Who are the Rosicrucians?
Vin Locke (vin@crl.com): In the `50s and `60s (and maybe still?) the Rosicrucians used to advertise in the back pages of magazines — fill in the coupon for more information (which arrives in a plain brown envelope). I always took the reference to them in this song to suggest a state of depression so severe that one would consider mail-order religion. Joshua E Randall (randall@morpheus.cis.yale.edu): Well, I found some information on them in, of all places, an annotated version of Hegel’s _Philosophy of Right_. Here it is: The image of the rose in the cross was apparently suggested to Hegel by the name (and the visual emblem) of the ‘Rosicrucians’, the secret religious society, apparently begun in the seventeenth century . . . . The name ‘Rosicrucian’ was based on that of the (alleged) founder of the society, Christian Rosencreutz (four- teenth century). But the name itself also has doctrinal signif- icance for Rosicrucians, associate with their proverb “No cross, no crown”: i.e., one
