l
Maier introduced rosicrucianism into England, and that freemasonry began
then especially with the cooeperation of the Englishman Robert Fludd
(1574-1637). Ferdinand Katsch warmly defended the actual existence of the
old rosicrucian fraternity with arguments, some of which are disputed. He
names with certainty a number of people as "true rosicrucians," among them
Julianus de Campis, Michael Maier, Robert Fludd, Frisius or Frizius,
Comenius (Katch, p. 33). Rosicrucianism turned into freemasonry for
practical reasons. As the most outstanding imposters represented
themselves as rosicrucians this name was not conserved. The wrong was
prevented, in that the true rosicrucians withdrew as such and assumed a
different dress.

Generally we imagine a different origin of freemasonry. We are accustomed
to look for its beginnings in practical masonry, whose lodges can be
traced back to the fourteenth century. The old unions of house builders
were joined by persons who were not actual workers but lay members,
through whom spiritual power was added to the lodges. At the beginning of
the eighteenth century the old working masonry was transformed into the
spiritual symbolical freemasonry, but with a continuance of its forms. At
that time in London the building lodges had diminished to four. These were
united on June 24 (St. John's Day), 1717, and chose Anton Sayer for their
grand master. That is the origin of Freemasonry as it exists to-day.

This derivation is and will be considered unsatisfactory by many, however
much it may satisfy the merely documentary claims. The attempt to make it
better required an inventive phantasy and this was not always fortunate in
its attempts. The rosicrucian theory cannot be dismissed off hand,
especially if we conceive it in a somewhat broader sense. In agreement
with Katsch, Hoehler (Herm. Phil., p. 6) recalls how generally people were
occupied in the 16th and 17th centuries in the whole of western Europe
with cabala, theosophy, magic (physics), astrology and alchemy, and indeed
this held true of higher and lower social strata, scholars and laymen,
ecclesiastic and secular. "The entire learned theology turned on cabala.
Medicine was based on theosophy and alchemy and the latter was supposed to
be derived from theosophy and astrology." Hoehler, in one respect, goes
further than Katsch and conjectures: "Freemasonry had its roots in the
chemical societies of the 16th and 17th centuries, in which all thos