Encyclopedia > Rosicrucian Order Crotona Fellowship
The Rosicrucian Order Crotona Fellowship was a supposedly-Rosicrucian group founded by George Alexander Sullivan in about 1924. It may have existed under the name Order of Twelve from 1911-1914 and again from 1920. The ROCF operated first from the Liverpool area of England and then after the mid-1930s from the Christchurch area. Its members studied esoteric subjects from lectures, plays and correspondence material prepared by George Alexander Sullivan.
The group’s headquarters near Christchurch was a wooden building named the Ashrama Hall, completed in 1936. In 1938, on the same land, the group built the Christchurch Garden Theatre, which called itself The First Rosicrucian Theater in England. It presented mystically-themed plays during June-September 1938.
The numbers attending Rosicrucian Order Crotona Fellowship events always were small, and the group is best known today for its association with Gerald Gardner and Peter Caddy. Following the death of George Alexander Sullivan in 1942, the group’s activities and membership diminished.
The Rosicrucians are a legendary and secretive order dating from the 15th or 17th century, generally associated with the symbol of the Rose Cross, which is also used in certain rituals of the Freemasons.
The influence that Rosicrucianism had in the modernizing of ancient Freemasonry early in the 18th century must have been slight, if any, though it is likely that as the century advanced, and additional ceremonies were grafted on to the first three degrees, Rosicrucian tenets were occasionally introduced into the later rituals.
Rosicrucian is a term that is also used to describe an idea, icon, person or group that is either Gnostic Christian or simultaneously Christian and trans-Christian.
Rosicrucianism has its roots in the Western mystery tradition and is generally associated with the symbol of the Rose Cross.
The Rosicrucians took the union of the rose and the cross for their symbol because this union embodies the meaning of their effort and emphasizes the fact that that effort must be made by all men, as the aim of humanity on earth is to attain divine wisdom.
To the Rosicrucians of the age of Elizabeth, it hardly seems questionable that the rose was the symbol of silence, as among the ancients it was originally derived from the pagan tradition that the God of Love made the first rose, which he presented to the God of Silence.
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