From the website of the Confraternity of the Rosy Cross:

“All manifestation exists by virtue of a process … a continuity of eternal existence that knows no beginning nor end.

This process must be one of transcendence and transformation that never permits gross stagnation or decay. It must ever be refining and improving upon itself and periodically shedding its outer skin of appearance and the density of its material expression. H. Spencer Lewis referred’ to this process early in his writings as the 108 year cycle and later alluded to it in the numerically higher degrees by allegorically referencing the well known analogy of the necessary relationship between Judas and Jesus. His referencing was to explain the necessity of a catalyst to induce necessary change and transformation.

The name ‘Rosicrucian’ seen from an initiatic perspective derives from the Latin words: ‘ros’ and ‘crucis’ and they are the true source of our name. In that they originate from the Latin also dates our history.

The process of our origins is alchemical in nature — alchemical in a spiritual sense and not material. It identifies a process of refinement and transcendence to a more evolved state not unlike the individual process of the obscure night and the golden dawn. Ros is Latin for ‘dew’ and in alchemical terms, ‘dew’ is the purity of essence refined through transcendent processes of working the power of vitriol in its highest state. Ros is the perfected result of grosser existence.

Crucis describes the attributes necessary for the process of transformation to manifest. ‘Crucis’ is a Roman instrument of torture made into a sacred symbol by the early founders of Christianity. Christians say that Jesus was tortured and died upon the cross and he sacrificed his life so that the human soul would be saved.

Our concern here is not with the religious connotations and symbolism for truly every great prophet or Saviour from each religion underwent a similar experience for the same reason.

It is that reason in which we are concerned and that reason is a PROCESS of transformation from a lesser to a higher state.

Sacrifice, represented by the color red, is the nature of crucis.

It is the state of sacrifice, of giving of one’s self for the purpose of greater evolvement which is the process. It is not for ourselves that is the primary reason why we seek truth.

We seek Truth so that ALL may be free to follow the Path of Light. That, brothers and sisters, is the greatest sacrifice and the most difficult attribute that we must learn. That process is the source of our name.

For those who have never sacrificed or learned the process may fear it. But for those who understand, they will never fear…..”

My Comment

It’s not well known that that the western esoteric tradition (of which Rosicrucianism is one branch) had a huge influence on the Indian independence movement, as well as on the Irish.

As a student in London, Gandhi ran into it.  He also came into contact with American writers like Emerson and Thoreau, who had been influenced by eastern religions. Later, during India’s struggle for independence, when he was in prison, Gandhi revisited and absorbed Tantric and other esoteric Hindu texts, and their principles informed his political practice right to the end of his life.

On the Irish end, at the turn of the century, an esoteric group, the Order of the Golden Dawn, which had Rosicrucian and alchemical elements, had an enormous influence on William Butler Yeats, the Irish statesman, poet ,and mystic.  The occult influence can be seen in poems like Mount Meru and  The Second Coming. It can also be seen in Yeats’ system of  “masks” and interlocking “gyres”  (representing cosmic dualities, played out in recurrent cycles). The gyres interpenetrate each other and move closer and farther as different cycles unfold. (Yeats was also deeply interested in astrological cycles).

Why do I bring all this up?

To show that thinking of religious or spiritual belief as something radically apart from or irrelevant to political struggle is simply delusional, at worst, and disingenuous, at best.

Church-state separation is necessary…principally to keep religion from the corruption of state power (as Roger Williams wrote).

But Religion (or mysticism) and politics have never been separate.

Note: I include under religion, atheism  – a noble, ascetic, and very worthy faith.

But, in my view, not all that creative or imaginative…..

Curiously, the  state that the American empire more and more resembles is not the one described in early modern or classical political theory.

American empire is more like the notoriously spy-ridden empire of the 4th century (BC) Indian empire of the Mauryas.

“No-touch torture,” “silent airwar,” “shadow statistics,” “endless surveillance”: these resemble nothing more than the empire of Chandragupta Maurya, one of India’s most successful conquerors.

Chandragupta’s minister, Chanakya, (Kautilya is the Greek form), is a little known theorist in the West, where he is sometimes seen as a political realist because of his most famous dictum: “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” sometimes called the Mandala theory of foreign policy.

But if by realism one means the “balance of power,” this isn’t what Chanakya wanted.

Chanakya saw the goal of politics not as maintaining peace but as augmenting power.

He advocated a ceaseless growth in power through concealed means, the strategy that seems to underlie such differing aspects of the American empire as the “white noise” of its air-power (see my piece, “America’s Downing Syndrome,”  Dissident Voice, 2006) and the increasing levels of electronic surveillance, propaganda and psyops (see another piece in 2006, “Kartoon-Krieg: War by Other Means,” Counter Currents, 2006)

Kautilya’s writing preceded by 2000 plus years the current theory of war of American empire – what some now call 5th Generation War.

5GWhas been described thus by one expert on it:

“Open source warfare. An ability to decentralize beyond the limits of a single group (way beyond cell structures) using new development and coordination methodologies. This new structure doesn’t only radically expand the number of potential participants, it shrinks the group size well below any normal measures of viability. This organizational structure creates a dynamic whereby new entrants can appear anywhere. In London, Madrid, Berlin, and New York.

Systems disruption. A method of sabotage that goes beyond the simple destruction of physical infrastructure. This method of warfare, which can burst onto the scene as a black swan, uses network dynamics (a new form of leveraged maneuver) to undermine and reorder global systems. It is through this Schumpeterian “creative destruction” that new environments favorable to opposition forces are built (often due to a descent into primary loyalties and pressure from global markets).

Virtual states (ala Philip Bobbitt). Unlike the guerrilla movements of the past, many of the 4GW forces we are fighting today have found a way to integrate their activities with global “crime.” No longer are guerrilla movements or terrorists aimed at taking control of the reigns of the state or merely proxies for states. A new form of economic sustenance has been found. This black globalization is already vast (a GDP of trillions per year), and gains momentum through weakening and disruption of states. This military/economic integration creates a virtuous feedback loop that allows groups to gain greater degrees of independence and financial wealth through the warfare they conduct.”

(more by blogger John Robb )

Robb describes 5GW as having been brewed in Iraq while Citizen Fouche at the Committee of Public Safety is blunt about the motives.

Time for the American people to quit “sleepwalking.”  Instead of clinging to the naive belief that civil society should be free of the tactics and goals of war (and that war should be open and conducted justly and legally),  the public should wise up.

5 WH proponents tell them what they need to wise up about:

War is not just violence and destruction. War is also anything you do to force someone to act against their will.

The first perspective is the perspective of Clausewitz, the second that of  pre-modern theorists like Sun Tzu and Kautilya.

All this sounds very deep and sophisticated until you strip off the jargon. Despite the exotic aura of eastern classical texts to it, I don’t see how the new strategy is anything more than a very old temptation gone one better. The temptation of power. Absolute power.

Under classical rules of engagement, in limited war, ones moral sense can remain intact.

The new varieties of total war – which is all 5GW amounts to – leave nothing intact, even among people who don’t know it exists —  because it creates a bubble of lies in which their minds are manipulated perpetually.

Turns out oriental despotism is whatso-called patriots admire.

Maybe someone should point out that America’s own republican tradition, despite all its follies, hypocrisies and failures, did at least pay lip-service  to truth and peace as the way of life proper to a society.

 An excerpt from a piece by Ryan Sayr Patrico in First Things about anti-Nazi heroine Sophie Magdalena Scholl (May 9, 1921–February 22, 1943):

 “New documents unearthed by German academics have revealed that the writings of the 19th-century English theologian were a direct influence on Sophie Scholl, who was beheaded for circulating leaflets urging students at Munich University to rise up against Nazi terror. . . .

But behind her heroism was the “theology of conscience” expounded by Cardinal Newman, according to Professor Günther Biemer, the leading German interpreter of Newman, and Jakob Knab, an expert on the life of Sophie Scholl, who will later this year publish research in Newman Studien on the White Rose resistance movement, to which she belonged. . . .

Newman taught that conscience was an echo of the voice of God enlightening each person to moral truth in concrete situations. Christians, he argued, had a duty to obey a good conscience over and
above all other considerations. . . .

Under questioning from the Gestapo Scholl said she had been compelled by her Christian conscience to peacefully oppose Nazism.

Sophie and Hans both asked to be received into the Catholic Church an hour before they were executed but were dissuaded by their pastor who argued that such a decision would upset their mother, a Lutheran lay preacher.

Fr Dermot Fenlon, a priest of the Birmingham Oratory who was given excerpts of Mr Knab’s findings to include in a speech on Newman in Milan last week, said the originality of the research was that it
showed the clear “centrality” of Newman to Hans and Sophie Scholl.

He said: “Knab has identified the presence of Newman in correspondence, in diaries and in the analysis of correspondence, particularly between Sophie and Hartnagel. He has shown how that
influence became operative at a critical moment.”

He added: “The religious question at the heart of the White Rose has not been adequately acknowledged and it is only through the work of Guenter Biemer and Jakob Knab that Newman’s influence . . . can be identified as highly significant.”

The 2005 German film Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (Die letzten Tage)  shows Sophie’s adherence to a higher law than the one imposed by the state. The law of her conscience, brought out beautifully in this confrontation with Herr Mohr, the police agent who interrogates her and finds in himself an unwilling connection to her:

“Mohr: You may have used false slogans but you used peaceful means.

Sophie: So why do you want to punish us?

Mohr: Because it is the law. Without the law there is no order.

Sophie: The law you are referring to protected free speech before the Nazis came to power in 1933. Someone who speaks freely now is imprisoned or put to death. Is that order?

Mohr: What can we rely on if not the law? No matter who wrote it.

Sophie: Our conscience.

Mohr: Nonsense! [Grabbing two books, one in each hand, as though weighing them against each other.] Here is the law and here are the people. As a criminologist, it is my duty to find out if they coincide and, if not, to find the rotten spot.

Sophie: The law changes. Conscience doesn’t.”

My Comment:

As Wendy McElroy notes in this review at iFeminists.com, Sophie’s very existence is a reproach to the way of life of those around her because it forces them to confront their own responsibility for the way things have become. Ultimately that is the real reason she must be killed.

“The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it.” (John 1:5)

In “Transit of Venus” (“Mobs,” Chapter 3), we cite Sophie Scholl as one of the heroes who truly bring change. The messiahs of  the state, on the other hand, don’t change anything, however much they may mean to.

They simply play out their assigned parts, driven by mass emotions and mass slogans.