‘Rosicrucians: Who and What?’

    

Dr. Christopher McIntosh, the scholar whose books on Rosicrucianism Rosicrucians should be reading, is scheduled to give a talk next month online. The Rosicrucians: Who and What Are They? will be hosted Thursday, July 21 at 2:30 p.m. Eastern. Tickets, starting at seven dollars, are available here. From the publicity:

In the early seventeenth century, some mysterious writings burst like a firework over Europe. They told of a German seeker called Christian Rosenkreuz, his journey through the Middle East in search of wisdom, and his creation of the esoteric Rosicrucian Fraternity. Since then, the Rosicrucian vision has been kept alive by many different groups and organizations from Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy to the British magical Order of the Golden Dawn.

In this talk, Christopher McIntosh, author of two books on the Rosicrucians, will explore this movement and its many-faceted impact. Hosting is the Viktor Wynd Museum & The Last Tuesday Society.

The Last Tuesday Society is a pataphysical organization founded by William James at Harvard in the 1870s, currently headquartered at the Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art, and UnNatural History in London. For the last twenty years we have put on lectures, balls, workshops, master classes, séances, expeditions to Papua New Guinea and west Africa, all from our East London museum and its infamous cocktail bar.

Dr. Christopher McIntosh is the rara avis, a scholar who is also a fiction writer, an artist, a romantic dreamer, and a connoisseur of the bizzarre and the otherworldly. He was born in England and grew up in Edinburgh, Scotland. He studied philosophy, politics, and economics at Oxford, and German at London University, later returning to Oxford to take a doctorate in history with a dissertation on the eighteenth century Rosicrucian revival. He also has a diploma in Russian from the United Nations Language School from his time in New York as an information officer with the UN Development Program. As a writer, he has specialized in the esoteric traditions.

His books include The Astrologers and Their Creed (1969); Eliphas Levi and the French Occult Revival (1972); The Rosicrucians (latest edition 1997); The Rose Cross and the Age of Reason (1992), based on his doctorate of philosophy dissertation; The Swan King: Ludwig II of Bavaria (latest edition 2003); and Guardians of the Gods (2005). With his wife, Dr. Donate McIntosh, he produced a new translation of the Rosicrucian Fama Fraternitatis (2014).