Christoph Gottlieb von Murr on the True Origin of the Rosicrucians and the Order of Freemasons: Together with an Appendix on the History of the Knights Templar

Rosicrucians in Germany.

I have transcribed a chemical correspondence of Crollius, Zatzers, Scherers, and Heyden (who was Emperor Rudolph II’s valet) from the years 1594 to 1596, which I received from a famous archive and will append to my reports on the history of so-called gold-making. In these letters, I find no trace of a Rosicrucian society.

In Naples, Ioh. Baptista Porta (died 1615) had established a small academy of secrets (Academia di Secreti) in his house. It was a useful physical society, the fruit of which was surely his natural magic; but by order of the Roman court, this useful association had to be disbanded.

In the year 1604, Simon Studion, who is little known,*) finished his as-yet unpublished

*) See Petersen’s Wirtemberg Repertorium of Literature, 3rd Part, p. 524 et seq.