The Rosicrucian Enlightenment Revisited

It's nearly 30 years since historian Dame Frances Yates published her groundbreaking study The Rosicrucian Enlightement, and so brought academic rigour back to a subject which had for too long been almost the sole province of occultists who often confused fact and fancy. Yates placed the three main Rosicrucian manifestos, which first appeared in 1614-1616, in the context of their time and place--the marriage of Elizabeth, dauthter of James VI & I, to Fredrick, Elector Palatine, head of the German Protestant princes--and identified many of the key players in 17th-century hermetic thought.

The Rosicrucian Enlightenment Revisited is a collection of papers given in Yates's honour at two conferences in the Czech Republic in 1995 and 1997, at which some of today's leading writers and academics in this field presented their latest research findings.

For readers new to the subject and not already conversant with Rosicrucian history, editor Ralph White's Introduction and Christopher McIntosh's very straightforward chapter "The Rosicrucian Legacy" will prove the most accessible. But for anyone with an interest (historical or spiritual) in the hermetic philosophers, alchemy or other religion or literature--there is some fascinating material in this collection. Paul Bembridge's paper on the likelihood of the metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell being a Rosicrucian is probably the most controversial. The book also, very usefully, includes the full text of the first two Rosicrucian manifestos, the Fama Fraternitas and the Confessio Fraternitas. --David V Barrett

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