Still Running Off at the Keyboard

ROSE OF THE WORLD

William Butler Yeats, ranked among the members the occult underground by James Webb, and member of the original Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, wrote a poem titled "Rose of the World." I wonder if Daniil Andreev was a fan of Yeats? Or perhaps there is some other source both of them used for the title.

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The Mitreya Sangha Brotherhood has a picture of a rose on their website and give this description of its meaning:

Deep red rose is an emblem of Maitreya Sangha Community as well as the Chintamani sign. Why Rose was chosen as a symbol of MS? Exoterically rose is a symbol of Beauty. It is also a sign of Love. However, esoterically Rose is also a symbol of Wisdom, Knowledge (e.g. in Rosicrucian path). Therefore, Rose of the World means the same as Chintamani, the sign of Culture or the sign of God or AUM. Rose of the World, Rosa Mundi, is a synonim of Pax Cultura, Peace Through Culture symbol of the Roerich movement. Rose is a more beautiful representation of the most important concept of the Universe than all others and therefore it was chosen as a key to the door of World Brotherhood, Maitreya Sangha. A great Russian mystic, Daniil Andreev, who was both a poet and a prophet saw Rose of the World as the sign of the future epoch of Mother of the World, the New Age of Acquarius. Nicholas Roerich while not explicitly discussing this symbol, probably knew about it since he called one of his art-promotion centers Corona Mundi, a Crown of the World, a similar concept. Exoteric purpose of this symbol is just to greet everyone visiting this site with Love and Joy which seem to emanate from a living rose. Last but most importantly, Rose means unity in diversity, where each of the petals represents a nation, a religion, a science, a philosophy etc, all in one, one for all - all for one.

Interestingly, they make the link to Theosophy:

In terms of closeness to another philosophical system, Maitreya Sangha path is essentially a petal of the Rose of Agni Yoga, Living Ethics Teaching given to us by a multitude of Messengers of Light but most recently through Nicholas and Helena Roerich, Helena Blavatskaya and Boris Abramov. But it is also a petal of a larger Rose of Mahayana Buddhism and ancient Kalachakra Teaching and is a sister to Theosophy, Esoteric Christianity, Esoteric Judaism (Kabbala), Baha'i Ulla faith, Zoroastrism, Sikh Faith and a number of other esoteric and exoteric paths of right hand.

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Leon Moscona, a devotee of Andreev, believes the Second Coming is imminent. He founded a Second Coming Mission.

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Another description of the Rose of the World equating it to the Shekinah:

The roses were the very offspring of Shekinah, the Rose of the World, that immanent, demiurgic power of the divine who is herself represented by the Garden. The Shekinah (Hebrew "shachan", meaning "to reside") is the female manifestation of God in humanity, the indwelling spark of the divine. In the New Testament the Shekinah is the glory emanating from God, his effulgence. She is equated with certain Sephira, particularly Malkuth, the Kingdom, and is mentioned as a messenger from on high, when she appeared to Moses. Maimonides regarded Shekinah as an intermediary between God and the World.14. This blinding light of Shekinah was the flame of the burning bush, a bush with thorns, a rose-bush no less, guarded by the angel Zagzagel, which name means "divine splendour", the angel of the Presence. This bush is the ever-flaming, ever-revealing blossoming of divine power that is truly Rosa Mundi, the Rose or Soul of the World, that had dwelt in Eden since the Creation, and which sustains the world.

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The Carmina Burana mentions the rose of the world. Here it refers to the Blessed Virgin. Use your own judgment about the comments on the verse made by Rob Carlson.

The satire of the organization of the Christian religions is subtle and swift, particularly in the performed presentation of the works. The verse begins as a hail to the virgin in "Ave, Formosissima":


Hail, most beautiful and good,
Jewel held most dear by us;
Hail, honor of maidenhood,
Virgin ever glorious--
Hail, thou light above all lights,
Hail, rose of the world--
Blacheflor
And Helen,
Venus,
Venus,
Venus noble-souled! (Wilhelm 86).

Ends a tribute the three goddesses of love and sex. Wilhelm accuses the poetry of being deceptively basic in order to get complex points across clearly (76). Of the poems he writes, "they are . . . diabolical, no matter how much like schoolbook exercises they may seem" (Wilhelm 76).

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Interestingly, Albert Pike discusses the rose. In MORALS AND DOGMA, the 30th Degree, Knight Kadosh, a degree that discusses Jacques de Molai and the Knights Templar, he writes:

The Rose was for the Initiates the living and blooming symbol of the revelation of the harmonies of being. It was the emblem of beauty, life, love, and pleasure. Flamel, or the Book of the Jew Abraham, made it the hieroglyphical sign of the accomplishment of the great Work. Such is the key of the Roman de la Rose. The Conquest of the Rose was the problem propounded to Science by Initiation, while Religion was laboring to prepare and establish the universal triumph, exclusive and definitive, of the Cross.

To unite the Rose to the Cross, was the problem proposed by the High Initiation; and in fact the Occult philosophy being the Universal Synthesis, ought to explain all the phenomena of Being. Religion, considered solely as a psysiological fact, is the revelation and satisfaction of a necessity of souls. Its existence is a scientific fact; to deny it, would be to deny humanity itself.

The Rose-Croix Adepts respected the dominant, hierarchical, and revealed religion. Consequently they could no more be the enemies of the Papacy than of legitimate Monarchy; and if they conspired against the Popes and Kings, it was because they considered them personally as apostates from duty and supreme favorers of anarchy.

What, in fact, is a despot, spiritual or temporal, but a crowned anarchist?

One of the magnificent pentacles that expresses the esoteric and unutterable part of Science, is a Rose of Light, in the centre of which a human form extends its arms in the form of a cross.(pp. 821-822)

A few pages prior to that passage he indicates that the "secret church" formed by the Templars opposes the Catholic Church. Quoting someone he calls "an enemy of the Templars" Pike writes:

"The Johannites ascribed to Saint John the foundation of their Secret Church, and the Grand Pontiffs of the Sect assumed the title of Christos, Anointed, or Consecrated, and claimed to have succeeded one another from Saint John by an uninterrupted succession of pontifical powers. He who, at the period of the foundation of the Order of the Temple, claimed these imaginary prerogatives, was named THEOCLET; he knew HUGHES DE PAYENS, he initiated him into the Mysteries and hopes of his pretended church, he seduced him by the notions of Sovereign Priesthood and Supreme royalty, and finally designated him as his successor.

"Thus the Order of Knights of the Temple was at its very origin devoted to the cause of opposition to the tiara of Rome and the crowns of Kings, and the Apostolate of Kabalistic Gnosticism as vested in its chiefs. For Saint John himself was the Father of the Gnostics, and the current translation of his polemic against the heretical of his Sect and the pagans who denied that Christ was the Word, is throughout a misrepresentation, or misunderstanding at least, of the whole Spirit of tht Evangel.

"The tendencies and tenets of the Order were enveloped in profound mystery, and it externally professed the most perfect orthodoxy. The Chiefs alone knew the aim of the Order: the Subalterns followed them without distrust.

"To acquire influence and wealth, then to intrigue, and at need to fight, to establish the Johannite or Gnostic and Kabalistic dogma, were the object and means proposed to the initiated Brethren. The Papacy and the rival monarchies, they said to them, are sold and bought in these days, become corrupt, and to-morrow, perhaps, will destroy each other. All that will become the heritage of the Temple: the World will soon come to us for its Sovereigns and Pontiffs. We shall constitute the equilibrium of the Universe, and be rulers over the Masters of the World. (emphasis in original) (p. 817)

Whether the "enemy" Pike quotes is accurate or not, it seems from what I've gathered up of Andreev, and what Pike writes, that a rival religious system, in opposition to the Church of Jesus Christ, has been in the making for some time, and that it is manifesting itself now. I have only read one of Alice Bailey's books, but she wrote one titled THE EXTERNALIZATION OF THE HIERARCHY which Lee quotes. Is this once secret and now manifesting church Bailey's Hierarchy? Lee's book would seem to confirm that it is, though I'm not sure how the old division between Theosophy and Anthroposophy, initiated by Steiner, would fit into this picture.