"etiological assumption" according to the terminology of psychoanalysis.
It would explain the temporary fusion of alchemistic rosicrucianism with
freemasonry. The rosicrucian frenzy would never have occurred--so much I
will say--in masonry, if there had been no trend that way. Some emotional
cause must have existed for the phenomenon, and as the specter of
rosicrucianism stalked especially on the masonic stage, and indeed was
dangerous to it alone, this etiological assumption must be such as to
furnish an effective factor in masonry itself, only in more discreet and
wholesome form. In masonry psychological elements have played a part which
if improperly managed might degenerate, as indeed they did when gold- and
rose-crossism was grafted on masonry. It appears to me too superficial to
explain the movement merely from the external connection of rosicrucianism
and the masonic system. Although the observation is quite just, it does
not touch the kernel of the matter, the impulse, which only psychology can
lay bare. Freemasonry must have felt some affinity with rosicrucianism,
something related at the psychical basis of the mode of expression
(symbolism, ritual) of both. Only the modes of expression of
rosicrucianism are evidently more far reaching or more dangerous in the
sense that they (the leadership of loose companions always presupposed)
could sooner incite weaker characters to a perverted idea and practice of
it.

That rosicrucianism in its better aspect is identical with the higher
alchemy, can no longer be doubted by any one after the material here
offered. The common psychological element is shown when, as will be done
in later parts of this book, we go into the deeper common basis of alchemy
and freemasonry. Then first will the sought-for "etiological assumption"
attain to its desired clearness. But already this much may be clear: that
we have in both domains, structures with a religious content, even though
from time to time names are used which will veil these facts. I add now in
anticipation a statement whose clear summing up has been reserved for
psychoanalysis, namely that the object of religious worship is regularly
to be regarded as a symbol of the libido, that psychologic goddess who
rules the desires of mankind--and whose prime minister is Eros. [Libido is
desire or the tendency toward desire, as it controls our impulsive life.
In medical language used mainly for sexual desire, the concept of libido
is e