- skip - Brewer’s

Rosicruʹcians

.

Not rosa crux, rose cross, but ros crux, dew cross. Dew was considered by the ancient chemists as the most powerful solvent of gold: and cross in alchemy is the synonym of light, because any figure of a cross contains the three letters L V X (light). “Lux” is the menstruum of the red dragon (i.e. corporeal light), and this gross light properly digested produces gold, and dew is the digester. Hence the Rosicrucians are those who used dew for digesting lux or light, with the object of finding the philosopher’s stone.

“As for the Rosy cross philosophers,

Whom you will have to be but sorcerers,

What they pretend to is no more

Than Trismegistus did before,

Pythagoras, old Zoroaster,

And Apollonius their master.”


Butler: Hudibras, pt. ii. 3.

 

previous entry · index · next entry

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.

previous entry · index · next entry

Rose Sunday
Rose of Jericho
Rose of Raby (The)
Roses
Rosemary
Rosemary Lane (London)
Rosewood
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Rosetta (Africa)
Rosetta Stone (The)
Rosicrucians
Ross (Celtic)
Rosse
Rossel
Rossignol (French)
Rostrum
Rota or Rota Men
Rota Aristotelica (Aristotle’s wheel)
Rota Romana
Rote
Rothschild [Red Shield]

Linking here:

Cross (a mystic emblem)

See Also:

Rosicrucians