The Rosicrucian Order

Forgive me for doing yet more digging rather than a response to the reading, but when we mentioned the journal this was published in (The Rosicrucian Digest No. 2 2009), I was very, very intrigued. Secret societies? I'm googling this.

When I typed "Rosicrucian" into Google, the first thing I noticed was the "People also search for..." suggestions.

... Hrmm.

Illuminati. This does not fall under the category of good first impressions.

Clicking the website of the Rosicrucian Order, and then clicking "Join Now!" leads me to what looks like a subscription service. Asking for membership dues? They've even got an introduction video on YouTube with a suspiciously large number of views and an even more suspicious like to dislike ratio. Not to mention that the entire comments section is surprisingly accepting of the Rosicrucian Order, and keep in mind the YouTube comments section has unparalleled notoriety when it comes to pointless online arguments about religion.

Turns out that this is the Rosicrucian in "Rosicrucian Digest" that we're looking for. They have a section on their website detailing this particular paper by Dr. Mara Lynn Keller, and if you really want to, there's a whole host of other related content in other issues of the Rosicrucian Digest on their website.

The submission guidelines state that:

"Submission to The Rosicrucian Digest implies that the article or other contribution has not been published elsewhere, has not been submitted to another publication, and will not be submitted to another publication during the time it is under consideration by the Rosicrucian Digest."

https://www.rosicrucian.org/rosicrucian-digest-submission

I'll assume that Dr. Keller submitted this to the Rosicrucian Order herself and, given her strong and very much so respectable academic background (PhD from Yale and 25+ years of lecturing/teaching), I trust that she knows much more than me about any of this. 

It's no wonder that Dr. Keller can relate to the Eleusinian Mysteries so deeply. Regarding the question of whether this can or should be considered an academic article, I would just like to point out that on page 30, on the last paragraph before the "Rites Open to All" heading, Dr. Keller says the following:

"I have chosen to present my own vision of he path of initiation into the ancient Eleusinian Mysteries, based primarily on the ancient Greek sources. I understand that the rites changed over time, and that no picture of the secret and ineffable rites can be definitive."

She asks us to take this document and the depiction of the nine days with a grain of salt. It's difficult for there to be a one-hundred percent objective article with regards to this topic. There's only so much we can learn about the inner workings of a centuries old secret society if none of us are in on the secret. And although Keller has (to my current knowledge) experience with similarly exclusive societies, these mysteries are centuries beyond our time, years out of our grasp. So even though it seems that the injection of her personal experiences (quite heavily) may detract from her authority, perhaps it is one of the few ways she can invoke understanding and ideas of relation with an audience that has nothing to do with exclusive societies (like us). It should also be noted that, for the audience who are a part of the Rosicrucian Order, who I assume will be the primary audience of this article, her injections of personal experience will resonate a lot more with them.

At the end of the day, I'm still not sure how I feel about the source/sponsor of this journal, but I think, having thought about the article some more, I think I am more satisfied with Dr. Keller's choice of delivery.