Take the word apart. Rose, and Cross — Kreutz, in the German.

Start with the rose, and with the part everyone thinks they know. A rose has no thorns. A thorn, to the people whose trade this is, is a modified branch — it grows from inside the wood, it has the plant’s own vascular tissue running through it, and you cannot take it off without wounding the stem. What a rose carries are prickles: outgrowths of the skin only, no wood in them, no vessels. You can push one sideways with a thumb and it comes away clean, and the stem does not bleed.

The flower everyone uses as the emblem of a beautiful thing that will hurt you is not armed the way anyone believes.

And she is sturdy, and she protects herself, and if you think to stand away from her because you are afraid of the thorns, she can still reach you and send you her fragrance. It is said she smells sweetest when the lover’s heart is awakened by a beloved. These are the mysteries of the Rose.

Now the cross, and it is not the same kind of word.

The cross stands for the death which every man on the true path of knowledge must think about. Men that do not think cannot know of death. At the centre of his own being a human being has the freedom to move in the four quadrants of time and space, and his inner being is never quite certain which direction it is going inward. But that centre is the middle of the world. Your world. By planting the seed of your heart there you are given the chance to choose your way, and knowledge joins with experience, and by thinking you see the best way for you.

How is the seed in the heart watered? By thought, organised through the active ego, joining presence with spiritual vision — visions that may point to the past, or to the future of your life, and beyond it.

Thinking is the inner focus of the ego. It turns an inner light on the objects of the mind, and it is the only thing that restores the elements to their true states, because the senses are filters in all men and the mind is a filter too. The language of the soul is thoughts. The larger a man’s stock of words, the more he can reflect, think, and be understood.

Here is where it becomes physical, and where you can test it on yourself.

We breathe in not only air but thoughts. We breathe out, and the thoughts are carried off on the breezes. Consider the substances you breathe out and the senses report on your inner nature; health and ill health are both recorded there. Air that is foul is sensed as such. Thoughts work the same way when they are sent out in words. Can you change them? If you sense your breath is foul, you can follow the breath back to its source — and the source is the thing you were looking for. That relates you to your body and to your soul at once. Adjustments depend on what you know and what you can do, and lacking the knowledge there is nothing to be done except go and acquire the connecting link, which is the study.

A foolish man fights inside with invisible demons he cannot control. The putrefaction goes on inside him and is bound up with the struggle. It is like putting water on a fire. The fire smoulders.

The study of the inner being is a secret path of wisdom, and not even the greatest scientist can reveal every secret. Secrets are made to be discovered by the right person at the right moment.

When the soul is allowed to form itself as love, and is fertilised by the thought-filled invisible substances of divine spirits, the human soul reveals itself as a flower, much like a rose in a garden. The Rosicrucian adept can see when a student has grown the flower of his soul. Then comes the time of caring for the growth.

The goal of the Chemical Wedding is to produce the invisible body. As the rose is known by light and fragrance, so the soul becomes visible to the seers who are the Rosicrucian adepts. The light of the heart is invisible, and its presence is still sensed by those on the more subtle planes. They work into every soul that does the Rose Cross meditation, because it makes those souls visible to them in the invisible garden called the Lost Eden.

Everything looks very funny to seers who know, and whatever proud thought prevails, the animal nature is still the only visibly completed form of man. The higher form is available to a man only if he dreams about it — and for anyone unprepared it must be said in advance that the view causes pain.

It is because of that pain that the method exists. The training prepares the soul so that the sight leads to development and not to the opposite, which is morbid depression and eventually madness. The path is demanding. The method saves the soul years of painful confusion.

Our methods are in harmony with the higher powers of nature that appear on a man’s path to guide mankind to its next stages. Meeting those beings requires you to know their language first.

Last modified: Saturday, 5 September 2026, 2:37 PM