At the Tomb of Christian Rosenkreutz
Ferdinando Pesso - trans. Richard Zenith
We had still not seen the corpse of our wise and prudent Father, and so we moved the altar to one side. Then we could raise a strong plate of yellow metal, and there lay a beautiful, illustrious body, whole and uncorrupted..., and in his hand he held a small parchment book, written in gold and entitled T., which, after the Bible, is our greatest treasure, one that should not be lightly submitted to the world's censure.
Fama Fraternitatis Roseae Crucis
When, awakened from this sleep called life,
We find out what we are and what
This fall into Body was, this descent
Into the Night that obstructs our Soul,
Will we finally know the hidden
Truth about all that exists or flows?
No: not even the freed Soul knows it
Nor does God, who created us, contain it.
God is the man of a yet higher God.
A Supreme Adam, He also feel.
Our Creator, He was also created,
And was cut off from the Truth. The Abyss,
His Spirit, hides it from Him in the beyond.
In the World, His Body, it doesn't exist.
Before all that there was the Word, here lost
When the already extinguished Infinite Light
Was raised from Chaos, the ground of Being,
Into Shadow, and the absent Word was obscured.
But though it feels its form is wrong, the Soul sees
At last in itself - mere Shadow - the glowing
Word of this Wolrd, human and anointed,
The Perfect Rose, crucified in God.
Lords, then, on the threshold of the Heavens,
We may search beyond God for the Secret
Of our Master and the higher Good;
Wakened from here and from ourselves,
At last in Christ's present blood from worshiping
The God who makes the created World die.
Ah, but here where we still wander, unreal,
We sleep what we are and although in dreams
We may at last see the truth, we see it
(Since our seeing is a dream) distortedly.
Shadows seeking bodies, how will we feel
Their reality if we find them?
What, as Shadows, can we touch with our shadowy
Hands? Our touch is absence and vacancy
Who will free us from this closed Soul?
We can hear, if not see, beyond the hall
Of being, but how make the door swing open?
Lying before us, calm in his false death
And with the shut BOok pressed against his chest,
Our Rosy Cross Father knows, and says nothing.