Customer Reviews

The Invisible College: A Study of the Three Original Rosicrucian Texts (Ams Studies in German Literature and Culture)

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Few have encountered this book, and those who have have been inevitably impressed by it. The work's title is perhaps slightly misleading; the text is most emphatically not an analysis or exegesis of the content of the Fama, Confessio and Chymische Hochzeit (as I originally took it to be), but rather an examination of the literary phenomena of the landmark manifestos.

More specifically, this study is useful for those interested in the phenomena of audience reception and the construction of a Rosicrucian mythology by readers of the Manifestos, a necessary knowledge when considering the so-called 'Rosicrucian furore' of 1610-1620.

Beeler's approach is of necessity more literary than historical, but this book is one of those rare attempts to unveil the spirit and variety of meaning Rosicrucianism came to posess amongst its 17th century audience, and importantly, why and how it was able to have such meaning read into it. There is much food for thought here.

A really interesting book.

Like the reviewer above, I expected this book to be an analysis of the three Rosicrucian manifestoes. Instead of taking this approach, the author instead examines them as a literary type- a mix of fact, fiction and allusions to mystery which tap into the human psyche, and resulted in the creation of societies imitating those envisioned by the manifestoes.

This is a very useful approach for both the historian and the mystic. One can examine the manifestoes for their importance at the time, or analyse their value in contemporary society, but Beeler's approach allows us to appreciate their value as a tool for creating a distinct type of reality, and shows why they are still important to us today.

Someone once asked a Rosicrucian leader if his group were the *original* Rosicrucians, and he smiled and said, 'Not yet, but we will be . .. '.