The Urim and Thummim and The Origins of The Gold-Und Rosenkreuz

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The Urim and Thummim and the Origins of the Gold-und Rosenkreuz
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4 Hereward Tilton 4
The Urim and Thummim

and the Origins of the Gold- und Rosenkreuz
I
came to Austria on the trail of theʾûrîm and tūmmîm (‫אּו ִרים ְוֻתִּמים‬, ‘lights and
perfections’). Enigmatic objects born upon the ḥōšęn (‫ֺחֶשׁן‬, breastplate) of the
high priests of pre-exilic Israel, they were lost to history until their resurrec-
tion as ritual magical artefacts by the alchemico-Cabalist Heinrich Khunrath
in the late sixteenth century. A century later we find them among the initiates of
the Gold- und Rosenkreuz; in accordance with Khunrath’s tradition, they are
conceived as Philosophers’ Stones, inlaid upon an object composed of the seven
metals and utilised for scrying by the seven Magi at the order’s peak.
Having studied Gold- und Rosenkreuz manuscripts in London and Munich
detailing the construction and use of this artefact, I was invited by Thomas Hakl
to inspect the Octagon copy of the Thesaurus thesaurorum (Treasure of Treasu-
res), an extensive manuscript compendium of the order which contains fleeting
references to the Urim and the Thummim (referred to synecdochically as a sin-
gular ‘Urim’), as well as to the electrum magicum upon which they were inlaid.
With a wealth of manuscript and printed Rosicrucian material to hand, and ens-
conced within what seemed to be the very vault of Christian Rosenkreuz, I set
about a source-critical analysis of the Thesaurus thesaurorum which would cast
a great deal of light not only upon the cultus (group religious ceremonial) of the
Gold- und Rosenkreuz, but also upon the history of this important occult order.
Perhaps most surprisingly, I discovered that a pre-Rosicrucian Christian Cabali-
stic tradition handed down by a Böhmian exile in Amsterdam lay at the heart of
the order’s doctrine and praxis. Indeed, while the quest to uncover the origins of
the Gold- und Rosenkreuz has shifted to Italy in recent decades, my own research
suggests those origins lie well north of the Alps.
Only a brief précis of my findings is possible here. As a collection of see-
mingly disparate magical and alchemical procedures utilized by the order, the
Thesaurus thesaurorum resembles a grimoire. The full title of the Octagon ma
nuscript is Thesaurus Thesaurorum a Fraternitate Rosae et aureae Crucis Tes-
tamento consignatus, et in Arcam Foederis repositus suae Scholae Alumnis, et
Electis Fratribus. anno. MDLXXX (The Treasure of Treasures, set down as a
testament by the Fraternity of the Rosy and Golden Cross, and kept in the Ark
of the Covenant for the protégés and chosen brethren of their school). Similar
eighteenth-century compendia entitled Thesaurus thesaurorum exist in Darm-
36 Hereward Tilton
stadt and Stuttgart.1 However, while their titles vary only slightly, their content
diverges from the Octagon manuscript in certain significant ways. For heuristic
purposes I will refer to the Thesaurus thesaurorum in the singular as a distinct
recension or family of documents; nevertheless, these compendia emerge from
an extensive matrix of interrelated texts, their titles and content evolving in ac-
cordance with the practical and doctrinal proclivities of numerous redactors. As
such they constitute not only a record of the order’s practice, but also a veiled
record of its history, which can be uncovered via an examination of variations in
textual content, terminology, iconography, orthography and chirography.
Figure 1.
The three ma-
nuscripts of
the Thesaurus
thesaurorum:
Octagon (A),
Darmstadt (B)
and Stuttgart (C).
Thus the Thesaurus thesaurorum is derived from a family of earlier, shorter

alchemico-magical compendia associated with the Gold- und Rosenkreuz: the
Testamentum, which also exists in three eighteenth-century versions at Vienna,
Dresden and Hamburg.2 Of these three versions, the manuscript most closely
1 Thesaurus thesaurorum à fraternitate roseae et aureae crucis testamento consignatus, et

in arcam foederis repositus suae scholae tyronibus, et alumnis fratribus. Anno MDLXXX.
1580. Stuttgart: Württembergische Landesbibliothek Stuttgart, Cod. theol. et phil. Qt 514
(henceforth MS Stuttgart); Thesaurus thesaurorum à fraternitate roseae et aureae crucis
testamento consignatus, et in arcam foederis repositus suae scholae alumnis et electis
fratribus. Anno MDLXXX. Darmstadt: Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Darmstadt, Hs
3262 (henceforth MS Darmstadt).
2 Testamentum der Fraternitet Rosae et Aureae Crucis, alß gewise Exstases oder geheime
The urim and thummim and the origins of the Gold- und Rosenkreuz 37
Figure 2.
The three ma-
nuscripts of the
Testamentum:
Hamburg (A),
Dresden (B)
and Vienna (C).
related to the textual genealogy I am tracing here – the Hamburg codex – is en-
titled Testamentum societatis aureae & roseae crucis darinnen gewiße geheime
Operationes alß große Mysteria unseren Kindern u. Schülern Magiae divinae
& Cabalae eröffnet werden. I.W.R. (Testament of the Society of the Golden and
Rosy Cross, in which certain secret procedures are revealed as great mysteries to
our children and students of divine magic and Cabala. I.W.R.). All three versions
of the Testamentum share the same basic structure and content:
a) a pseudo-history tracing the origins of the order and its prisca magia to the He-
brew patriarchs, who utilised the Urim to evaluate new candidates for their ‘magical
priesthood’;
b) the laws of the order and details of the neophyte initiation ceremony;
c) nine chapters of ‘ecstasies’ or secret procedures concerning the production of essen-
tial tinctures from the mineral realm (bismuth, antimony, silver ore, sulphuric acid,
mercury, rock salt), vegetable realm (wine), animal realm (blood, urine, excrement)
Operationes, wodürch das Mysterium eröffnet an unsere Künder der Weißheit göttl. Magi-
ae und Englischer Cabalae. J.W.R. Anno 580. Vienna: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek,
Cod.Ser.n.2897 Han (henceforth MS Vienna); Tesdamendum der Frader Aurae vel Rosae
[sic] – als gewiße Extases oder geheime operationes, wo durch das Misterio er öffnet. an
unßere Kinder der Kunst und Weysheit, Göttlicher Magia und Englischer Cabala. I.W.R.
anno 580. Dresden: Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek
Dresden, MS N 158 (henceforth MS Dresden); L.B.V.D. Testamentum societatis aureae &
roseae crucis darinnen gewiße geheime Operationes alß große Mysteria unseren Kindern
u. Schülern Magiae divinae & Cabalae eröffnet werden. I.W.R. Hamburg: Staats- und Uni-
versitätsbibliothek Hamburg, Cod. alchim. 750 (henceforth MS Hamburg).
38 Hereward Tilton
and astral realm (dew, rainwater, snow, air, earth); the same material is divided into
only seven chapters in the Vienna and Dresden codices;
d) nine chapters devoted to magical doctrine and practice (the creation of a homuncu-
lus from rotting human flesh; rejuvenation via fasting with animal and astral tinc-
tures; rainmaking with a magical electrum sphere; the fertilisation of plants with an
astral tincture; the construction of a type of camera obscura with magical electrum
mirrors; and the production of a sympathetic powder that kills at a distance); the
same procedures (bar the last) are presented in only seven chapters in MS Vienna
and MS Dresden.
Figure 3. Construction and operation of a ‘magical machine’ for producing the secret fire of nature:
Thesaurus thesaurorum, Octagon Collection (A) and Arcana divina, Beinecke Library MS 88 (B).
Sections a), b) and c) of the Testamentum correspond closely to book one of

the Stuttgart and Darmstadt versions of the Thesaurus thesaurorum. However,
section c) is missing from the Octagon Thesaurus thesaurorum: in its place we
find a different text which corresponds in certain places to another family of
manuscripts, the Arcana divina.3 While this variant text also deals with the pro-
duction of tinctures from the four realms, its defining feature is the employment
of a ‘secret fire of nature’ produced by a solar lens (figure 3).4
3 Hence MS Octagon, 54–60/95–96 = Arcana divina. Yale: Yale University, Beinecke Rare
Book and Manuscript Library, Mellon MS 88 (c.1725), ff. 10 verso–16 verso/41 recto–41
verso. Material from MS Octagon, 61–76 is also to be found, abbreviated and dispersed,
in this version of the Arcana divina. Other members of the Arcana divina family of ma-
nuscripts include: pseudo-Paracelsus, Universal Anleitung. Munich: Bayerische Staatsbi-
bliothek, MS Kiesewetteriana 25 d (1767; Johann Haussen scripsit); Das zweyte Silentium
Dei in des Königs Salomonis des Weisen paradiessischen Lustgarten. Yale: Yale Univer-
sity, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Mellon MS 136 (1798; Johann Haussen
scripsit); Adnotationes Hermeticae, Fasciculus III. Vienna: Österreichische Nationalbiblio-
thek, Cod. Ser. n. 4135 Han (c.1780–1799; Teofil Kelíni scripsit), 1–50.
4 Cf. Heinrich Khunrath, De igne Magorum philosophorumque secreto externo et visibili
(Strasbourg: Zetzner, 1608), 70–72.
Section d) of the Testamentum corresponds to book two of all three versions

of the Thesaurus thesaurorum, which is entitled De magia divina et naturali.
However, in place of the passage on the homunculus, the Thesaurus thesaurorum
describes the attainment of planetary angelic visions with a lapis magicus created
through repeated ingestion of gold with one’s own urine. As the Testamentum
evolved into the Thesaurus thesaurorum it also accrued additional alchemical
recipes: these comprise the third and fourth books of the Stuttgart and Darmstadt
manuscripts. Both of these manuscripts are written by the same scribe and – jud-
ging by their chirography – both date to circa 1760–1780. The pseudonymous
author of the Erklärung des mineralischen Reichs (1783) – ‘Joseph Ferdinand
Herverdi, M. D. in Rotterdam’ – was probably a late redactor of text in both the
Stuttgart and Darmstadt manuscripts,5 which nevertheless have southern Ger-
man Catholic origins. Thus the most recognisably Böhmian material in the Tes-
tamentum – chapter ten (Von der geheimen Magia) and chapter eleven (Von der
geheimen Cabala) – is replaced in the Stuttgart and Darmstadt versions of the
Thesaurus thesaurorum by a much shorter exposition drawn from the popular
definition of ‘Cabala’ given in Toxites’ Onomastica, as well as from a condemna-
tion of the ‘degenerate’ and ‘damned’ Jewish Kabbalah given in a Jesuit (!) Bible
commentary.6 The exposition in the Stuttgart Thesaurus is still in the original
Latin; in the German translation given in the Darmstadt Thesaurus its explicitly
Catholic reference to the ‘Apostolic See’ is excised.7
The Octagon manuscript derives from a common source (ThQ1; see figure
4) which had the same Latin exposition of the Cabala, as it lends that Latin a dif-
ferent meaning in at least one place;8 although it usually abridges the common
5 An extract from an unpublished work of ‘Herverdi’ is given in the first book of the Darm-
stadt and Stuttgart manuscripts (MS Darmstadt, 46–47); Herverdi’s Erklärung des miner-
alischen Reichs (Berlin: Arnold Wever, 1783), 36–37, supplies an extract from Das Buch
der Weißheit from the fourth book of MS Stuttgart (MS Stuttgart, 279–280), and promises
to reveal more in a manuscript he possesses (which is presumably either the Thesaurus
thesaurorum or his own work cited in its first book). A redactor of MS Stuttgart inserts
prolonged accusations of impropriety against ‘J.C. Vanderbeeg’ for printing Das Buch der
Weißheit (an early order text: cf. MS Hamburg, 20) whilst omitting its essential passages;
the same redactor proceeds to supply those passages in MS Stuttgart (275ff.). In the
preface to Erklärung des mineralischen Reichs, f. 2 verso, the editor states it was never
Herverdi’s intent to publish this work; yet on p. 37 Herverdi advertises his possession of
restricted knowledge by stating he may not say more in print. Hence Herverdi was a con-
temporary of the publisher, with whom he collaborated. See I.C. von Vanderbeeg, Manu-
ductio Hermedico-philosophica (Hof: Johann Ernst Schultz, 1739), 234–277; the fact the
redactor refers to the second edition (c.1750) of this book supplies a rough terminus post
quem for MS Stuttgart.
6 MS Octagon, II, 7–8; MS Stuttgart, 153–158; MS Darmstadt, 138–143; Michael Toxites,
Onomastica II (Strasbourg: Bernhard Jobin, 1574), 410–412; Jacobus Tirinus, In univers-
am Sacram Scripturam commentarius, vol.2 (Venice: Nicolai Pezzana, 1760), Index I, p. iii.
7 MS Stuttgart, 158; MS Darmstadt, 143.
8 MS Octagon, II, 7; MS Stuttgart, 157; MS Darmstadt, 142. MS Octagon, III, 45–66, con-
40 Hereward Tilton
source,9 the Octagon manuscript also preserves certain sections which have been
excised from the Stuttgart and Darmstadt manuscripts. Its chirography suggests
a date of circa 1780–1800; idiosyncrasies in its title and laws indicate it is related
to – or identical with – a copy of the Thesaurus thesaurorum once held by the
Supreme Council of the Ancient and Accepted Rite of Freemasonry in London.10
Figure 4.
Source history
of the Gold- und
Rosenkreuz laws,
Testamentum and
Thesaurus thesau-
rorum (illustrating
the minimum
possible number of
redactions; more
complex permuta-
tions are possible).
The title of the Thesaurus thesaurorum states that its raison d’être is the
transmission of esoteric knowledge within the order; the fact the text is commit-
ted to safe-keeping within the Ark of the Covenant is symbolic of its status as re-
stricted knowledge controlled by the ‘high priests and consummate Magi’ alone.
Given the order reconstructed the artefacts of the ancient Hebrew cultus for its
ritual practice, the ‘Ark’ may also have been a physical object: thus in the related
initiatory rituals of the Asiatic Brethren the Urim is taken from the Holy of Holies
amidst the burning of entheogenic incense.11 A Freemasonesque concern with the
forms to the chapter order of MS Darmstadt, 312–344, not MS Stuttgart; hence it is not
derived from MS Stuttgart.
9 Thus the related group of ‘animal tinctures’ made from blood, urine and sweat are numbe-
red one to three in MS Darmstadt, 346–363; in MS Octagon, III, 73–81, the blood tincture
is omitted, as is the numbering for the other two tinctures.
10 Hence the sub-titled ‘Iuramentum Fraternitatis’, MS Octagon, I, 29; cf. Arthur Edward Wai-
te, The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross (London: William Rider & Son, 1924), 70, 634.
11 Johann Christoph von Woellner, Der Signatstern oder die enthüllten sämmtlichen sieben
Grade der mystischen Freimaurerei nebst dem Orden der Ritter des Lichts, vol.2 (Berlin:
C.G. Schöne, 1803), 114, 117. The primary ingredient of the incense is mandrake; the Holy
of Holies and other fixtures are illustrated in the Octagon’s Asiatic Brethren manuscript ta-
bles for the first main grade rituals, Ad 1ste Hauptstuffe Nr.1 + Nr. 3 (c.1786); cf. Die Brüder
St. Johannis des Evangelisten aus Asien in Europa, oder die einzige wahre und ächte
Freimaurerei (Berlin: Johann Wilhelm Schmidt, 1803), 208 ff.
Tabernacle and its fixtures is evident throughout the order’s Hebrew patriarchal
pseudo-history given in both the Thesaurus thesaurorum and the Testamentum,
which identifies Bezalel – the chief artisan of the Ark and its sanctuary – as the
first Imperator. The order’s alchemical and magical practices are portrayed as
traditions established by the patriarchs: thus the twelve stones of the Urim are
associated with the twelve stones collected by representatives of the twelve tribes
at the parting of the Jordan (Joshua 3.1–4.24). Together with the twelve ‘magical
priests’ carrying the Ark, these men represent the order’s traditional membership
quota (twenty-four).12
Despite their restricted status,13 neither the Thesaurus thesaurorum nor the
Testamentum is a complete record of the order’s doctrines and practices. Alt-
hough the Urim and related magical artefacts are alluded to, their manufacture is
not explained: indeed, while the Testamentum refers to the pertinent order tract
(Magia divina),14 the scribes of the Thesaurus thesaurorum – whether intenti-
onally or otherwise – give the impression they are not privy to this secret.15 A
higher-grade treatise explains why this knowledge is restricted: only those whose
hearts are ruled by the Holy Spirit may construct the Urim.16 More complete texts
describing the production of essential tinctures or ‘stones’ from the four realms
12 MS Hamburg, 9–10; MS Dresden, 3–4; MS Vienna, 4–5.

13 Thus both the Thesaurus thesaurorum and the Testamentum instruct initiates to show only
the laws of the fraternity and the Buch der Weißheit (cf. infra) to a potential candidate; and
as even these tracts allude to higher secrets, care should be taken lest ‘the seal is broken
prematurely’, the candidate leaves and restricted knowledge is profaned.
14 MS Vienna, 248: ‘… habe bey der handt eine Kugel, so aus der Electrum gegossen, wie
wir dir solches gelehret in der Magia Divina’. Magia divina die Gott der Herr nur seinen
Kindern vorbehalten hat, worinnen unaussprechliche Wunder zu sehen, von Wort zu Wort
beschrieben. Dresden: Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek
Dresden, MS N 166, pp. 167–197 (1728); I.N.R.I. Magia divina, die Gott der Herr nur sei-
nen Kindern vorbehalten hat, worinnen unaussprechliche Wunder zu sehen, von Wort
zu Wort beschrieben. The Hague: Bibliotheek van de Orde van Vrijmetselaren, MS 240
A 43 (1730); De magia divina oder Caballistischer Geheimnüsse. London: Wellcome Li-
brary, MS 4808, pp. 223–263 (1737); Kabbalistische Geheimnisse de magia divina wo-
rinnen allerhand rare unerhoerte Dinge enthalten. Munich: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek,
MS Kiesewetteriana 18 (1767); published as Magia divina, oder gründ- und deutlicher
Unterricht, von denen fürnehmsten Caballistischen Kunst-Stücken derer Alten Israeliten
Welt-Weisen, und Ersten, auch noch einigen heutigen wahren Christen (s.l.: L.v.H., 1745),
a rare work also held at the Octagon.
15 MS Octagon, II, 22: ‘… habe bey der hand eine Kugel, so aus dem Electro seu Wismutho
gegossen ist’; MS Darmstadt, 155: ‘… habe bey der Hand eine Kugel, so aus dem Electro
im ersten Theil dieses Buchs gegossen worden’; in this manner the scribes refer to elect-
rum not as an alloy of the seven metals (electrum magicum) but rather as bismuth, i.e. the
mineral referred to in the first book of ThQ1 (cf. MS Darmstadt, 106). This is a reference
to electrum as a mineral ‘full of seminal power’: Paracelsus, Werke, vol.5, ed. Will-Erich
Peuckert (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1968), 415.
16 Pseudo-Paracelsus, ‘Dei [sic] magia oder magia divina seu praxis Cabulae albae et natu-
ralis’, in Septimus sapientiae: Liber verus ac genuinus. Munich: Bayerische Staatsbiblio-
thek, MS Kiesewetteriana 1 e (1778), pp. 426–572 (pp. 567–568).
42 Hereward Tilton
and their employment in the creation of the Urim include R. Abrahami Eleazaris
uraltes chymisches Werck (depicting a pendant breastplate with twelve stones),17
the Schrifftliche Unterrichtung der wahren Weißheit von der F.R.C. (depicting
group use of a free-standing artefact with six stones),18 the Himmlisches und über
natürliches Geheimnis des Geistes und der Seele der Welt (depicting individual
use of the free-standing artefact),19 and γνῶϑι σεαυτόν seu noscete ipsum: Sextus
sapientiae liber verus ac genuinus (depicting both individual and group use of
the free-standing artefact).20 While the number of stones in the pendant Urim cor-
responds to the pseudo-history of the Thesaurus thesaurorum and the Testamen-
tum, a free-standing Urim appears in their description of the neophyte initiation
ritual, indicating that an early redactor was aware of both artefactual traditions.
Both the pendant and the free-standing Urim are created by inserting stones
from the four realms into crystal fixtures within artefacts of electrum magicum –
an alloy of the seven metals first described in the pseudo-Paracelsian Archidoxis
magica, which details the creation of magical mirrors and spirit-summoning bells
similar to those described in the order’s manuscripts.21 At the centre of both types
of Urim the Tetragrammaton is inscribed and a larger stone incorporating all four
types of stone is inserted; the free-standing artefact is crowned by a further collo-
idal gold ‘ruby’ manufactured with a liquid ‘fire of the Lord’.22
17 R. Abrahami Eleazaris Uraltes Chymisches Werck, 2 vol. (Erfurt: Augustinus Crusius, 1735).
18 Pseudo-Thölde, Schrifftliche Unterrichtung der wahren Weißheit von der F.R.C. London:
Wellcome Library, MS 4808 (1737); apparently this text was translated from the French
(see the notarial attestation on the verso of the last leaf) and was subsequently split into
two parts for publication as pseudo-Thölde, J.G. Toeltii, des welt-berühmten Philosophi
Coelum reseratum chymicum (Erfurt: Carl Friedrich Jungnicols hinterlassene Wittwe,
1737) and Magia divina (1745, cf. n. 14 supra). The preface from ‘Johann Carl von Frisau,
Imperator’ in Wellcome Library MS 4808 includes a passage (p. 6) on the Urim and Thum-
mim that is excised from the printed Coelum reseratum chymicum, ff. 8 recto–8 verso.
19 Pseudo-Trithemius, Himmlisches und übernatürliches Geheimnis des Geistes und der
Seele der Welt und von der natürlichen Magia. Amsterdam: Bibliotheca Philosophica Her-
metica, MS M 217; pseudo-Trithemius, Heimliches und uebernatuerliches Geheimnis des
Geistes und der Seele der Welt, 1506. Überlingen: Leopold-Sophien-Bibliothek, MS 234;
the latter text is closely related to Scheible’s printed edition: Wunder-Buch von der göt-
tlichen Magie, ed. Johann Scheible (Passau [Stuttgart]: [Johann Scheible], 1506 [1857]).
20 γνῶθι σεαυτόν seu noscete ipsum: Sextus sapientiae liber verus ac genuinus. Munich:
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS Kiesewetteriana 1d (1777); the title of this manuscript
comes from its first chapter, which corresponds with that of MS Stuttgart, MS Darmstadt
and the Testamentum (‘Erkenne dich’).
21 Cf. Hereward Tilton, ‘Of Electrum and the Armour of Achilles: Myth and Magic in a Ma-
nuscript of Heinrich Khunrath (1560–1605)’, Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Eso-
tericism 6, 2 (2006), 117–157.
22 Cf. Hereward Tilton, ‘Of Ether, Entheogens and Colloidal Gold: Heinrich Khunrath and the
Making of a Philosophers’ Stone’, in Aaron Cheak (ed.), Alchemical Traditions: From An-
tiquity to the Avant-Garde (Melbourne: Numen Books, 2013), 355–422; see also Khunrath,
De igne Magorum, 89–90: the ‘URIM Theosophorum’ is created ‘Physico-Chymicé, divino
Magicé, Et Christiano-Kabalicé’ from the ‘IGNIS Naturae internus Catholicus’.
Figure 5. The Urim in its free-standing and pendant forms: Schrifftliche Unterrichtung
der wahren Weißheit von der F. R. C., Wellcome Library MS 4808 (A) and
R. Abrahami Eleazaris uraltes chymisches Werck (B).
The significance of this sacred object to the order cannot be overemphasised:

it is ‘Jehova Jesus himself’, and the divine light shining within it is the Holy
Spirit.23 When in use at the Imperator’s dwelling the Urim is placed upon a table
between two ever-burning lamps fuelled by the ‘fire of the lord’;24 as they scry,
the seven Magi at the order’s apex sit in chairs inscribed with the characters of
the seven planets (a fact indicative of a further initiatory hierarchy within the
grade of Magus corresponding to the angelic order), while the rest of the gathe-
red brethren must remain lying with their faces to the floor in a state of ‘inner
communion’ with God.25 Within the artefact’s stones various scenes are revealed,
including cosmogonic processes reminiscent of Böhme and apocalyptic visions
of the future.26 The Urim also grants the Magi powers of surveillance and control:
through scrying the activities of lower brethren may be observed, while their
hearts are probed and God’s judgment on their fate is learnt as the central stone
brightens or darkens.27 This vetting function explains the presence of the Urim
23 Pseudo-Paracelsus, Dei magia, 568.

24 Schrifftliche Unterrichtung, 235; cf. Khunrath, De igne Magorum, 90: the ‘IGNIS Naturae in-
ternus Catholicus’ (i.e. ether) used to create the Urim is also the fuel for ever-burning lamps.
25 Schrifftliche Unterrichtung, 232.
26 Pseudo-Paracelsus, Dei magia, 567–568, 569.
27 Schrifftliche Unterrichtung, 233–234; the conception of the Urim and Thummim as brigh-
tening or darkening gemstones is to be found in the work of Augustine and other Church
Fathers: Cornelis van Dam, The Urim and Thummim: A Means of Revelation in Ancient
Israel (Warsaw: Eisenbrauns, 1997), 27–28.
44 HEREWARD TILTON
at the initiation ceremony described in the Thesaurus thesaurorum and the Tes-
tamentum. 28 Thus the order's most prominent member during its quasi-Masonic
phase, crown prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia, became a Magus himself after
he 'passed the Urim and Thummim and was approved' in April of 1783 .29
What are the origins of this extraordinary Christian practice? Heinrich Khun-
rath (1560-1605) details the production of magical artefacts from electrum ma-
gicum in his restricted esoteric teachings; 30 he also refers to the Urim and Thum-
mim in his printed work as artefacts manufactured from the Philosophers' Stone
by which God reveals his secrets to the theosopher; 3 1 what is more, a remarkable
manuscript tableau uncovered by Forshaw depicts Khunrath consulting just such
artefacts in order to secure the aid, solace and counsel of 'a great benevolent spi-
rit from the Empyrean'. 32 Before an altar the 'practising theosopher' beseeches
God to grant him success; upon the altar-cloth the preconditions of that success
- prayer, fasting, penitence, faith, humility, alms-giving - are written, together
with a reminder that the pure in heart are blessed, 'for they shall see God' (Matt.
5.8). Upon the altar a Psalter (marked 'the theosopher's obedience-book') 33 lies
next to a spirit-summoning bell of electrum magicum. 34 Two polished mirror-
like stones marked 'Urim' flank a further 'wonder-working stone of the wise' in
which the 'Thummim' - a type of scrying mirror derived from two emblems of
Khunrath's Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae - is reflected.
As it is infused with a 'powerful ray of divine omnipotence', the tableau in
question is both a magical artefact and an instructional aid35 in an esoteric tradi-
28 MS Octagon, 28-29; MS Vienna, 37; MS Dresden, 36; MS Hamburg, 33.

29 Johann Christoph von Woellner, Johann Christoph v. Woellner to Johann Rudolf v. Bisch-
offwerder, 22. April 1783. Berlin : Geheimes Staatsarchiv PreuBischer Kulturbesitz, BPH
Rep. 48 - Konig Friedrich Wilhelm II, Nr. 8, Bd . 1, ff. 20 recto-21 recto (f. 20 recto) . In the
previous year the prince had reached the penultimate eighth grade (Magister): Johannes
Schultze, Forschungen zur brandenburgischen und preussischen Geschichte (Berlin : Wal-
ter de Gruyter, 1964), 254.
30 Heinrich Khunrath, Consilium de Vulcani magica fabrefactione armorum Achillis Grceco-
rum omnium fortissimo et cedere nescii. Stockholm: Kungliga Biblioteket MS Ral 4 (1597).
31 Heinr. Khunrath, Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae (Hanau : Erasmus Wolfart, 1609), 204.
32 Tabulae theosophiae Cabbalisticae. London: British Library, Sloane MS 181, ff. 1 verso-2
recto; et. Peter Forshaw, "'Behold , the dreamer cometh": Hyperphysical Magic and Deific
Visions in an Early Modern Theosophical Lab-Oratory', in Joad Raymond (ed.) , Conver-
sations with Angels: Essays towards a History of Spiritual Communication (Houndmills:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) , 175-200 (184-186).
33 An expression of the notion that the psalms exert magical power over spirits : hence a
Psalterium magicum is bound together with the Dresden Magia divina (cf. n. 14 supra).
34 Khunrath, Consilium, 43; the origins of the electrum magicum bells are to be found in
pseudo-Paracelsus, Archidoxis magica, in Paracelsus, Samtliche Werke, vol.14, ed. K.
Sudhoff (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1933), 437-498 (p. 488) ; the same tradition is described in
(e.g.) De magia divina, Wellcome MS 4808, 244-248.
35 Hence Tabulae theosophiae Cabbalisticae, f. 1 verso:' .. . diese der GOTTHEIT geheiligte
Ahnbedeutungs Zeichen ... '
Figure 6. Consulting the Urim and Thummim. Tabulae theosophiae Cabbalisticae,

British Library, Sloane MS 181.
tion transmitted by Khunrath to his followers. The tableau itself appears to date
from the early seventeenth century:36 but how did this tradition – somewhat mo-
36 Edward Scott, Index to the Sloane Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: William
Clowes and Sons, 1904), p. 90 (cf. p. 289) dates it to the seventeenth century, while Samu
el Ayscough, A Catalogue of the Manuscripts Preserved in the British Museum Hitherto
Undescribed, vol.2 (London: John Rivington, 1782), p. 880, dates it to the sixteenth; the
chirography and the interior design of the theosopher’s house suggest a slightly later date
than the related oratory emblem of the Amphitheatrum (which was engraved in 1595), but
still possibly within Khunrath’s lifetime.
46 Hereward Tilton
dified but still fully recognisable – come to play such a central role in the Gold-
und Rosenkreuz in the following century? Let us proceed to a closer analysis of
the Thesaurus thesaurorum.
Stylistic and redactional evidence indicates the earliest identifiable redactor
of the Testamentum (and hence the Thesaurus thesaurorum) was Ulrich Pfeffer
(?–1680), a surgeon and physician from Itzehoe in Holstein. Indeed, it appears
Pfeffer was the custodian of an esoteric tradition that forms an essential foundati-
on for the entire edifice of the doctrine and practice of the Gold- und Rosenkreuz.
Of Pfeffer’s early life I know nothing, except that he mistook the ‘serpent’s
guile’ of his academic training for wisdom, and subsequently spat that bitter
poison out.37 In 1660 he relinquished Lutheranism and became a member of the
Society of Friends (‘Quakers’);38 this conversion was probably contingent upon
the arrival in Friedrichstadt in 1657 of the Quaker missionary William Ames.39
According to Friedrich Breckling – a Radical Pietist close to the Holstein Qua-
ker circle40 – Pfeffer subsequently turned away from the Society of Friends and
devoted himself to the study of Böhme, van Helmont, Weigel, Paracelsus and
Basil Valentine.41 Whether his inclinations at the time were primarily Quakerish
or Böhmian, Pfeffer moved to the Netherlands, a relatively safe haven for inspi-
rationists of all stripes. There he lived on the Egelantiersgracht in Amsterdam.42
Along this short canal lay the house and offices of Christoffel Cunrad, the Dutch
publisher of Böhme, von Franckenberg, Penn and Breckling; between 1672 and
37 George Ernst Aurelius Reger, Gründlicher Bericht auff einige Fragen (Hamburg: Georg
Wolff, 1683), p. 76: ‘… ich habe auch in meiner Jugend gemeint bey dieser Huren grosse
Weißheit zu finden/ aber ich fand nur der Schlangen Klugheit/ welche ich als bittere Galle
wieder hab müssen ausspeyen.’
38 Johann Moller, Cimbria literata, vol.1 (Copenhagen: Orphanotrophius Regius, 1744), 494.
39 Gottfried Arnold, Unpartheyische Kirchen- und Ketzer-Historie, vol.2 (Frankfurt: Thomas
Fritsch, 1700), 655; Sünne Juterczenka, Über Gott und die Welt: Endzeitvisionen, Reformde
batten und die europäische Quäkermission in der Frühen Neuzeit (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht, 2008), 96. Quakers faced persecution as ‘separatists’ (vis-à-vis corrupted ec-
clesiastical and secular power structures) and inspirationists (or Schwärmer, to use Luther’s
derogatory term). Thus another Quaker in Pfeffer’s circle, Peter Arend, was banished from
Halle in 1663: Gottfried Olearius, Halygraphia topo-chronologica (Leipzig: Johann Wittigau,
1667), 488; this fact contradicts the counter-assertion in the supplement to Gottfried Arnold’s
Fortsetzung und Erläuterung … der unpartheyischen Kirchen- und Ketzer-Historie (Frankfurt:
Thomas Fritschens sel. Erben, 1729), 1271, that Pfeffer and Arend ‘were never Quakers’.
40 Breckling graduated from the University of Strasbourg in the same year (1655) as ano-
ther member of the Holstein Quaker circle, Johannes Grimmenstein; both men were from
Flensburg. Die alten Matrikeln der Universitaet Strassburg 1621 bis 1793, vol.1, ed. Gus-
tav Carl Knod (Strasbourg: Karl J. Trübner, 1897), 623.
41 Friedrich Breckling, ‘Mehrere Zeugen der Wahrheit’, in Arnold, Fortsetzung und Erläuter-
ung, 1089–1110 (p. 1098).
42 Thus Johann Anton Söldner, Keren Happuch, Posaunen Elia des Künstlers, oder deutsch-
es Fegefeuer der Scheidekunst (Hamburg: Libernickel, 1702), p. 119, gives ‘Neglandirs
Kraft in Amsterdam’ as Pfeffer’s former residence; this is a corruption of ‘Negelantiers-
gracht’, as it was known at the time.
1680 Breckling himself lived and worked there with Cunrad’s family.43 From
1673 Egelantiersgracht was also the site of Johann Georg Gichtel’s communal
house of Böhmians – the Engelsbrüder (Angelic Brethren), so named for their
commitment to angelification in this life.44 While it is not clear if Pfeffer resided
at either of these houses,45 it is evident he was extremely close – both geographi-
cally and ideologically – to this circle of Böhmian exiles. Thus Pfeffer’s praise
of Böhme is included in the foreword to the edition of Böhme’s Theosophische
Schriften published in Amsterdam by Heinrich Betke in 1675.46 Breckling re-
cords Pfeffer’s death in 1680, a year in which he says many thousands died of the
plague in Amsterdam.47
Pfeffer left behind a large corpus of unpublished and in part fragmentary
manuscript texts. These contained teachings of an esoteric nature intended for
Pfeffer’s ‘disciples’ that would normally – more Cabalistico – be passed on orally.48
A partial inventory of these texts was published in Franz Rottman’s Treuhertzige
Vermahnung (1680), and a more complete list appeared three years later in Georg
Ernst Aurelius Reger’s Gründlicher Bericht auff einige Fragen (1683); 49 both of
these books from Rottman and Reger appear to have been stitched together from
Pfeffer’s work,50 while a further anonymous work published by Reger in 1686
43 Friedrich Breckling, Autobiographie: ein frühneuzeitliches Ego-Dokument im Spannungs-

feld von Spiritualismus, radikalem Pietismus und Theosophie, ed. Johann Anselm Steiger
(Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2005), 39, 51.
44 Jakob Michelmann, Der Wunder-volle und heiliggeführte Lebens-Lauf des auserwehlten
Rüstzeugs und hochseligen Mannes Gottes, Johann Georg Gichtels, vol.7 of Johann Ge-
org Gichtel, Theosophia practica (Leiden: s.n., 1722), p. 144; Martin Brecht, ‘Die deut
schen Spiritualisten des 17. Jahrhunderts’, in Der Pietismus vom siebzehnten bis zum
frühen achtzehnten Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993), 205–240
(p. 235). Note this is not the parallel Egelantiersstraat.
45 Johann Friedrich Gmelin, Geschichte der Chemie, vol.2 (Göttingen: Johann Georg Ro-
senbusch, 1798), p. 23, states Pfeffer ‘lived alone’ in Amsterdam.
46 Jacob Böhme, Theosophische Schriften (Amsterdam: Heinrich Betke, 1675), ff. X ii recto–X
iii verso. On Betke and his connections with the group Brecht calls ‘die radikalen Arndtia-
ner’ (Breckling, Gichtel and Heinrich’s adoptive father Joachim Betke), see Willem Heijting,
‘Hendrick Beets, uitgever voor de Duitse Böhme-aanhangers in Amsterdam’, in Willem
Heijting, Profijtelijke boekskens: boekcultuur, geloof en gewin (Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verlo-
ren, 2007), 209–243.
47 Breckling, Autobiographie, 50–51; note the year of death coincides with the death of ‘E.
P.J.H.’ (Reger, Gründlicher Bericht, 118) and the release of his manuscript oeuvre, thus
confirming Söldner’s identification of those initials as ‘Ericus Pfeffer, Itzehoensis Holsatus’:
Söldner, Keren Happuch, 119.
48 Franz Rottman, Treuhertzige Vermahnung in diesen itzigen gefährlichen/ doch wunderbahr
lichen Zeiten ... (Hamburg: Georg Wolff, 1680), f. C iii recto.
49 Rottman, Treuhertzige Vermahnung, ff.Ciiii recto–Cvi verso; Reger, Gründlicher Bericht,
121–137. Reger was resident in Amsterdam (cf. Reger, Gründlicher Bericht, 112) before
moving to Rijswijk near The Hague (cf. Georg Ernst Aurelius Reger, Nosce te ipsum physico-
medicum (s.l.: s.n., c.1705), 23: written from ‘Ryswyk ausser dem Haag in Musaeo meo’).
50 Söldner, Keren Happuch, 120, accuses Reger of ‘cobbling these books together’ from
Pfeffer’s work, while Breckling (in Arnold, Fortsetzung und Erläuterung, 1098) states Rott-
48 Hereward Tilton
is also likely to be Pfeffer’s.51 Reger’s inventory of Pfeffer’s manuscript works

includes the titles of three texts associated with the Gold- und Rosenkreuz. First-
ly, there is the Cabala et philosophia naturae et artis; the subtitled description
states it was written ‘for the instruction of my favourite disciples out of love’.52
Two eighteenth-century manuscripts with this title exist at The Hague and Ams-
terdam, and both are ascribed to Friedrich Gualdi of the Italian Cavallieri dell’
Aurea Croce (cf. infra).53 The Amsterdam copy is bound together with the afo-
rementioned Himmlisches und übernatürliches Geheimnis des Geistes und der
Seele der Welt – a work ascribed to Trithemius, but which nevertheless contains
Pfeffer’s words verbatim in a chapter entitled ‘Was Magia naturalis’.54
Secondly, Reger lists among Pfeffer’s works an Occulta philosophia, coelum
sapientum et vexatio stultorum, which shares its title with the Occulta philoso-
phia, coelum sapientum et vexatio stultorum published in 1737 by Augustinus
Crusius of Erfurt. In the faux-Jewish Uraltes chymisches Werck (1735) of ‘Abra-
ham Eleazar’, the same publisher announces a list of manuscripts he is ‘inclined’
to print, which includes the Occulta philosophia, a work of ‘Eric Pfeffer’ entitled
Secretum denutatum[sic] philosophiae occultae and the Coelum reseratum chy-
micum of pseudo-Thölde.55 While the Secretum denutatum philosophiae occultae
was not printed, the other three works – Occulta philosophia, Uraltes chymisches
Werck and Coelum reseratum chymicum – contain large swathes of text that are
also to be found in the Testamentum and the Thesaurus thesaurorum, as well as
a closely related iconography.56
man passed off Pfeffer’s works as those of an ‘unknown adept’; stylistic and thematic
commonalities support these accusations. Reger’s copies of Pfeffer’s manuscripts passed
to Abraham van Brün (d. 1745–1750) of Amsterdam; while Friedrich Schröder, Neue al-
chymistische Bibliothek für den Naturkundiger, vol.1 (Frankfurt am Main: Heinrich Ludwig
Brünner, 1772), 21–22, declared that van Brün did not belong to any lineage of adepts,
the anonymous author of the ‘Authentische Nachricht von den eigentlichen Grundsätzen
der wahren Rosenkreutzer, und wo sich die Originalnachrichten davon befinden’, Der
Deutsche Zuschauer 16, 6 (1787), 198–208 (p. 201), responded that van Brün was the last
of the ‘true’ Rosicrucian lineage represented by Pfeffer and Reger.
51 Anonymous [Ulrich Pfeffer], Das Buch Amor Proximi: Geflossen aus dem Oehl der Göttli
chen Barmhertzigkeit (The Hague: Pieter Hagen, 1686); in Nosce te ipsum, 4, Reger claims
responsibility for the publication of Das Buch Amor Proximi. The work is praised and
claimed for the brotherhood in Carl Hubert Lobreich von Plumenoek [Bernhard Joseph
Schleiß von Löwenfeld], Geoffenbarter Einfluß in das allgemeine Wohl der Staaten der
ächten Freymäurerey (Amsterdam [Regensburg]: s.n., 1777), 34.
52 Reger, Gründlicher Bericht, 128.
53 Cabala et philosophia naturae et artis: Fridericus Gualdianus, ein geberner orientalischer
Prinz u. Bluthsverwander des Keyssers von Marocco 1698. The Hague: Bibliotheek van
de Orde van Vrijmetselaren, MS 190 E 55; Fridericus Gualdianus. Ein geborener Orien-
talischer Printz und Bluths verwandter des Keysers von Marocco, Cabala et philosophia
naturae et artis 1698. Amsterdam: Bibliotheca Philosophia Hermetica, MS M 217.
54 Hence Reger, Gründlicher Bericht, 42–43 = pseudo-Trithemius, Wunder-Buch, 24–25.
55 Uraltes chymisches Werck, vol.1, f. 13 verso.
56 Shared text includes that pertaining to a) an astral tincture derived from the earth: Occulta
Figure 7.
Iconography of the
Coelum reseratum
chymicum (A),
Uraltes chymisches
Werck (B),
Testamentum (MS
Hamburg) (C)
and the Occulta
philosophia (D).
A third text associated with the Gold- und Rosenkreuz that is listed in Reger’s
inventory of Pfeffer’s works is the Testamentum an die Kinder der Kunst und
Weißheit Göttlicher Magiae, Englischer Cabalae und Natürlicher Philosophiae.
There is no further indication of the content of this manuscript in Reger’s Gründ-
licher Bericht, but given a) the correspondence of the title’s terminology and
syntax to that of the Testamentum; b) the aforementioned presence of Pfeffer’s
philosophia, 60–66 = MS Vienna, 105–114 = MS Hamburg, 79–83 = Uraltes chymisches

Werck, vol.1, 12–19 = Anton Kirchweger, Aurea catena Homeri (Jena: Christian Henrich
Cuno, 1757), 475–479 = Curieuse Untersuchung etlicher Mineralien, Thiere und Kräuter
(s.l.: s.n., 1703), ff. 24 verso–25 verso; b) information on the whereabouts of magnesia
philosophorum: Occulta philosophia, 24–26 = MS Darmstadt, 120–121; and c), animal
tinctures derived from blood and urine: Coelum reseratum chymicum, 178–184/193–195 =
MS Darmstadt, 346–352/352–355.
50 Hereward Tilton
words in the Thesaurus thesaurorum and another text describing the order’s ma-
gical activities (Himmlisches und übernatürliches Geheimnis des Geistes und
der Seele der Welt); and c), the doctrinal and terminological commonalities of
Pfeffer’s oeuvre with the Cabalistic sections of the Testamentum, it is highly
likely that the manuscript in Reger’s inventory was a forebear of the order com-
pendia analysed here.
Among those commonalities we find generic Pietist, Böhmian and Christi-
an Cabalistic themes: the Weltgelehrten (those taught by the world),57 Schrift-
gelehrten (those taught by texts)58 and Pharisaic Sterngelehrten (those taught
by the stars)59 are guided by fallible human reasoning60 and scholastic book-
lore,61 and are thus fully incapable of attaining a new Adamic body through
spiritual rebirth,62 of passing from this visible world into the inner Mysterium,
of penetrating to ‘the Centre of the great spirit’ and achieving spiritual union
with Jehovah.63 Such union is the primary concern of ‘divine magic’, which
utilises the seven Quellgeister (source-spirits) as a bridge between this ephe-
meral world and the eternal realm of triune divinity;64 these spirits exist within
the human microcosm as sealed ‘psychic qualities’, and their seven seals (cf.
Revelations 5.1–5) are broken through the light of Christ as the initiate follows
the aphorism of the prisci theologi: nosce te ipsum.65 The (Joachimite) chilias-
57 MS Hamburg, 171; MS Vienna, 197 (‘Schriftgelehrter und Weltweiser’).

58 MS Vienna, 206; Gründlicher Bericht, 66 (‘Phariseern und Schrifftgelährten’); Gründlicher
Bericht, 92 (‘Scartecken Galeni’).
59 MS Vienna, 200; Das Buch Amor Proximi, 55 (‘Darum ist ihre Syderische Vernunft todt’).
60 MS Hamburg, 157 (‘der Mensch muß gantz mit Gott vereinigt seyn, es muß der Natürliche
Mensch gefangen worden’), 159 (‘denn so bald der Mensch seine Vernunft mit einmischt
… ist solcher ein Greuel vor seinem Angesicht’); Gründlicher Bericht, 82 (‘siehe O du Welt-
kluge Vernunfft/ dein Schlangen-Klugheit hilfft dir nichts’); Das Buch Amor Proximi, 55 (‘im
Niedergang deiner natürlichen Vernunft’).
61 MS Hamburg, 171 (‘wirst eine solche Poetische und heydnische Antwort’); Das Buch Amor
Proximi, 60 (‘Heydnisches Disputiren’); Gründlicher Bericht, 68 (‘Heidnische erdichtete
Träume’).
62 MS Hamburg, 171 (‘Der neue leib aus der neuen geburth’); Das Buch Amor Proximi, 47
(‘den reinen Cristal Leib ... aus dem unreinen Leib, durch die Wiedergeburt’); 55–56 (‘... in
diese neugeborne Microcosmische Welt ... deinen ganzen neuen Leib’).
63 MS Vienna, 227 (‘aus der sichtbahren in das inner Mysterium hineingeführet’); MS Ham-
burg, 164 (‘dringe mit demselben ein biß an das Centrum des großen geistes’); Das Buch
Amor Proximi, 59 (‘so ist er ein Magisches krafftiges mercurialisches glied Jesu Christi ...
in der Vereinigung’).
64 Das Buch Amor Proximi, 28–29 (cf. Rev. 4.5): the seven source-spirits are Fackeln (tor-
ches, cf. the Menorah); together with the Trinity they are homologous with the sefirot. On
the function of the Quellgeister in the brightening and darkening of the Urim, see Schrifftli-
che Unterrichtung, 225.
65 ‘Liber Theophrasti de septem stellis’, in Septimus sapientiae: Liber verus ac genuinus.
Munich: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS Kiesewetteriana 1 e, pp. 180–343 (pp. 222, 283–
284); Das Buch Amor Proximi, 29, 150 (‘Wie nun das ewige Licht alle 7 Geister im innern
Grund erleuchten muss’). On the Magus breaking the seven seals, see Jacob Böhme, In-
formatorium novissimorum, oder Unterricht von den Letzten Zeiten (Theosophia Revelata,
Figure 8. The book with seven seals: Gold- und Rosenkreuz manuscript (c.1760),
Beinecke Library, Mellon MS 110 (A) and Ad 1ste Hauptstuffe Nr. 1 + Nr. 3
(Asiatic Brethren tables), Octagon Collection (B).
tic dimensions of this spiritual process are evident in both Pfeffer’s work and
the texts of the order.66
However, some commonalities are less generic. Thus the Gründlicher Be-
richt states that, just as higher angels instruct those beneath them, so the secret
of the Urim and Thummim was passed down in an esoteric lineage among the
prophets, who were practitioners of magia divina.67 In another place in Pfeffer’s
presumed oeuvre divine revelations in a speculum magicum divinum are men-
tioned.68 At the end of his inventory, Reger also lists a number of manuscripts
owned but not authored by Pfeffer ‘that have never been printed’: this includes
a ‘manual’ of Heinrich Khunrath that is the likely source of the esoteric magical
practices in question.69 This evidence suggests Pfeffer belonged to an esoteric li-
vol.13) (s.l.: s.n., 1730), 438; Paracelsus, Astronomia magna, vol.12 of Sämtliche Werke,
ed. K. Sudhoff (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1933), 123 (‘als das buch der offenbarung, das wird
nimer keiner auslegen, er sei dann ein magus geborn oder adoptiert’).
66 Treuhertzige Vermahnung, f. A ii recto (‘der Elias Artista ... des heranbrechenden Seculi
Spiritus Sancti’); Gründlicher Bericht, 125; cf. Uraltes chymisches Werck, vol.1, 93 (‘das
Urim ... ist nicht verlohren gangen, wie man sagt, sondern es liegt mit dem gantzen pries-
terlichen Schmuck verwahrt ... und wird zu der Zeit, wenn der Herr sein Volck wieder
heimsuchen wird durch den Propheten Eliam, hervorbracht und geholet werden’).
67 Reger, Gründlicher Bericht, 51, 73.
68 Rottman, Treuhertzige Vermahnung, 31.
69 Gründlicher Bericht, 137. Khunrath’s influence is also readily apparent in Reger, Nosce te
ipsum, 12 (‘Harmonia macro- et microcosmica triuna atque catholica’); 13 (‘arg-chymia’).
52 Hereward Tilton
neage stretching from Khunrath to the later Gold- und Rosenkreuz. However,
while the doctrines and practices described in the printed works associated with
Pfeffer are certainly consonant with the worldview of the order’s Testamentum,
should we attribute that text in its earliest form to Pfeffer? Let us compare the
title of the Dresden Testamentum with the Testamentum that Reger claims is Pfef
fer’s own work:
Tes t[d]ament[d]um [der Frader Aurae vel Rosae – als gewiße Extases oder geheime
operationes, wo durch das Misterio er öffnet.] an die [unßere] Kinder der Kunst
und Weiß[ys]heit[,] Göttlicher Magiae, [und] Englischer Cabalae und Natürlicher
Philosophiae. [I. W. R. anno 580.]
Note that the last term in Pfeffer’s all-pervasive leitmotiv – göttliche Magia, eng-
lische Cabala und natürliche Philosophia70 – has been removed, indicating the
excision from Pfeffer’s Testamentum of material written under the rubric of ‘na-
tural philosophy’ (i.e. the medical reflections to be found in Pfeffer’s surviving
printed texts). However, there is insufficient data to draw a firm conclusion con-
cerning the tract’s authorship. Notwithstanding the fact we are examining both
texts through the lens of a number of redactions, stylistic dissimilarities between
the Böhmian passages of the Testamentum and the work which can most safely
be ascribed to Pfeffer – Das Buch Amor Proximi – raise the possibility that the
Testamentum was a work redacted by, but not first authored by, Pfeffer.
If Pfeffer was a redactor of the Testamentum, was he a ‘Rosicrucian’? The
above title comparison suggests the attribution of his Testamentum to ‘a brother
[hood] of the golden or rosy [cross]’ was a later interpolation, as does the distinc-
tive term Extases associated with pseudo-Gualdi (cf. infra). Indeed, in the Dres-
den codex the confusion of possessives and an incongruous full stop in the midst
of the title still attest to this interpolation. While Pfeffer refers in Das Buch Amor
Proximi to the ‘F.R.+’71 – an abbreviation reminiscent of the Hessen-Darmstadt
‘Rosen+er’72 – in the manuscript titles of Reger’s inventory Pfeffer repeatedly
addresses his own disciples with the Böhmian terminology of ‘children of lilies
and roses’.73 Once again, the data available does not support any definite conclu-
70 Eg. Das Buch Amor Proximi, 46; Gründlicher Bericht, 33; Treuhertzige Vermahnung, f. C ii recto.
71 Das Buch Amor Proximi, 96 (‘… darum ist nöthig, dass, nach der F.R.+ Ermahnung, ein
junger Hermetis nicht allein die H. Schrift fleisig lese, sondern auch nach der Regel, da
rinn vorgeschrieben, ernstlich wandle, und Gott in dem Namen JEsu fleisig um den H.
Geist bitte.’)
72 Heinrich Klenk, ‘Ein sogenannter Inquisitionsprozeß in Gießen anno 1623’, Mitteilungen
des Oberhessischen Geschichtsvereins 49 (1965), 39–60 (p. 54).
73 Carlos Gilly, ‘Vom ägyptischen Hermes zum Trismegistus Germanus’, in Konzepte des
Hermetismus in der Literatur der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. Peter-André Alt and Volkhard Wel
(Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2010), 71–131 (98); Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, Apokalypse
und Philologie (Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2006), 208.
sions concerning the ‘Rosicrucian’ affiliation of either Pfeffer or the Testamen-

tum he authored/redacted.
Another interpolation evident from the comparison of titles is the conspicuous
backdating of the Testamentum to ‘580’, which becomes a slightly more plausib-
le ‘1580’ in the titles of the Thesaurus thesaurorum. Such backdating is characte-
ristic of a number of ‘orphaned’ texts claimed by the Gold- und Rosenkreuz and
related to Pfeffer’s oeuvre. By the mid-eighteenth century the Himmlisches und
übernatürliches Geheimnis des Geistes und der Seele der Welt had been backda-
ted to 1566 and ascribed to Trithemius; likewise, by the point of their publication
in Erfurt in the mid-1730’s the Occulta philosophia, Uraltes chymisches Werck
and Coelum reseratum chymicum had accrued pseudo-historical framing narra-
tives.74 That of the Occulta philosophia describing the conflict of its supposed
author – Ludwig Conrad ‘Orvius’ of Berg – with the draconian Imperator of the
Gold- und Rosenkreuz in the early seventeenth century is manifestly fictional;75
by 1926 Scholem had already noted the Böhmian terminology utilized by the
allegedly fourteenth-century author of the Uraltes chymisches Werck, ‘Abraham
Eleazar’;76 and the Coelum reseratum chymicum in its print and existing ma-
nuscript versions is backdated to 1612 in an attempt to portray its author as Jo-
hann Thölde (c.1565–c.1614), the publisher of the works of Basil Valentine (and
thus demonstrate the priority of the order’s lineage in relation to the Rosicrucian
manifestos). The latter two texts appeared under the guise of works that had
been alluded to by earlier authors (Flamel,77 Tolle78) but were never published,
74 Johann Haussen’s manuscript copy of the Occulta philosophia, Munich: Bayerische Staats
bibliothek, MS Kiesewetteriana 24, is dated 1728 and gives ‘Orvius’ as the author.
75 A Rosicrucian living in Amsterdam in 1622 would know the order’s legendary founder was
‘Christian Rosenkreuz’ rather than ‘Christian Rose’ (Occulta philosophia, 16; cf. Coelum
reseratum chymicum, 121, which also refers to ‘Christian Rose’); references to the Gold-
und Rosenkreuz laws (p. 17) and Rosicrucian origins among the Order of the Knights of
Saint John (p. 16) also demonstrate the late origins of the framing narrative, as well as
supplying an early association of Rosicrucianism with the Templar mythos (cf. Die Brüder
St. Johannis, 247–248).
76 Gershom Scholem, ‘Zu Abraham Eleazars Buch und dem Esch Mezareph’, Monatsschrift
für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 70, 3 (1926), 202–209 (p. 202); there
is no unambiguous reference to the text prior to the Curieuse Untersuchung, ff. D i verso
–D ii verso (where the anonymous author, a member of the ‘Collegium Curiosorum’, cites
a passage from a ‘secret manuscript’ corresponding to Uraltes chymisches Werck, vol.1,
12–14). The most prominent defence of a fourteenth-century authorship remains Raphael
Patai, The Jewish Alchemists: A History and Source Book (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2014), 238–257; however, the faux-Jewish elements of the Uraltes chymisches
Werck are directed towards a Protestant inspirationist diaspora.
77 Trois traitez de la philosophie naturelle non encore imprimez (Paris: Guillaume Marette,
1612), 50–51.
78 Writing from Amsterdam in 1688, Jacob Tolle, Manuductio ad coelum chemicum (Jena: Jo-
hann Christoph Crökern, 1752), p. 22, promised his readers a Caelum chemicum resera-
tum; however, he subsequently retracted his promise: Sapientia insaniens (Amsterdam:
Janssonius van Waesberge, 1689), 4–5. The editor of the 1752 edition of Tolle’s Manuduc-
54 Hereward Tilton
as did a further related text, the spurious ‘third book’ of Kirchweger’s Aurea
catena Homeri:79 in this manner one or more redactors have attached more illus-
trious names to unpublished material that originated in part with Pfeffer.
In the case of the order’s Testamentum, the most likely scenario given the
available evidence is that the redactor: 1) was a resident of Utrecht; 2) wrote
under the name of ‘Friedrich Gualdi’; 3) was a custodian of Pfeffer’s esoteric
magical tradition; 4) worked at the hub of a large epistolary network of practicing
alchemists and magicians; and 5), died in 1724. According to this scenario, the
‘pseudo-Gualdi’ in question was responsible for splicing Pfeffer’s Testamentum
together with the laws of the fraternity associated with the true Friedrich Gualdi.
The earliest version of these laws in exoteric circulation is an Italian manuscript
housed at the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples and dated to 1678.80 A comparison
of these Italian laws with those given in the three Testamentum codices reveals
the insertion of idiosyncratic material designed to bring them into conformity
with Pfeffer’s esoteric tradition:
a) the unveiling of a free-standing Urim during the neophyte initiation ceremony;81
b) the appearance of ‘seven elders’ or Magi;82
c) a reference to spiritual union with God through abnegation of the flesh;83
d) a statement that the order’s secrets pertain to ‘magia’ and ‘Cabala’;84
e) the addition of order meeting-houses in Amsterdam, Hamburg and ‘Ancona’
(Altona?) to the original meeting-house in Nuremberg.85
The short pseudo-history of the Italian laws describes the reformation of the or-
der in 1542–43.86 In its stead the Testamentum supplies the much longer patri-
tio (p. 37) states it is untrue that the Rosicrucians stole the promised work from the printers,
and unashamed fraud to claim that the Coelum reseratum chymicum published in 1737
was the work in question, as that text is as far removed from Tolle’s genuine works as the
earth is from heaven (the editor is correct in this regard). The association of the order’s
Coelum reseratum chymicum with Tolle apparently predates its association with Thölde.
79 [Pseudo-]Kirchweger, Aurea catena Homeri (1757), 407–482 (a tract written from ‘Utrecht,
1654’); the promise is made in Anton Kirchweger, Aurea catena Homeri (Frankfurt: Johann
Georg Böhme, 1723), 236. Cf. n. 56 supra.
80 ‘Osservationi inviolabibili [sic] da osservarsi dalli Fratelli dell’ Aurea Croce, ò vero dell’ Au-
rea Rosa precedenti la solita professione’ (‘Inviolable rules to be observed by the brethren
of the golden cross, or more properly of the golden rose, preceding the customary vow’),
in Andreas Segura, Filosofia filosofica [sic]. Naples: Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli, Cod.
XII-E-30, ff. 226 recto–242 verso (1678) (henceforth ‘MS Naples’). A transcription is given
in Alessandro Boella and Antonella Galli (eds.), L’alchimia della confraternita dell’Aurea
Rosacroce (Rome: Edizioni Mediterranee, 2013).
81 MS Hamburg, 33; MS Dresden, 36; MS Vienna, 37.
82 MS Hamburg, 23; MS Vienna, 23.
83 MS Hamburg, 22.
84 MS Hamburg, 25–26.
85 MS Hamburg, 23; MS Naples, f. 228 recto.
86 MS Naples, ff. 226 recto–227 recto.
archal pseudo-history I have briefly described; various fictional ‘events’ in the

history of the order are also added to the laws, such as the exposure of brethren
due to indiscretions with women and canting clerics.87
The Italian laws appear to belong to the alchemical and magical sect led by
Friedrich Gualdi: the Cavallieri dell’ Aurea Croce (Knights of the Gold Cross),
which constituted a conspiratorial cabal within high diplomatic and political
circles in Venice. Notwithstanding their likely inclusion of hearsay and delibe-
rate defamation, the Inquisitorial records refer to Gualdi as ‘a star that domina-
tes Venice’ (presumably just as the sage dominates the stars),88 and mention is
made of an elixir produced from human semen by which the operator is ‘exal-
ted to an angelic nature’ and becomes a ‘prophet dominating the aerial and sub-
terranean spirits’.89 These are summoned and subdued with the help of un libro
di negromanzia containing their characters, legions and circles;90 thus one dia-
bolical spirit is said to be kept captive in a flask (cf. figure 6, lower left).91 The
legend of Gualdi’s longevity is also present in the records.92 This is attributable
to the Philosophers’ Stone he possesses: thus most of the Italian laws (if they
indeed belong to Gualdi’s ‘high sect’)93 are directed toward the maintenance of
secrecy and the correct handling of this lapis, which takes powdered, liquid and
solid forms. There are also references to a (magical or ecstatic?) riversioni di
spiriti as well as natural magical artefacts such as ever-burning lights.94
87 MS Hamburg, 27–28.
88 Sponte comparuit Francesci Giusti contra Federicum Gualdum et sequacis de magicis
artibus. Venice: Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Sant’Uffizio, Processi, MS b 119 (1676), sec-
tion VII.8. A transcription and French translation is given in Eric Humbertclaude, Federico
Gualdi à Venise: fragments retrouvés (1660–1678) (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2010).
89 Francesci Giusti contra Federicum Gualdum, section II.2.g.
92 Francesci Giusti contra Federicum Gualdum, section II.4.
93 Gualdi is the ‘prince of the high sect’: Francesci Giusti contra Federicum Gualdum, sec-
tion II.2.c.
94 MS Naples, f. 232 verso. While the brethren are forbidden to make ‘lumi perpetui’ (perpe-
tual lamps) in the Naples manuscript, they are forbidden to cause ‘immerwährenden Haß’
(perpetual hatred) in the laws printed by Samuel Richter, Die wahrhaffte und vollkommene
Bereitung des Philosophischen Steins der Bruderschaft aus dem Orden des Gulden- und
Rosen-creutzes (Breslau: Fellgiebels seelige Wittwe und Erben, 1710), 105. This apparent
error is also present in MS Vienna, 29, and is carried over into the Thesaurus thesaurorum
(e.g. MS Darmstadt, 22). As MS Vienna is not derived from the Breslau laws (cf. their
respective pseudo-histories), the error was present in their Protestant German-language
common source (RQ2), while an earlier version of the laws (RQ1) did not contain the error.
RQ1 may also have been a German-language manuscript, as ‘immerwährenden Haß’ is
more likely to be a mistranscription of ‘immerwährenden Lampen’ rather than a mistransla-
tion of ‘lumi perpetui’, ‘lucernae inextinguibiles’, etc.; furthermore, the redactor of the more
comprehensive laws in MS Hamburg may have had recourse to RQ1 or a derivative which
did not contain the error (hence MS Hamburg, 28: ‘die außerordentliche und den unwißen-
de als wunderwercke vorkommende dinge’).
56 Hereward Tilton
What was the relationship of the Cavallieri dell’ Aurea Croce to the Germa-
nic Gold- und Rosenkreuz associated with Pfeffer’s esoteric tradition? There is
little indication in either the Inquisitorial records, the Italian laws or Gualdi’s
genuine works95 of Pietist, Böhmian and Christian Cabalistic themes or termi-
nology. Nevertheless, angelification via a seminal tincture (alchemically assisted
theurgy)96 and pseudo-Solomonic demon-binding are consonant with the practi-
ces described in the esoteric manuscript literature of the Gold- und Rosenkreuz.97
The twofold division of the order into ‘brethren of the golden cross’ (signified by
a red cross) and ‘brethren of the rosy cross’ (signified by a green cross) alluded
to in all existing versions of the order’s laws may indicate the amalgamation of
the alchemically oriented Italian ‘Philosophers of the Gold Cross’98 with a Ro-
sicrucian tradition based in Nuremberg and represented by Gualdi.99 Although
Gilly argues that the laws of the order were ‘originally written in Italian by Ro-
man Catholics’, and that their content is ‘of good Catholic stock’,100 the Naples
95 E.g. Philosophia hermetica, overo vera, reale e sincera descriggione della pierra filosofica.
New Haven: Yale University, Beinecke Library, MS 131, ff. 1–41 (ca. 1790).
96 Cf. Hereward Tilton, ‘Alchymia Archetypica: Theurgy, Inner Transformation and the His-
toriography of Alchemy’, in Transmutatio: La via ermetica alla felicità (Quaderni di Studi
Indo-Mediterranei, vol. 5), ed. Daniela Boccassini and Carlo Testa (Alessandria: Edizioni
dell’Orso, 2012), 179–215 (187–192).
97 Thus the ‘complete archive’ of Gold- und Rosenkreuz manuscripts described by Ignaz Au-
relius Feßler, Fessler’s sämmtliche Schriften über Freymaurerey. Wirklich als Manuscript
für Brüder (Berlin: s.n., 1801), pp. 383, 425, includes a Clavicula Salomonis; the third and
fourth books of the Book of the True Practice of the Ancient Magic of ‘Abramelin’ are given
in Magia divina. Stockholm: Svenska Frimurare Ordensbiblioteket, MS 13.106 Mystik, a
Swedish Rosicrucian manuscript which also includes diagrams for the construction of a
spirit-summoning temple (figure 9).
98 Cf. Jesvs et Maria et Ioseph. London: Wellcome Library, MS 259.1, ff. 1 recto–2 verso
(1649). The thirteen laws given here lack any unambiguous relation to the later laws of the
Cavallieri dell’ Aurea Croce.
99 A later indication of order activity in Nuremberg is Chrysostomus Ferdinand von Sabor
(aka Christian Friedrich von Steinbergen, aka Christian Friedrich Sendimir von Sieben-
stern, etc.) Practica naturae vera (Nuremberg: Getruckt auf Kosten der Rosencreutzer
Brüderschafft, 1721), which appeared in Nuremberg and was (according to its title-page)
financed by the ‘Rosicrucian Brotherhood’. Friedrich Mumenthaler (aka Hermann Fictuld;
cf. infra), Der längst gewünschte und versprochene Chymisch-philosophische Probier-
Stein, vol.2 (Frankfurt: Veraci Orientali Wahrheit und Ernst Lugenfeind, 1753), 135–137,
rails against this author as a fraud and arch-sophist who has duped his correspondents
– high nobility among them – into joining his alchemical society in Fürth (a German mile
from Nuremberg). Given Mumenthaler’s friendship with pseudo-Gualdi (cf. infra), this may
indicate a schism in the order.
100 Carlos Gilly and Cis van Heertum, Magia, alchimia, scienza dal ‘400 al ‘700. L’influsso di
Ermete Trismegisto, vol.2 (Florence: Centro Di, 2005), 224, 226. The lament in the Naples
manuscript that Calvinists and Muslims have been forced to convert to Catholicism in order
to join the order surely cannot be taken at face value; rather, the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ temp-
late presented in both the ‘Catholic’ Naples manuscript and Richter’s ‘Protestant’ laws can
be read as the expression of a trans-confessional irenicism, and a willingness of the order’s
elite to dissemble before neophytes. This tendency culminates in the late (now lost) laws
manuscript clearly states that the order’s headquarters (la casa maggiore) are
in Nuremberg, residence of the imperatore (quite possibly Gualdi, the ‘prince
of the high sect’).101 Moreover, Gualdi is repeatedly referred to in the Inquisito-
rial records as a German and ‘native of Augsburg’.102 Nor are Richter’s laws a
translation of the Naples text, as Gilly asserts.103 Rather, they are derived from
a Protestant German manuscript (RQ2); therefore it is too early to conclude the
laws are an ‘Italian import product’.104
Whether it existed beforehand or not, the first hard evidence for the doctrinal
and organisational continuity of the Cavallieri dell’ Aurea Croce with the Germa-
nic Gold- und Rosenkreuz is to be found in the figure of pseudo-Gualdi – a follo-
wer of both Gualdi and Pfeffer who (according to the aforementioned scenario)
was responsible for those transformations in the order’s grade system and cul-
tus that are manifestly derived from Pfeffer’s esoteric tradition.105 After Gualdi’s
death, this pseudo-Gualdi more or less opportunistically traded on the mystique
surrounding Gualdi and his life-giving elixir.106 Thus the Amsterdam manuscript
of Pfeffer’s ‘orphaned’ Cabala et philosophia naturae et artis is ascribed to ‘Fri-
dericus Gualdianus’, and has a preface signed in Utrecht in ‘1678’ – yet the real
Gualdi was still in Venice in that year.107 Furthermore, two Pietistically tinged
letters describe a Dutch ‘Friedrich Gualdianus’ undertaking a mission in Septem-
ber 1721 on behalf of the ‘Brüderschafft der Rosen-Creutzer’ to collect secret
manuscripts belonging to a recently deceased ‘brother’: a two-part Schlüssel der
wahren Weisheit (Key to True Wisdom) and Der güldene Begriff (The Golden
Compendium), the latter of which forms the bulk of the fourth book of the Darm-
stadt Thesaurus thesaurorum.108 While the veracity of the narrative presented
of the Dégh manuscript Aureum vellus, seu Junioratus fratrum Rosae crucis, in which se-
parate Catholic and Protestant ‘companies’ exist side-by-side within the order: Ludwig Abafi-
Aigner, ‘Die Entstehung der neuen Rosenkreuzer’, Die Bauhütte 36, 11 (1893), 81–85 (82).
101 MS Naples, ff. 228 recto, 235 recto; Francesci Giusti contra Federicum Gualdum, section
II.2.c (‘Prencipe dell’alta seta’).
102 Francesci Giusti contra Federicum Gualdum, sections V.6, VI.8.
103 Gilly and van Heertum, Magia, alchimia, scienza, 226.
104 Gilly and van Heertum, Magia, alchimia, scienza, 228; cf. n. 94 supra.
105 Hence the structure of the order described in the Inquisitorial records (twelve Areopagites,
seventy-two followers: Francesci Giusti contra Federicum Gualdum, section II.6; cf. Luke
6.13, 10.1) differs markedly from that described in the Testamentum (seven Magi, seventy-
seven brethren).
106 The frontispiece of La critica della morte (Colonia: s.n., 1694), states that Gualdi ‘disap-
peared’ in 1682. As he was born c.1600, this is probably his date of death (various legends
notwithstanding).
108 Johann Gottfried Meister, Curiöse historische Nachricht von Verwandlung der geringen
Metalle in Bessere (Frankfurt am Main: s.n., 1726), 80–87; MS Darmstadt, 266–303. Ma-
nuscripts of the Schlüssel der wahren Weisheit (Dresden: Sächsische Landesbibliothek –
Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden, MS N 162) and Der güldene Begriff (Dresden:
Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden, MS N 166)
58 Hereward Tilton
in these letters is by no means assured, pseudo-Gualdi refers to himself therein

as a Dutchman, and describes a journey from Utrecht to Nuremberg, Augsburg
and Biberbach, where the brother’s widow awaits him with the said order ma-
nuscripts.109 Another tract ascribed to ‘Prinz Utasop a.k.a. Friedrich Gualdianus’
and dated to 1722 is to be found in a collection of thirteen ‘letters’ from pseu-
donymous brethren of the ‘Fradernität Rosee Crucis Aurea’; purportedly writ-
ten from Utrecht (home to the ‘Imperator’), Limbourg, Helsingør, Wolfenbüttel,
Hamburg, Maastricht and Lübeck, they give the impression of an epistolary net-
work used to share laboratory experience and exchange alchemical recipes for
the creation of tinctures from the four realms.110 One manuscript version of these
letters is bound together with the aforementioned laws of the fraternity; another
is bound with the spurious ‘third’ book of Kirchweger’s Aurea catena Homeri,
which in its printed version is also dated ‘Utrecht the 18th of October 1654’.111
The identity of pseudo-Gualdi is addressed by the Swiss alchemist Friedrich
Mumenthaler (1700–1777), who is better known by his pseudonym ‘Hermann
Fictuld’.112 Mumenthaler was the customs inspector and public treasurer of Lan-
written by the same hand appear in the cache of order manuscripts at SLUB Dresden;
there Der güldene Begriff is bound together with instructions for the creation of the Urim
and Thummim (again from the same scribe, cf. n. 14 supra). The Schlüssel der wahren
Weisheit and Der güldene Begriff were also bound together in a manuscript on sale in the
Münchener Politische Zeitung 13, 55 (1812), p. 248, as well as in a Venetian manuscript
that is the subject of Johann Gotthelf Lindner, Ganz besonderer und merkwürdiger Brief
an die Herren Herren [sic] Hohen unbekannten Obern Gold- und Rosenkreuzer, Alten
Systems in Deutschland und anderen Ländern (s.l.: s.n., 1820).
109 The text (Curiöse historische Nachricht, 82) puts ‘Bibrach 15. Meilen hinter Nürnberg’; but
pseudo-Gualdi was travelling from Nuremberg to Augsburg, and it is Biberbach rather than
Biberach an der Riß that is 15 German miles from Nuremberg. A further letter (pp. 85–86)
to the same recipient describing business matters in Lübeck and Hamburg is written by
pseudo-Gualdi from Amsterdam in 1723.
110 Dreyzehn geheime Briefe von dem großen Geheimniße des Universals und Particulars
der goldenen und Rosenkreutzer (Leipzig: Adam Friedrich Böhme, 1788).
111 Geheime Manipulatio etlicher Rosen- und Gulden Creuzer. Amsterdam: Bibliotheca Phi-
losophica Hermetica, MS M 203; the letters bound together with the Aurea catena Homeri
text are to be found at Dresden: Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitäts-
bibliothek Dresden, MS e 8; on the spurious third book of the Aurea catena Homeri, see n.
79 supra.
112 The identity of Mumenthaler was already partially revealed by the anonymous editor of
the Hermetisches A.B.C. derer ächten Weisen, vol.3 (Berlin: Christian Ulrich Ringmacher,
1779), 5, 251, who referred to ‘Fictuld’ as ‘Weinstof oder Mummenthaler in Langenthal’
and the ‘Freyherr von Meinstoof’. But these ambiguous references muddied the waters
for subsequent writers (e.g. Antoine Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1994), p. 179), as ‘Meinstoof’ is derived from a cryptogram
Mumenthaler gives in his Azoth et ignis ... Aureum vellus (Leipzig: Michael Blochberger,
1749), 380, that merely veils another pseudonym (‘Johan Ferdinant von Meimstooff’).
However, the first book printed under the ‘Fictuld’ pseudonym (the rare Wege zum Gros-
sen Universal, oder Stein der Alten Weisen, 1731) was written from ‘Schweitz der freyen
Republic’ (cf. Denis Duveen, Bibliotheca alchemica et chemica (London: Dawsons of Pall
Mall, 1965), 214); the name of Mumenthaler’s manor is evidently the origin of Kopp’s cryp-
genthal, a small but prosperous trading centre some 50 kilometres south of Basel;
to the east of this country town he built a (now ruined) manor-house he named
Sonnenberg (solar mountain), where it was rumoured he engaged in alchemical
and magical experiments.113 In his Probier-stein Mumenthaler describes two men
writing under the name of Friedrich Gualdi: 1) ‘Fredricus Gualdus der I’, a Ger-
man resident in seventeenth-century Venice and Vicenza who wrote tracts in both
Italian and German; and 2), ‘Fredricus Gualdus der II’, who wrote letters under
the name of the first Gualdi and who was a personal friend of Mumenthaler.114
This second pseudo-Gualdi was a ‘descendant and disciple’ of the first Gualdi
who adopted his name and title ‘out of thankfulness and high respect for his
patron’, and who spent his days visiting and corresponding with other disciples
(hence, perhaps, his alleged journey to Augsburg, Nuremberg and Biberbach).115
According to Mumenthaler, pseudo-Gualdi died in 1724 – a date confirmed by
the alchemist Johann Gottfried Meister, who adds that he died in ‘N.’, where
the town administration took possession of his effects.116 The widespread disse-
mination and publication of order texts in the years that followed may well be
contingent upon this fact.
In this manner Mumenthaler lays to rest the ubiquitous and persistent legend
of Friedrich Gualdi’s remarkable longevity. It is probable that one and the same
individual was responsible for putting the name of ‘Friedrich Gualdi of Utrecht’
to both his own letters and Pfeffer’s Cabala et philosophia naturae et artis; like-
wise, it is probable that this same pseudo-Gualdi was responsible for marrying
tic and unreferenced suggestion that Fictuld was ‘Johann Heinrich Schmidt von Sonnen-
berg’ (Hermann Kopp, Die Alchemie in älterer und neuerer Zeit: ein Beitrag zur Culturge-
schichte, vol.1 (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1886), 367); the Aureum Vellus cryptogram states
the author is ‘currently residing in the customs house’ (Mumenthaler completed building
a new customs house in the year prior to the book’s publication: Marta Meyer-Salzmann,
Langenthaler Handwerksärzte und Apotheker im 18. Jahrhundert und ein Blick ins 19.
Jahrhundert (Langenthal: Stiftung zur Förderung wissenschaftlich-heimatkundlicher For-
schung über Dorf und Gemeinde Langenthal, 1984)); and the editor of the Hermetisches
A.B.C. derer ächten Weisen (p. 5) claims ‘Fictuld’ (who was ‘very dear’ to him) has died
within the last two years (i.e. between 1777 and 1779).
113 Meyer-Salzmann, Langenthaler Handwerksärzte. It is not just local rumour that testifies to
Mumenthaler’s alchemical proclivities: in 1752 the Frühaufklärer Johann Christian Edel-
mann (Joh. Chr. Edelmann’s Selbstbiographie, ed. Karl Close (Berlin: Karl Wiegandt, 1849),
417) complained that the ‘postmaster’ of Langenthal ‘Joh. Friedrich von Mumenthaler’ was
pestering him with unwanted correspondence concerning the transmutation of gold.
114 Hermann Fictuld [Friedrich Mumenthaler], Der längst gewünschte und versprochene Chy-
misch-philosophische Probier-Stein, vol.1 (Frankfurt: Veraci Orientali Wahrheit und Ernst
Lugenfeind, 1753), 86–89 (p. 88: ‘von Person gekannt’); cf. Fictuld, Probier-Stein, vol.2, 52
(‘einige Briefe unsers ehemahligen Freunds Friderici Gualdi’).
115 Here a ‘Hermetic descendant’ is meant, i.e. the recipient of esoteric teaching, as Mu-
menthaler (Probier-Stein, vol. 2, 87) tells us the first Gualdi had many such ‘Hermetic de-
scendants’ and correspondents throughout the world.
116 Meister, Curiöse historische Nachricht, 87; cf. Fictuld, Probier-Stein, vol.2, 89.
60 Hereward Tilton
Pfeffer’s Testamentum an die Kinder der Kunst und Weißheit with what appear to
be the laws of Gualdi’s fraternity. While it cannot be adduced as proof, the date
of origin of the order’s Testamentum does not speak against this probability. Gilly
dates the text to 1737;117 yet the terminus ante quem for the creation of the Vienna
Testamentum is 1735, the year in which it was acquired by the Silesian nobleman
Johann Adalbert Prinz de Buchau.118 Its provenance is southern German,119 and
the Hebrew patriarchal pseudo-histories of all copies of the Thesaurus thesau-
rorum are derived from a lost common source of this manuscript (TeQ2).120 The
Dresden Testamentum is part of the aforementioned cache of order manuscripts
donated to the Kursächsische Archiv des geheimen Konsiliums (1702–1834;
today the Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek or
‘SLUB’); its distinctive Low German orthography links it to the SLUB ma-
nuscript of the letters of pseudo-Gualdi and his twelve fellow ‘brethren’.121 Ano-
ther tract in the same cache and from the same hand was acquired by ‘J.L.V.’
from ‘Geheimer Rath Sepach’ (Ludwig Alexander von Seebach, 1668–1731122)
in 1729.123 As for the Hamburg Testamentum, it once belonged to Rudolph Jo-
hann Friedrich Schmid (1702–1761), an alchemist active in Jena, Copenhagen,
Vienna and Hamburg whose extensive manuscript collection was acquired by the
Hamburg city library upon his death.124 It is possible that Schmid himself was a
member of the Gold- und Rosenkreuz: not only do his experiments on the alche-

118 MS Vienna, f. 1 recto; on the family von Prinz und Buchau, see Johannes Sinapius, Schle-
sische Curiositäten, vol. 2 (Leipzig: Michael Rohrlach, 1728), 403–404.
119 Otto Mazal and Franz Unterkircher, Katalog der abendländischen Handschriften der Öster-
reichischen Nationalbibliothek, ‘Series Nova’ (Neuerwerbungen), vol.2 (Cod. ser. n. 1601–
3200) (Wien: Prachner, 1963), 426.
120 Hence the distinctive ‘extasis’ terminology of MS Vienna and MS Dresden is to be found
in all versions of the Thesaurus thesaurorum; yet MS Vienna and MS Dresden do not in-
clude chapters 17–18 of MS Hamburg, which are nevertheless included in the Thesaurus
thesaurorum.
121 Cf. n. 111 supra.
122 Von Seebach organised the manufacture of porcelain at Meißen in the 1720’s under Fried-
rich August I, Elector of Saxony: Katharina Christiane Herzog, ‘Mythologische Kleinplastik
in Meißener Porzellan 1710–1775’. Doctoral dissertation, Universität Passau, 2012, p. 18.
Kiesewetter’s assertion that the order’s enigmatic ‘Fried’ was a laboratory assistant to an
‘F.C.R.’ committed to house arrest by the Elector of Saxony seems to be a garbled allusion
to Johann Friedrich Böttger (1692–1719): Karl Kiesewetter, ‘Die Rosenkreuzer, ein Blick
in dunkele Vergangenheit’, Sphinx: Monatsschrift für die geschichtliche und experimentale
Begründung der übersinnlichen Weltanschauung auf monistischer Grundlage 1 (1886),
42–54 (53).
123 Aurum Seculum ChurFürst. Augusti und Christano. Primi. mid Eignen henden gearbeidet.
Dresden: Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibl. Dresden, MS e 8/1.
124 MS Hamburg, f. 1 recto (‘Schmid’); Julian Paulus, ‘The Collection of Alchemical Books and
Manuscripts in Hamburg’, in Alchemy Revisited: Proceedings of the International Confer-
ence on the History of Alchemy at the University of Groningen, 17–19 April 1989, ed. Z.R.
W.M. von Martels (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1990), 245–249 (247).
mical reanimation of corpses resemble those of the Testamentum he possessed,125

but at some point prior to 1742 he assured an acquaintance that Freemasonry was
‘united with magic and alchemy’ (the earliest indication of the fateful merger of
Rosicrucianism with Freemasonry that I am aware of).126 In any case, there are a
number of good reasons to believe the Hamburg manuscript Schmid once owned
is the earliest of the three existing versions of the Testamentum: for example, both
the Dresden and Vienna manuscripts mistake Das Buch der Weißheit ascribed to
pseudo-Thölde in the Hamburg Testamentum for the deuterocanonical Wisdom
of Solomon.127 Furthermore, the sixth page of the Hamburg manuscript gives the
very plausible date ‘1708’.
It is unclear if the emergence of the order’s Testamentum (i.e. TeQ1) coinci-
des with the rise of order ceremonial activity involving the use of the Urim, or
indeed with the rise of the grade structure of the later Gold- und Rosenkreuz and
its seven ‘Magi’. However, the Testamentum and Thesaurus thesaurorum do not
present us with the mere literary form of ceremony, or a fictional brotherhood
such as that apparently portrayed in the Rosicrucian manifestos. Nor was the or-
der a purely virtual entity, notwithstanding the evident centrality to its operation
of the epistolary network inherited from Gualdi by pseudo-Gualdi of Utrecht,
and subsequently by Imperator Tobias Schultz (1686–c.1770) of Amsterdam.128
I am not aware of the survival of any electrum magicum artefacts utilised by the
Gold- und Rosenkreuz; of the pendant Urim utilised by the Asiatic Brethren, the
‘old, true original’ was once said to be held in Vienna.129 But there is credible
125 Edelmann, Selbstbiographie, 315–316; MS Hamburg, 184–194; Johann Salomon Semler,

Unparteiische Samlungen zur Historie der Rosenkreuzer, vol.2 (Leipzig: Georg Emanuel
Beer, 1787), 94, also suspected his membership.
126 Elisa von der Recke, Nachricht von des berüchtigten Cagliostro Aufenthalte in Mittau, im
Jahre 1779 (Berlin: Friedrich Nicolai, 1787), 3–4; cf. Martin Mulsow, ‘You Only Live Twice:
Charlatanism, Alchemy, and Critique of Religion, Hamburg, 1747–1761’, Cultural and So-
cial History 3 (2006), 273–286 (278).
127 MS Hamburg, 19–20; MS Vienna, 19; MS Dresden, 17; cf. n. 5 supra. In accordance with
their derivation from TeQ2, the error is also present in the three versions of the Thesaurus
thesaurorum. On Das Buch der Weißheit, see Joachim Telle, ‘Eine deutsche Alchimia Pic
ta des 17. Jahrhunderts: Bemerkungen zu dem Vers/Bild-Traktat von der Hermetischen
Kunst von Johann Augustin Brunnhofer und zu seinen kommentierten Fassungen im Buch
der Weisheit und im Hermaphroditischen Sonn- und Monds-Kind’, Aries 4, 1 (2004), 3–23.
128 The lost manuscripts of the Dégh archives described Schultz as ‘the centrepoint of all che-
mical correspondence’: Abafi-Aigner, ‘Entstehung der neuen Rosenkreuzer’, 81. The dates
of Schultz’ life can be gleaned from his correspondence with Johann Haussen: Briefwechsel
Tobias Schultzens, Ehelichs und Haußens. Munich: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS Kiese-
wetteriana 30 (1765–c.1770), ff. 3 verso (‘Ich gehe nunmehro in mein 79stes Jahr, und weis
nicht, wie lange ich noch lebe…’), 30 verso–31 recto (‘…den Tobias Schultzens Geist belebt
…’).
129 Friedrich Münter, Authentische Nachricht von den Ritter- und Brüder-Eingeweihten aus
Asien: zur Beherzigung für Freymaurer (Copenhagen: Profft, 1787), p. xxvii; however, it is
unclear if this is a reference to an artefact or to insignia.
62 Hereward Tilton
historical evidence of ceremonial practice among European ruling elites that con-
tradicts Geffarth’s suggestion that the highest grade of the Gold- und Rosenkreuz
was a purely literary expression of the order’s ideals.130 This evidence is from the
quasi-Masonic phase of the order and includes both the aforementioned initiation
of Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia,131 as well as the ceremonies of the Metatronisten
centred upon Friedrich Wilhelm’s first cousin Duke Karl of Södermanland (later
Karl XIII of Sweden).132 The latter group’s name is associated with the magia
Metatrona of the Gold- und Rosenkreuz;133 a manuscript in Duke Karl’s own
hand shows a floor-plan of a Sanktuarium secreted at the heart of the Swedish
royal palace, complete with Menorah, incense altar and Holy of Holies.134 There
white-robed brethren – including the noted spirit mediums Gustaf Björnram and
Henrik Gustaf Ulfvenklou – employed the ‘Urim and Thummim’ to ‘clearly dis-
cern the precise character and nature of a man, as if in a mirror’.135
Gilly has argued that ‘the Rosicrucians experienced their cultural nadir’ un-
der the Gold- und Rosenkreuz, having replaced the noble reform programme
of the original manifestos with ‘empty ceremony and hollow alchemical phra
seology’.136 My research under the patronage of Thomas Hakl has painted a very
different picture of the order. The cultus of the Gold- und Rosenkreuz has its
origins in an esoteric tradition predating the manifestos; amongst this tradition’s
guardians and practitioners we find a preponderance of manual workers (miners
are prominently represented)137 with an enchanted experience of the natural or-
130 Renko Geffarth, Religion und arkane Hierarchie: Der Orden der Gold- und Rosenkreuzer
als geheime Kirche im 18. Jahrhundert (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 185.
131 Cf. n. 29 supra.
132 On the Metatronisten, see Jan Häll, I Swedenborgs labyrint. Studier i de gustavianska
swedenborgarnas liv och tänkande (Stockholm: Atlantis, 1995), 121–129, and Kjell Leke-
by, Gustaviansk Mystik – alkemister, kabbalister, magiker, andeskådare, astrologer och
skattgrävare i den esoteriska kretsen kring G.A. Reuterholm, hertig Carl och hertiginnan
Charlotta 1776–1803 (Södermalm: Vertigo Förlag, 2010), 25, who cites Reuterholm’s re-
ference to the court chaplain Peter Fredell as a Metatronist in a written dedication at the
front of Duke Karl’s copy of Khunrath’s Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae.
133 Septimus Sapientiae: Liber verus ac genuinus. Munich: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS
Kiesewetteriana 1 e, pp. 392–425. Reuterholm’s papers at the Svenska Frimurare Ordens
biblioteket include a number of Gold- und Rosenkreuz and Asiatic Brethren manuscripts,
including the Magia divina of the Schrifftliche Unterrichtung der wahren Weißheit von der
F.R.C. (Lekeby, Gustaviansk Mystik, 241–263; a tract distinct from the Magia divina of
figure 9 and n. 97 supra).
134 Bernt von Schinkel and Carl Bergman, Minnen ur Sveriges nyare historia, vol.3 (Stock-
holm: P.A. Norstedt & Söner, 1853), 335–339.
135 Oscar Patric Sturzen-Becker, Reuterholm efter hans egna memoirer (Stockholm: s.n.,
1862), 85–86.
137 While Pfeffer was a surgeon, Gualdi was a miner; the thirteen letters associated with pseu-
do-Gualdi are bound together with a ‘miners’ hymn’ (Dreyzehn geheime Briefe, 117–120);
and the most complete collection of order manuscripts still in existence comes from the
hand of Johann Salomon Haussen (1729–1802), the mine inspector at the Trier family’s
Figure 9. Ceremonial magical architecture of Duke Karl of Södermanland:

the Sanktuarium (from von Schinkel and Bergman, Minnen ur Sveriges nyare historia) (A) and the
spirit-summoning temple of Abramelin (Magia divina, Svenska Frimurare Ordensbiblioteket, MS
13.106 Mystik; image courtesy of Tommy Westlund, Sodalitas Rosae+Crucis & Solis Alati).
der, a pious disregard for conformity and an ‘exilic’ Gnostic attitude linked to an
imminentist eschatology.138 In their marginalised form of Christianity, interaction
ill-fated cobalt mine at Glücksbrunn, where the ‘dearest son’ of Imperator Tobias Schultz
also worked (Briefwechsel Tobias Schultzens, ff. 4 verso, 5 recto). A letter from ‘Fried’
(a ‘Gabrielist’, i.e. a Magus seated at the lunar chair) suggests the recently deceased
mine manager Johann Paul Trier was also an order member (Friedischer Brief, Taucha d.
24. Dez. 1770. Munich: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS Kiesewetteriana 16 (1770), ff. 2
verso, 7 verso, 8 recto). It is noteworthy that the Royal Prussian mine surveyor, Johann
Gottfried Jugel, was a prominent Gold- und Rosenkreuzer: Geffarth, Religion und arkane
Hierarchie, 196–197.
138 In the words of Imperator Schultz, ‘die ganze Welt in allem ihren Thun, ist böse’: Brief-
wechsel Tobias Schultzens, f. 7 verso. For imminentist eschatology, see the Friedischer
Brief, f. 3 recto: ‘dass Ihr ... solche göttliche Geheimnisse der himmlischen Sophiae per
64 Hereward Tilton
with lower spirits is an essential step on a path to God that at once reverses and
consummates the cosmogony; for this reason their faith has all too easily been
condemned as diabolical heresy, enthusiastic insanity or irrational absurdity by
those who have failed to subjugate (and are therefore ruled by) their own demons.
While there is no evidence of any continuity of organisation between the Gold-
und Rosenkreuz and the early network in Gießen, Ulm and Marburg ostensibly
self-identifying as ‘Rosicrucian’,139 both were inheritors of an anti-institutional
inspirationist tendency – present, albeit obscured, in the manifestos – promoting
the irenicism of the radical Reformers (Franck, Weigel) and drawn to the addres-
sative magic of the Paracelsians, Christian Cabalists and the grimoire tradition.
Flowing forward in time to the Golden Dawn and Thelema, this is a current of
esoteric praxis that is not always visible to the intellectual historian or historian
of ideas, but that is nevertheless of considerable significance to the history of
religion in Europe.
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Hereward Tilton
(B.A. Hons., PhD (Queensland), FHEA) has taught on the history of religion
at the University of Exeter, the University of Amsterdam, the Ludwig-
Maximilians-Universität München and the University of Queensland.
He is a past fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and has conducted
research at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel under the auspices
of the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst. The history of Rosicrucianism
and the psychology of Carl Gustav Jung are his fields of specialty. He has published
work on early modern alchemy, magic and Rosicrucianism, most notably his book
The Quest for the Phoenix: Spiritual Alchemy and Rosicrucianism in the Work
of Count Michael Maier (1569–1622) (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2003).
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The Urim and Thummim

Thus the Thesaurus thesaurorum is derived from a family of earlier, shorter

1 Thesaurus thesaurorum à fraternitate roseae et aureae crucis testamento consignatus, et

Sections a), b) and c) of the Testamentum correspond closely to book one of

Section d) of the Testamentum corresponds to book two of all three versions

12 MS Hamburg, 9–10; MS Dresden, 3–4; MS Vienna, 4–5.

The significance of this sacred object to the order cannot be overemphasised:

23 Pseudo-Paracelsus, Dei magia, 568.

28 MS Octagon, 28-29; MS Vienna, 37; MS Dresden, 36; MS Hamburg, 33.

Figure 6. Consulting the Urim and Thummim. Tabulae theosophiae Cabbalisticae,

43 Friedrich Breckling, Autobiographie: ein frühneuzeitliches Ego-Dokument im Spannungs-

is also likely to be Pfeffer’s.51 Reger’s inventory of Pfeffer’s manuscript works

philosophia, 60–66 = MS Vienna, 105–114 = MS Hamburg, 79–83 = Uraltes chymisches

57 MS Hamburg, 171; MS Vienna, 197 (‘Schriftgelehrter und Weltweiser’).

sions concerning the ‘Rosicrucian’ affiliation of either Pfeffer or the Testamen-

archal pseudo-history I have briefly described; various fictional ‘events’ in the

in these letters is by no means assured, pseudo-Gualdi refers to himself therein

117 Gilly and van Heertum, Magia, alchimia, scienza, 229.

mical reanimation of corpses resemble those of the Testamentum he possessed,125

125 Edelmann, Selbstbiographie, 315–316; MS Hamburg, 184–194; Johann Salomon Semler,

Figure 9. Ceremonial magical architecture of Duke Karl of Södermanland:

Quäkermission in der Frühen Neuzeit. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008.

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