The greatest mystery of occultism is called the German mystic Johann Valentin Andreae. Historians cannot find convincing evidence in favor of one of the versions: was this person the author of the founding text of the Rosicrucian Order, or not. And also whether this order was believed to be a secret society, or was it a skillful hoax.
German theologian, writer and mathematician Johann Valentin Andreae was born on August 17, 1586. With his birth, he made happy enough eminent townspeople of the city of Herrenberg: father - the local superintendent and Lutheran pastor Johann Andreae and mother - Maria Moser, daughter of the local vogt Valentin Moser. The grandfather of the future mystic, Jacob Andreae, was Chancellor of the University of Tübingen and one of the editors of the book formula concordiae - the Formula of Concord, which was supposed to reconcile Lutherans and Calvinists.
In 1601, after the death of her husband, Maria Moser moved with her children to her relatives in Tubingen. In his life, boring on external events, there was, perhaps, only one episode that blossomed the monotonous study at the University of Tübingen. In 1608, Johann Valentine met the jurist and theosophist, adherent of the doctrine of chiliasm or millenarianism, Tobias Hess (Tobias Heß, 1568-1614), who is considered one of the organizers of secret societies.
In the period 1607-1614, he traveled to France, Switzerland and Italy as the tutor of young noblemen, so the abundance of his acquaintances should not be surprising. In 1610 Andreae defended his doctoral dissertation and a few years later became a pastor. Do not be confused by the viewers who grew up watching the television series "Seventeen Moments of Spring" - only Protestants have a pastor.
For this reason, in 1611, Andreae met the reformer Jean Calvin in Geneva. But the most significant year for him was 1614, when he received the position of deacon in Weigingen, in August he married Agnes Elisabeth Grüninger, with whom nine children were born, and, finally, by his own admission, it fell on his head slander.
Andreae was reproached with the fact that he was the author of the main texts of the Rosicrucian order, in particular, the anonymous work Fama fraternitatis - "Revelation of the Brotherhood", published in German Kassel, and also Confessio fraternitatis - "The Confession of Brotherhood". As expected, Andreae denied all slander.
The appearance of these two texts, or, as historians call them, the Rosicrucian manifestos, caused a stir in Europe. Educated people were looking for an "invisible brotherhood" in order to join the Hermetic wisdom and do good.
The author of the fundamental research “History of secret societies, unions and orders” Georg Schuster characterized Johann Valentin Andreae as follows: “Andreae was a versatile educated person who had seen a lot in his life, shrewd, standing high above his petty bourgeois environment and free from the self-righteous orthodox Lutheranism of the time.
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He opposed the dogmatic strife of his era, in a number of works he preached an active Christianity based on brotherly love and mutual assistance, and created a plan for the founding of a religious brotherhood, which should have united efforts to strive for the realization of its ideal.
Andreae has the following statement: "Everyone can talk about religion, but they obey the faith, out of a thousand it concerns almost everyone."
Perhaps his most famous work was the book Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosencreutz, published in 1616 in Strasbourg. Historians have long broken their spears in the dispute over whether Johann Valentin Andreae was a latent Rosicrucian and whether he took part in the literary hoaxes of that era.
Currently, most experts are confident in this. In addition to the assurances of Andreae himself, there is a lot of circumstantial evidence. Andreae's family coat of arms (like Martin Luther, by the way) contains a double motif of a rose and a cross. In other works of his there are ideas consonant with the movement of the Rosicrucians.
“As an external distinctive sign, the members of the brotherhood were assigned the emblem of suffering in love - a rose with a cross inside,” G. Schuster authoritatively asserts. But as a result of a 30-year war, Fraternitas christiana, brought to life in 1620, eked out a very sad existence. Andreae himself later admitted that the fantastic work "Chemical Wedding" belongs to his youthful pen.
Regarding other works, although he assured that their content was fiction, he did not recognize himself as the author. Further, the author, referring to the works of his predecessors, asserts that "if Andreae was the author of Fama and Confessio, then his goal was only a satire on the many dreamers of his time."
As for the directly mystical aspect of this work - attention was immediately drawn to alchemical symbolism - another great mystic of the 20th century, Rudolf Steiner, wrote about this: “The mystic enters directly into a person's own spiritual being. Its goal is the union of the conscious soul with its own spiritual being, what can be called 'mystical marriage'."
A year after the publication of The Chemical Wedding, Andreae calls the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross "nothing more than a game for the curious, deceiving those who tried to take a winding and unremarkable path instead of following Christ's true and simple path." Meanwhile, in the period between 1618-1620, Andreae founded the "Christian Society", the purpose of which was probably to spread true (reformed) Christianity, brotherly love and genuine knowledge. And again, the behavior of Johann Valentin Andreae baffles researchers. No one has ready-made answers.
The mystic or hoaxer Andreae died on June 27, 1654 in Stuttgart, just over two months before his 68th birthday.