the United States (Boston, Philadelphia) colleges of a Masonic Rosicrucian society, whose members claim to be direct descendants of the brotherhood founded in 1408. Only Master Masons are eligible for membership. According to the definition of the president of the London branch (Supreme Magus), Brother Dr. Wm. Wynn Westcott, M.B., P.Z., it is "the aim of the Society to afford mutual aid and encouragement in working out the great problems of life and in searching out the secrets of nature; to facilitate the study of philosophy founded upon the Kabbalah and the doctrines of Hermes Trismegistus, which was inculcated by the original Fratres Roseae Crucis of Germany, AD 1450; and to investigate the meaning and symbolism of all that now remains of the wisdom, art, and literature of the ancient world." The view which has been lately revived, especially by Katsch and Pike, that Rosicrucianism definitely or even perceptibly cooperated in the foundation of modern Freemasonry in 1717, is contradicted by well-known historical facts.

LON MILO DUQUETTE

1 St. Germain's birth and death dates remain uncertain—a mystery that only adds to speculation that this immortal adept periodically feigns his own death, only to resurface in another other city or country a few years later as a young man with a new name.

2 The Catholic Encyclopedia. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13193b.htm.

BOOK III. — THEURGIA.

—i cavalier sen vanno

dove il pino fatal gli attende in porto.

(The knights came where the fatal bark Awaited them in the port.)

GERUS. LIB., CANT. XV (ARGOMENTO.)

CHAPTER 3.I.

But that which especially distinguishes the brotherhood is their

marvellous knowledge of all the resources of medical art. They

work not by charms, but simples.

—MS. ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGIN AND ATTRIBUTES OF THE TRUE ROSICRUCIANS, BY J. VON D—.

At this time it chanced that Viola had the opportunity to return the kindness shown to her by the friendly musician whose house had received and sheltered her when first left an orphan on the world. Old Bernardi had brought up three sons to the same profession as himself, and they had lately left Naples to seek their fortunes in the wealthier cities of Northern Europe, where the musical market was less overstocked. There was only left to glad the household of his aged wife and himself, a lively, prattling, dark-eyed girl of some eight years old, the child of his second son, whose mother had died in giving her birth. It so happened that, about a month previous to the date on which our story has now entered, a paralytic affection had disabled Bernardi from the duties of his calling. He had been always a social, harmless, improvident, generous fellow—living on his gains from day to day, as if the day of sickness and old age never was to arrive. Though he received a small allowance for his past services, it ill sufficed for his wants; neither was he free from debt. Poverty stood at his hearth,—when Viola's grateful smile and liberal hand came to chase the grim fiend away. But it is not enough to a heart truly kind to send and give; more charitable is it to visit and console. Forget not thy father's friend. So almost daily went the bright idol of Naples to the house of Bernardi. Suddenly a heavier affliction than either poverty or the palsy befell the old musician. His grandchild, his little Beatrice, fell ill, suddenly and dangerously ill, of one of those rapid fevers common to the South; and Viola was summoned from her strange and fearful reveries of love or fancy, to the sick-bed of the young sufferer.

The child was exceedingly fond of Viola, and the old people thought that her mere presence would bring healing; but when Viola arrived, Beatrice