Emma Carr, and Rosicrucianism

Written as part of Amy Johnson Crow’s “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks” challenge. This week’s topic: Groups

Background

One of the few things Dad ever told me about his mother was that she had been interested in Rosicrucianism.  He owned a very beautiful book that apparently came from her.  

When she died in 1935 Emma bequeathed £100 to the Rosicrucian Fellowship in Oceanside, California.  The Fellowship still exists. 

From Wikipedia, I learned 

• That there is a connection to the Freemasons.

• That the name refers to the Order of the Rose Cross.

• That a source is The Divine Comedy (ca. 1308–1321) by Dante Alighieri.

• That there are a number of groups that use the name which can be divided into three categories

  • Esoteric Christian Rosicrucian groups;

  • Masonic Rosicrucian groups such as Societas Rosicruciana;

  • initiatory groups such as the Golden Dawn.

From the website of the Rosicrucian Fellowship

http://www.rosicrucian.com/index.html. 

The following is taken from the fellowship’s website,  unedited so as to be sure I am not misusing their words

The Rosicrucian Fellowship is composed of men and women who study the Rosicrucian Philosophy known as the Western Wisdom Teachings as presented in The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception. This Christian Mystic Philosophy presents deep insights into the Christian Mysteries and establishes a meeting ground for Art, Religion, and Science. Max Heindel was selected by the Elder Brothers of the Rose Cross to publicly give out the Western Wisdom Teachings in order to help prepare mankind for the coming age of Universal Brotherhood, the Age of Aquarius.

The work of the Rosicrucian Fellowship is to spread the gospel and heal the sick. This is achieved by making the Western Wisdom Teachings available to all who are willing to receive them, by providing a Healing Department which emphasizes spiritual healing along the principles of right living, and by making The Rosicrucian Fellowship books and home study courses available upon request.

What is the essential difference between the teachings of the Rosicrucian Philosophy and the Orthodox Church?

There are many, but perhaps the principal one is the teaching of orthodoxy that at each birth a newly created soul enters material existence fresh from the hand of God, that it lives here in a material body for a longer or shorter span of time and then passes out by death into the invisible beyond, there to remain for all eternity in a state of happiness or misery according to what it did while here in the body. 

The Rosicrucian teaching is that each soul is an integral part of God, which is seeking to gain experience by repeated existences in gradually improving material bodies and that, therefore, it passes into and out of material existences many times; that each time it gathers a little more experience than it previously possessed and in time is nourished from nescience to omniscience--from impotence to omnipotence--by means of these experiences. 

Our sense of justice revolts against a teaching which sends one soul into a home of culture and a noble family where it has the advantage of wealth, where moral teachings are implanted in the growing child, but sends another into the slums, its father a thief and the mother, perhaps, immoral, and where its teachings consist in lying, stealing, etc. If here only once, all should have the same chance if they are to be judged by the same laws, and we know that no two people have the same experiences in life. We know that where one meets many temptations, another lives comparatively untouched by the storms of life. Therefore, when one soul is placed in a moral environment and another in immoral surroundings, it is not right to send the one to a heaven of enjoyment and eternal bliss for doing the right he could not help doing, nor is it just to send the other to a hell for stealing and robbing when the environment and the conditions into which he was thrown were such that he could not help himself. 

Therefore, the Rosicrucian teaching holds that we come into whatever place is best fitted for us by our previous experiences in former lives, and that we get just what we deserve in all cases; that all experiences which come to us are just what we need to give us the appropriate impetus for our next step in unfoldment. 

My takeaway

What I find most interesting is the explanation for the belief in repeated existences here on earth, as distinct from the orthodox teaching that we have one life on earth and then go either to heaven or to hell.  It is an extremely moral and uplifting rationale.  

Our sense of justice revolts against a teaching which sends one soul into a home of culture and a noble family where it has the advantage of wealth, where moral teachings are implanted in the growing child, but sends another into the slums, its father a thief and the mother, perhaps, immoral, and where its teachings consist in lying, stealing, etc. If here only once, all should have the same chance if they are to be judged by the same laws, and we know that no two people have the same experiences in life.

We know that where one meets many temptations, another lives comparatively untouched by the storms of life. Therefore, when one soul is placed in a moral environment and another in immoral surroundings, it is not right to send the one to a heaven of enjoyment and eternal bliss for doing the right he could not help doing, nor is it just to send the other to a hell for stealing and robbing when the environment and the conditions into which he was thrown were such that he could not help himself.

While I never knew my grandmother, I have a sense of understanding my father a little better. While he was never a churchgoer, I sense that he was able to draw on a deep spring of moral and spiritual enlightenment inherited from his mother.