This is the best travel book there is ....I too have had the same book for 9 years and its information is still the best....I wish they would do an update....

I've been using this book since 1984. The small size and clear maps make this easy to carry. My current copy is so dog-eared and I've been looking for it's update. By chance, I ordered the Travel & Leisure Paris and found it to be the same format, similar size and with the same clear maps (copyright 1997). For those of you looking to update your Paris guides the new book could be a good substitute for an old favorite. I leave for Paris again in 2 weeks, and I'll pack the new book along with the old for further comparison.

Publications about Freemasonry and its history tend to fall into two classes - the first written by and for Freemasons and of little interest to anyone else; the second sensational and denunciatory, portraying the Craft as a diabolic conspiracy against God and man. Academic historians have mostly paid little attention to Freemasonry, perhaps because it has seemed the province of dabblers and fanatics. Christopher McIntosh is neither, and has treated an interesting period in history during which offshoots of the Craft had significant social and political importance, in a sensible and factual way, and with impeccable scholarship.

Much has been made by conspiracy theorists of Adam Weishaupt's Illuminati, attributing to it all manner of sinister influence. Yet, as McIntosh shows, a system of hautes-grades Freemasonry called the Gold- und Rosenkreuz both had a longer life and achieved actual political influence the Illuminati never did. Two cabinet ministers of the Prussian King Frederick William II, Johann Christof Wöllner and Johann Rudolf von Bischoffswerder, were the chiefs of this order, and the king was a member. Under the ministry of Wöllner and Bischoffswerder, the Prussian government sought to enforce a rigorous Lutheran orthodoxy against the rising tide of "enlightened" scepticism and scientism. Wöllner and Bischoffswerder have been described as "the first self-consciously conservative politicians in German history." Throughout the Holy Roman Empire, Gold- und Rosenkreuz circles found themselves in rivalry with Illuminati groups, as McIntosh describes in his chapter on "The Polemical Stance of the Gold- und Rosenkreuz."

While this episode of Masonic history has understandably been neglected by the conspiracy theorists, because it does not fit their preconceptions, some German historians have represented the Gold- und Rosenkreuz as a completely reactionary, anti-Aufklärung force. McIntosh shows that this was really not true, and that the Gold- und Rosenkreuz represented a different size of the phenomenon we refer to as the Enlightenment. The philosophical ferment of the eighteenth century incorporated Adam Smith, Samuel Johnson, and Edmund Burke as well as Voltaire, Helvétius, LaMettrie and Rousseau. It is facile to equate the Enlightenment with the views of a few French philosophes.

While the political influence of the Gold- und Rosenkreuz petered out with the death of Frederick William II, its cultural influence lasted well into the nineteenth century and extended as far east as Russia, and as far west as Great Britain, where the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia was founded using the ritual and grade structure of the Gold- und Rosenkreuz. This, in turn, gave rise to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which attracted a curious blend of literary and artistic figures, wealthy dilettantes, and a few charlatans like Mathers and Crowley.

What I wish McIntosh had pointed out more explicitly is that the importance of secret and semi-secret groups in politics is inversely proportional to the degree of freedom in the body politic. In Great Britain, the wellspring of speculative Freemasonry, the Craft never developed a political character, because the country was a constitutional monarchy. Representative government (if not complete democracy) and substantial latitude in public discourse (if not perfect freedom of speech) already existed there by the eighteenth century. Prussia, in contrast, was an absolute monarchy. Public dissent from the policies of government was suppressed as thoroughly as possible. In such a climate, masonic lodges became hospitable refuges for those having political aims, which were facilitated by members' pledges of secrecy and mutual assistance. Everywhere "political" freemasonry continues to exist in continental Europe and Latin America similarly had or has a comparable pattern of repressing open political dialogue.

Furthermore, as Eric Voegelin has pointed out in his "New Science of Politics," there is an affinity between gnosticism and totalitarianism. The latter has philosophical roots in the former. On the continent of Europe there are two streams of gnosticism that arguably have led to competing totalitarian systems. One, flowing from French philosophes like d'Alembert and Rousseau, through Weishaupt, to early nineteenth-century German rationalist philosophers, ultimately ends in the swamp of Marxism. The other, represented by the occultism of the Gold- und Rosenkreuz, flows through German romanticism, antiquarianism, and pseudo-scientific philology, among others to Nietzsche, Lanz "von Liebenfels," Glauer "von Sebottendorf," as well as through Blavatsky, Guénon, Evola, and empties into Fascism and Nazism. However different these systems may seem, both propose to build utopian societies in which men will be "as gods." It should be no surprise that they have come a-cropper even more disastrously than did the efforts of Wöllner and Bischoffswerder.

If you're here because you're looking for it--then you've found it. "The Rose Cross and the Age of Reason" provides a much needed re-evaluation of 18th century esoteric movements in Continential Europe, especially in Germany. The study is an evaluation of the structure, rituals, and doctrine of the Gold und Rosencreutz, an esoteric but politically powerful Rosicrucian order in Germany from about 1760 to the end of the 18th century. Many governent officials, as well as merchants and other professionals, were members of this order, which practiced an austere Christianity, but one powerfully symbolic as well. Alchemy and masonry also came to the fore in this study.

McIntosh's judgment is that the evaluate literature so far has painted occultism, especially German esotericism, as anti-Enlightenment in structure, doctrine, and function. This is commonly explained by the pietism of its members, who were resistant tor openly hostile to Cartesian science and metaphysics. The "G und R" also became involved in a conservative, perhaps even reactionary monarchy in Prussia (King Frederick William II). As this Rosicrucian movement gained power, it drew the ire of a number of Enlightnment critics, and a secret society, the Bavarian Illuminati, was formed in part to oppose it.

McIntosh demonstrates conclusively that simply judging the G und R as anti-Enlightenment is not the case, and he suggests a more nuanced view. To do this, McIntosh identifies three modalities of thought that were operative at the time in 18th century Germany, an Enlightenment mode, represented by Kant and others, the Orthodox churches (Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed) and a variety of Hermetic Neoplatonism, informed by Kabbalistic (both Jewish and Christian) discourse and alchemy, both theorectical and practical. Between the Orthodox religious views (the Counter-Enlightenment) and the Aufklarer, the Neoplatonic intellectual mode argued for a metaphysics illuminated by divine quintessance at every level. Drawing on classic Gnosticism and German Protestant Pietism, this Hermetic strain that gave birth to the G und R shared some characteristics with each of the other two movements. Like orthodox Christianity, the G und R held to a mostly world-negative cosmology and pessimistic epistemology, and taught that before all else men must fear and rever Jesus Christ. However, Pietism, Kabbalah and other influences gave it a strong emphasis on self-development towards the Kingdom of the Paraclete, and as such nationalistic development toward this idea as well. Reason and Science were encouraged so long as they took place within this religious telos, and many of the G und R and associated occultists found themselves on this list of prohibited books in Rome. Relations with the clergy were sometimes tense, and the G und R at times made moves to silence Counter-Enlightment clergy when they felt their interests threatened.

What this text adds to a dicussion of esotericism and intellectual culture is a better framework of understanding the relationship of these metaphysical and religious movements and their influence on culture. In much of the scholarly literature and popular imagination, such religious and magical movements represent a return to "irrationality" and as such can easily be dismissed by Enlightenment discourse as unworthy cultural productions. McIntosh's text recontextualizes occultism and shows that it can (and has) had a pervasive cultural impact at crucial times and places.

In light of recent documentary discoveries in a number of European archives, I had high hopes that this volume would further the body of research into the Rosicrucian movement. Ultimately, it did, but in ways I did not anticipate.

There are some essential works here (Joscelyn Godwin's excellent meditation on Michael Maier and Rafael T. Prinke's article on Michael Sendivogius immediately spring to mind: both of which demonstrate the varities of meaning Rosicrucianism took on to those who sought to perpetuate the movement in different contexts) but also much filler. Too many of the contributions collected in this volume re-state a body of knowledge familiar to all students of the subject. Due to the original format of these contributions (i.e., speeches) this knowledge is -understandably- not communicated in a particularly useful fashion.

Having said that, this volume is worth its price of entry. However the content is certainly a mixed bag.
Lastly, the translations of the Rosicrucian manifestos contained in this volume are those of Thomas Vaughan's mid 17th century edition of the Fama and Confessio .

Before the 'New Age' there was the "Rosicrucian Enlightenment". At the beginning of the 17th century, a new awakening was heralded throughout Europe, announcing the universal reform of all known areas of human activity - religion, science, art, and society were to become one being. The chief proponents of this great awakening were the mysterious "Rosicrucians". Nearly 400 years after the first seeds of this movement were planted, over 100 students, authors, and scholars of traditional Western esotericism, of which Rosicrucianism is the foremost exponent, gathered in the medieval town of Czesky Krumolv in the Czech Republic, to discuss, explore, and in someway, reopen the 'Vault of Christian Rosencreutz' once again.

"The Rosicrucian Enlightenment Revisited" contains nine essays on the early Rosicrucian movement presented at this landmark conference sponsored in part by The New York Open Center, and copies of the first two Rosicrucian Manifestoes, the "Fama" and the "Confessio". It is a great read and ideal for anyone interested in what is truly the heart and soul of Western esotericism - the Rosicrucian Enlightenment.

THIS VERSION IS DISAPPOINTING. TEDIOUSLY DULL. LUDWIG II WAS ONE OTHE THE MOST COMPLEX AND INTERESTING KINGS OF HIS DAY. THIS BOOK TELLS VERY LITTLE OF THE PERSONAL OR PUBLIC LIFE OF THE KING. YES, HE WAS MAD AS A HATTER, OR SHOULD IT BE CRAZY LIKE A FOX. HE WAS A HARMLESS HOMOSEXUAL THAT LOVED BEAUTY. HE WAS AN ADEQUATE, IF UNINSPIRED KING TO HIS PEOPLE UNTIL THE LAST. IN EARLIER HISTORY, HE WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN TREATED SO BADLY. THIS RENDITION IS MISSING SO MUCH OF THE MAN. IT ISN'T EVEN HALF THE STORY.

The problem with this book is it focuses on trying to explain rumors by twisting facts into ficton-a problem I found when reading many Evita bios. I feel there definitely needs to be a better bio written for the market. The book on the whole was interesting for me as a first time reader of LudwigII.

However, the author tends to overlook important issues ie.I was really disappointed when we are told Ludwig toured the western region of Bavaria, but instead of finding out about what he did on the tour(in reflecting his FACTUAL actions),we are drawn back to what Wagner was doing and his importance in Lud's life.

Good for first time read but take with a grain of salt.

In March of this year (2000), I was in Bavaria and visited the castles of Ludwig II. Upon my return I purchased this book to learn more about the King. I found this book fascinating. I only wish I had read it before my trip to his castles so I could have appreciated my visit more.

For those with a preliminary interest in the Rosicrucian (R+C) philosophy and teachings, this is a good overall introduction. The book ties together the Gnostic- and Hermetic-influenced origins of the R+C and various accounts of their evolution through the ages up to the 1990s.

This book was written by an author who is up to his neck in esotericism and the history of the Age of Reason. The author does a good job of explaining just how dangerous it was in times past to hold some of the beliefs that R+Cs did, and why things were kept so secret. I had the feeling he did his research well, going back where possible to original documents in various continental libraries in order to do so. One glance at the bibliography of this book will prove the breadth of his research and, likely, the intensity of his interest in the subject.

It is not a handbook of R+C teachings, but does contain very helpful information on key parts of the R+C tradition: the Fama Fraternitatis, Confessio Fraternitatis and Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz. The roles of key personalities relevant to the R+C are considered: Johann Andraea, Francis Bacon, Dr. R. Swinburne Clymer, John Dee, Rene Descartes, Goethe, Max Heindel, Dr. H. Spencer Lewis, Michael Maier, Paschal B. Randolph, Rudolph Steiner, A.E. Waite, Adam Weishaupt (of the Bavarian Illuminati), etc.

There are 16 b/w plate illustrations.

One of the later chapters gives potted histories of some of the 20th century R+C groups: AMORC, Fraternitatis Rosae Crucis, Golden Dawn, Lectorium Rosicrucianum, Rosicrucian Fellowship.

Although this book is not an exposé of detailed R+C teachings and symbology, it is a valuable resource for someone interested in knowing more about the Rosicrucians and in tying together the various strands, movements and philosophies.

One of the best books I've read on the subject of Rosicrusianism. It's a little bit too short but the information is good and gives the reader an introduction to the Rosicrusian history after Fama.

If you are already a rosicrucian, this book will not help you since you have inside information. But if you want to read a true historian's view on facts involving the Rosicrucian movement, this is an excellent book. The author made a very thorough job of investigating sources.

His basis is veryfiable facts (not all facts unfortunately can be verified). He started writing on Rosicrucianism with the thought of it being a fledging unimportant movement, but had to change his mind completely as the many details came to the surface. This books covers everything from the Fama (manifestos) to present day rosicrucian movements like AMORC, and the Fellowship...

A very technical and scholarly book!