thereby that condition of spiritual repose, only in which inspired visions occurred.
Why did these mystics call themselves Rosicrucian? Some writers have attempted to derive the name from two words meaning "dew" and "cross": but the usual interpretation is "followers of the Rosy Cross" a cross with a rose being used as the society's symbol. Some derive the word from the name, Christian Rosenkranz, the reputed founder of the society: but in view of the fact that it is uncertain that he ever lived, and that the stories told about the opening of his tomb 120 years after his death, have a decidedly mythical flavor, one may be pardoned for considering this personage a myth, invented as a convenient explanation to outsiders to throw them off the track of the real meaning of the society's name.
Now, the cross is an old, old religious symbol of the union of man and woman the world over, and dates from an unknown antiquity. The rose is a well known symbol of love under its most ardent form. We have already seen that the Mexican Virgin, Sochiquetzal, was presented by a heavenly messenger with a rose when the annunciation was made that she should bear a mysteriously begotten son; that her name means the "lifting up of roses": and that this event marks the commencement of an epoch called "the age of Roses." We have seen that the Mexican Eve sinned by plucking roses which elsewhere are called, apparently, "the fruit of the tree." We have seen that quite on the other side of the world, among the Mohammedans, is found a tradition that Christ was conceived by the smelling of a rose, and there is an Eastern legend that the burning brush in which the angel of the Lord appeared to Moses a bush which burned without being consumed, was a rose bush. May not these roses be symbolically one and the same with the rose upon the Rosicrucian cross? If so, remembering the Rosicrucian teachings, about the duty of chastity, the joy of nuptials with a being from the unseen world, and the obligation to enter upon that heavenly marriage with "fasting, watching, prayer, and contemplation" we may well believe that they had learned the inner
