Louisenlund Appeal for sponsorship for the rebuilding of a Masonic/alchemical monument in Germany
Introduction by David Sheihan Hunter Lindez
Dr. Christopher McIntosh travelled to America to speak at the Rose Circle Research Foundation's symposium in Manhattan. While in town that same week, he was the guest of a distinguished and private lodge of gentlemen Freemasons where he delivered his lecture entitled “Louisenlund: A Masonic, Rosicrucian, Alchemical, ‘Theme Park’ in Germany.” He explored German Masonic and esoteric activity in the late 18th and early 19th century, focusing on the milieu of Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel (1744-1836), an Aristocratic Patron and protectorate of Freemasonry involved in the institution of the Templar Rite of the Strict Observance, the Gold- und Rosenkreuz, Knight Masons Elus Coen of the Universe and the Scottish Rectified Regime. His seat was at Louisenlund in Schleswig-Holstein; with a ‘Freemasons Tower’, consisting of both a lodge space and an alchemical laboratory, used for a time by the legendary alchemist, the Comte de Saint Germain.
Landgrave Carl von Hessen-Kassel was known the Strict Observance and later in the Chevaliers Bienf'aisants de la Cite Sainte of the Scottish Rectified Rite as Eques a Leone Resurgente. His influence in the shaping of the Scottish Rectified Rite ritual was extensive, as acknowledged by the Duke of Brunswick and later by Jean Baptiste Willermoz himself in correspondence from 1789 and several years after the French Revolution in 1810 when Willermoz had just completed his final edits of the Scottish Master of Saint Andrew. It was the Landgrave who had insisted on the preservation and adoption of the Strict Observance tracing boards with key additions, such as the added emphasis on Sion, interestingly enough.
We found in examining correspondence that Prince Charles of Hesse was often hosting members of the Jesuit Order in his Alchemical Masonic meetings. For the "Reform of Lyon" and the Masonic Congress of 1782, he offered up the Summer residence of his brother Wilhelm, the invested heir to Hesse-Kassel. The castle was built on the edge of the spa baths as a ruin meant to bewilder its guests, as its interior was magnificent and luxurious with grand halls featuring large portraits of the family's Royal progenitors.
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| Wilhelmsbad Castle |
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| Landgrave Carl von Hessen-Kassel (1744-1836) |
The Masonic Alchemical Tower at Louisenlund has long since been a ruin, but there is now a project to raise funds to properly rebuild it. Dr. McIntosh is working with myself as an archivist and preservationist, to raise awareness of this project throughout the world. Up till now, this has been accomplished via multimedia presentations in private clubs, lodges and the likes and by way of pamphlets, mailed and distributed in person via a grass roots campaign across the United States, the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, continental Europe and the Caribbean. All interested parties are invited to donate to the restoration effort, especially those who are custodian to traditions such as the Swedish Rite, the RER, Rosicrucianism or otherwise have a common root or shared heritage in the Strict Observance. Support from the world wide community of practicing Alchemists is also invited.
Regarding
the Tower - unfortunately it fell into ruin in the 1960s, so that all that
remains today are the foundations. These are of stone. The main part of the
Tower was of wood made to look like stone. The ground
plan is designed to resemble an Egyptian scarab pushing a ball of dung. In the
cellar was a subterranean alchemical lab.
The 'Theme Park' was consciously constructed by Karl von Hessen-Kassel as an initiatic journey. The site itself was apparently chosen in order to consciously harness the primordial energy of the grove and the "Rune stones" found therein. In the 1790s two standing stones with runic inscriptions were found in the vicinity of the old Viking settleent of Haithabu near Louisenlund. Landgrave Carl placed them together with a semicircle of boulders from a prehistoric burial site in the grounds of Louiselund. The rune stones are now in the Schleswig Museum.
Louisenlund Appeal for sponsorship for the rebuilding of a Masonic/alchemical monument in Germany
presented by Christopher McIntosh
The Freemasons’ Tower, sometimes called the
Alchemist’s Tower, is part of the remarkable Masonic/Rosicrucian/alchemical park at Louisenlund in Schleswig-Holstein, northern Germany, built by Prince
Carl von Hessen-Kassel and now occupied by a prestigious international boarding
school. The Tower is now sadly a ruin, and there is a project to rebuild it,
which I shall come to shortly.
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| Freemason Tower |
But first I would like to set it in its context and talk a bit about the
esoteric mind-set which it reflects. It‘s typical of a strain of esoteric
spirituality which was very strong in Germany at that time. It goes back to
mystical writers like Meister Eckhart and Jakob Boehme and the Rosicrucian
movement of the 17thcentury. It includes Gnostic elements, Christian Kabbalah,
Christian theosophy, and in the 18th century it merges with the world of
Freemasonry and neo-Rosicrucian orders. Alchemy played an important part in it,
reflecting the view that the divine is present not just in heaven but in the
substance of the material world if you know where to find it. German mystical
poetry is full of alchemical references and metaphors – such as the idea that the
Trinity is actually present in material substance in the form of the three
basic alchemical principles of salt, sulphur and mercury.
This particular mixture
of ideas issomething very German and it accounts for the survival of alchemy in
Germany much longer than in other countries. When, in the 18th century, it
merged with Freemasonry and neo-Rosicrucianism it produced a whole
proliferation of high-degree Masonic and Rosicrucian orders, whose members
included many prominent aristocrats and landowners, who transformed their
estates into what I call symbol-filled landscapes, initiatic theme parks which
led you past a series of symbolic features, which reminded you of certain
virtues, heroic figures from the past, important stages in life’s journey,
ethical principles and so on, so that a journey through the park became a kind
of initiatic pilgrimage.
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| Louisenlund Manor (photo credit - PodracerHH, 1, May 2009 Wikipedia) |
In Germany there are
some fascinating examples of parks of this kind. Above is one example:
Wilhelmshöhe in Kassel, built by Prince Carl’s great-grandfather and namesake,
the Landgrave Karl of Hessen-Kassel. It is built on a steep hillside with a
water cascade, overlooked by a massive statue of Hercules, as a symbol of
courage and virtue. Another remarkable example of a “symbol-filled
landscape” that I’d like to mention isthe park at Wörlitz in Sachsen-Anhalt, in
the former German Democratic Republic, built in the latter part of the 18th
century by Prince Friedrich Franz von Anhalt-Dessau around a watery area formed
by a salient of the river Elbe. The Prince had spent a great deal of time in
England and may very well have been initiated there as a Mason – although we do
not know for sure. But certainly the
whole garden is unmistakeably initiatic. And we know
that this was deliberate, because there is a remarkable guide to the garden
written by the Prince's Privy Counsellor August von Rode, who was extremely
well read in the esoteric literature of the past and advised on the creation of
the garden.
So if you walk through
it you are led on a sort of pilgrimage through a series of different settings
and past certain symbolic objects. There is, for example, a labyrinth (above),
which leads through rocky passages with inscriptions such as those shown above
that warn the visitor: WAEHLE WANDERER DEINEN WEG MIT VERNUNFT (Wanderer, choose
your way with reason) (top) or HIER WIRD DIE WAHL SCHWER ABER ENTSCHEIDEND (Here
the choice becomes difficult but decisive) (bottom). In a different part
of the park the journey becomes even more mysterious and intriguing (see images
below). You go across a rather precarious chain bridge over a chasm. On the
other side you come to a grotto. Then you go down a stairway to a small open
space, surrounded by rocks and stone walls. Here you were supposed to pause for
meditation. Then, going further, you pass the Cell of the Mystagogue, or the
"Cell of the Initiator into Sacred Mysteries", as Rode describes it.
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| Initiatory Tunnel at Wörlitz - photo retrieved from: http://www.mz-buergerreporter.de/dessau-rosslau/lokales/tunnel-im-labyrinth-m6086,1886.html |
Then the itinerary continues
to the Temple of Venus. Inside the hill under this temple are two
grottos, one dedicated to the elements fire and earth, theother to water and
air. As you stand in the grotto of earth and fire you can look up directly into
the pedestal of the statue of Venus. And here Rode has a beautiful
description: "A circular opening inthe domed ceiling looks into the
pedestal of Venus, which is glazed with yellow glass, allowing a faint light to
fall into the grotto, resembling the light of the sun during an
eclipse." What a wonderful image! It's very alchemical, because for
the alchemists the presence of gold in the earth was analogous to the divine
light penetrating the depths of matter.
We can see the same idea
in a painting by the Romantic painter Friedrich Otto Runge, entitled Morning. Here we have a
wonderful Venus-like figure floating in the air in front of a beautiful sunrise.
And down below, in the earth, is a sun partially eclipsed by a moon. It's
almost as though Runge knew that grotto and had read Rode's
description. So, as you go through these grottoes you go symbolically
through the four elements. And after the passing though the second grotto, the
grotto of water and air, you exit through the opening shown in the foreground
on the right, and as you come out you have a wonderful vista of the river Elbe,
for the water element, and it was originally planned that you would hear the
sound of an aeolian harp, a harp played by the wind. As Rode writes in his
guidebook: "Its strings, touched only by the swift,airy fingers of the
wind gods, will create divine melodies redolent of the air element." What
a pity that the harp was never installed. That would have been a wonderful
experience.
St. Germain's Hermetic Garden & Tower of Eternity, by Iona Miller, 2010 from Iona Miller on Vimeo.
Another fascinating
garden of about the same era is the New Garden beside a lake at Potsdam, near
Berlin. It was built by the Rosicrucian King Frederick William II of Prussia,
nephew of Frederick the Great, at about the same time as Louisenlund, and is
marked by the same esoteric world view. Frederick William became King of
Prussia in 1786 when his uncle died. Already as Crown Prince, he had become a
Freemason and had been initiated into the Golden and Rosy Cross Order, in which
alchemy played an important role. Frederick William was a keen member of the
order, and he duly worked diligently at his alchemy. Shortly after acquiring
the land for the New Garden he wrote to a fellow member of the Rosicrucian
order saying that he had bought a secluded garden and garden house, where he
intended to carry out alchemical work. Then, after he became King, he set about
building a palace by the lake and laying out the garden as a symbol-filled
landscape.
One of the Rosicrucian
motifs in the New Garden is an icehouse in the form of an Egyptian pyramid.
This reflects the mystique of ancient Egypt, which goes right back to the
Hermetic writings, but it became particularly fashionable in the 18th century,
partly through the novel Sethos, by
the French priest JeanTerrasson, published in 1731, which tells the story of
the young prince, Sethos, who is taken through an initiatory process by the sage
Amedes to prepare him to become King. This book also influenced the Egyptian
setting of Mozart's Magic Flute. The
pyramid has some Egyptian hieroglyphs and a set of seven alchemical symbols in
gilded wrought-iron work over the doorway.
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The Phoenix Doorway to the Freemasons’ Tower before it fell into
ruin
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So, looking at these
features in the New Garden, it’s clear that King Frederick Williamand Prince
Carl von Hessen were kindred spirits, both of them at home in this esoteric
world of alchemy and Rosicrucianism. Interestingly they were the same age –
born in the same year – and they must surely have known each other. They were
both members of the Golden and Rosy Cross Order, which clearly played an important
role in their lives, so I should say a bit about this order. What was it
like to be a member? The Order was grouped into circles of nine members each,
and had nine grades of initiation, each involving elaborate initiation rituals.
In ascending order, the grades were as follows: Junior, Theoreticus,Practicus,
Philosophus, Minor, Major, Adeptus Exemptus, Magister and Magus. This grade
structure, slightly modified, was adopted by the English Occult Order, the
Golden Dawn, and later by other Rosicrucian orders.
In the symbolic tableau used at the initiation of members into the 5th grade of Minor a form of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life with the
Sefiroth arranged in two pentagonal figures is employed. Above is the eye of God in the
triangle and in between a sort of Adam Kadmon figure. The crosses on his clothing
and in the sphere underneath emphasize the basically Christian nature of the
Order. Part of the order's curriculum involved reading recommended books
and manuscripts on Christian theosophy, mysticism, Kabbalah and alchemy. And if
it was difficult for a member to attend a circle he could even be received into
the order by correspondence and initiate himself into the various grades.
Alchemy played a major
part in the Order’s activities. Alchemical symbolism featured inthe initiation
ceremonies and members were supposed to have their ownlaboratories, and work
diligently at their furnaces, and retorts and crucibles, and I think some of
them blew themselves up in the process. There survive today many alchemical
manuscripts that circulated among the Fraternity and, as you progressed up the
Order, you received more and more alchemical secrets. So they took alchemy very
seriously, as you can see from this engraving of a candidate being interviewed
for membership in a Rosicrucian lodge – clearly identifiable as such from the
alchemical equipment on the shelves – distilling apparatus, retorts and so on.
If you look at the
alchemical books and manuscripts that circulated among the brethren, you will
see that they are very much practical recipe books, containing very detailed
and precise instructions about alchemical processes, often with drawings of
alchemical equipment. Many of these were traditional
alchemical procedures that you find inother alchemical sources. For example,
when you reached the grade of Adeptus Exemptus you were given the recipe for an
alchemical process involving dew. Part of it reads as follows: "Take as much
as you like of that material, which can most easily be found in stony meadows,
transparent and gleaming like emerald, or also in sandy hills …Collect it in
the sign of the Ram before sunrise; … Collect it as carefully as possible,
clean it and get rid of foreign impurities. NB. As soon as you have soaked up
some of it, for which you need a sheet of clean linen, you mustimmediately put
it into a glass vessel and close it securely, for the most subtle spirits can
easily evaporate …When your vessel is carefully sealed, dig a trench about two
fathoms deep in a dryplace, making a special hole for each vessel; put your
vessels in and, to make sure they do not break, cover each hole with an
earthenware plate. After you have covered your trench over again leave the
material to putrefy for 40 days.When you take it out after the elapse of this
period you will see, to your great astonishment, that your material has been
changed into a very pure blood… and restored to a quintessence of
nature."[1]
So this was very
down-to-earth, practical alchemy, but it was also a spiritual process. One of
the mottos of the alchemists was “ora et labora” – pray and work. So it was a
dual process: on the other hand the work in the laboratory, which was an
attempt to raise substances to a higher level; and on the other hand
thestriving of the alchemist to raise himself up to a higher spiritual level.
Now we come to
Louisenlund itself. Shown above is one of the few remnants of the Freemasons’
Tower, the so-called Phoenix Gate, which is now in a different location. As one
can see, it’s built in the Egyptian style. The pillars are decorated with
lotuses. The cross-piece has a winged solar disk, flanked by caduceuses with
snakes curled around them, and in the middle of the cross-piece is a very
curious symbol, showing a winged scarab with two dog-like heads, holding in its
legs a ball of dung. It represents the type of beetle that lays its eggs in a
ball of dung, which was an important motif for the ancient Egyptians,
representing the god Khepri, who rolls the sun out in the morning and catches
it again in the evening. And one could also see this as an alchemical symbol –
the dung representing base matter, out of which the alchemist can conjure gold,
corresponding to the sun. And of course the gateway expresses again the
mystique of Egypt as the source of an ancientwisdom tradition. It’s a motif
that crops up again and again in Masonic symbolism and – for example, as I
mentioned – in Mozart’s Magic Flute.
Mozart himself was of course a Freemason. And it’s not surprising that a
performance of the Magic Flute took
place at Louisenlund. And one can imagine the opening tones of the opera
floating out over the park on a summer evening.
Now here is an exercise
in imagination. Imagine that what you see in the picture below is a gateway in
time, and you’re passing through it – between the lotus pillars, under the
portico with the winged solar disc and the scarab. And on theother side you
emerge into the beautifully landscaped park of Louisenlund. And waiting to greet you is Prince Carl von Hessen-Kassel himself, Rosicrucian, (Knight Mason Elu Cohen), alchemist and one of the most prominent Freemasons of his day.
To tell
you a bit about him – at the age of 22 he married Louise, the daughter of the
Danish King and they built a house at a beautiful spot on an inlet of the
Baltic, named Louisenlund after his wife – a fine house by today’s standards
but a relatively modest one for aprince of that era. A few years later, at the
age of 30, Carl became aFreemason, and rose very rapidly so that within a short
time he became a Provincial Grand Master. He was in many different Masonic
rites including the Golden and Rosy Cross Order, in which the practice of
alchemy played a central role. He was also Grand Master of an offshoot of the
Golden and Rosy Cross called the Asiatic Brethren (I’ve written about both of
these orders in my book The Rose Cross
and the Age of Reason).And, curiously enough, he was also a member of the
Illuminati, which was ahighly radical, democratic, rationalist order – quite the
opposite of theGolden and Rosy Cross.
He was deeply immersed
in the world view of these Masonic and Rosicrucian orders,and he set out to
turn the park at Louisenlund into a sort of Masonic/alchemical/Rosicrucian
Arcadia. Like the other parks I mentioned, it’sa park of spiritual initiation,
designed so that a walk through the park becomes a kind of pilgrimage, taking
you past certain carefully placed symbolic features and leading you to an
experience of illumination. Over the years, many of these features have
disappeared or fallen into ruin, but let’s imagine that Carl von Hessen is
taking us on a tour of the park as it was around 1800 when it was pretty much
complete.
We begin at the parterre
in front of the house, where we find a sundial in the form of an
armillary sphere, representing the notion of an ordered universe, mounted on a
truncatedpillar, which is a something we often find in masonic illustrations, symbolising
the fallen Temple of Solomon and the lost ancient wisdom that it represents.
The height of the pillar is carefully calculated so that, when you look through
the armillary sphere towards the house, the ball in the centre of it,
representing the sun, lines up with a diamond-shaped cartouche over the main
entrance [slide], in such a way that the ball, projected on to the cartouche,
becomes the pupil of an eye of Ra or the all-seeing eye of God. So we get our
first message: that this is a place wherethe eye of God is ever-present if you
know how to perceive it.
Next we come to the
obelisk, set in a small clearing in a wood. This commemorates the marriage of
Carl’s daughter Maria to Prince Frederick of Denmark in 1790, but it also –
like the Phoenix Gateway – evokes the notion of ancient Egyptian wisdom. In the
wood behind the obelisk is a small stone altar, originally set in front of a
dead oak tree and possibly intended as a memento mori, a reminder of
death. Then we come to the Felsenberg, the "Rocky Hill", with a path of rough stones, which is both a path of initiation and the rough
stone of the newly apprenticed Mason, ready to be made smooth. The path
leads up to a small pavilion at the top with a view out over the park. So this
is the arduous ascent of the Mason towards the light.
Going further we come to
a stream with a waterfall. This was an artificial waterfall – the water came
from a small lake fed by a device called a hydraulic ram, the remains of which
are still visible, which pumped water into the lake. When the hydraulic ram was
switched off and the water ceased to flow – lo and behold! – there was
a concealed entrance to a grotto in which Masonic initiation rituals were held. When
the brethren were assembled the water would be switched on and they would be
safe from prying eyes. In the present day we would find that this grotto has long
since caved in and is no longer visible.
Continuing on we find
other features that we wouldn’t find in the present day: a rune stone, brought
from a Viking site on the Baltic coast, a hermitage, complete with a mechanical
hermit, who sat up in bed and made groaning noises when anyon eentered his hut;
and, beside the hermitage, a labyrinth, similar to the one at Wörlitz,
representing life’s journey with all its dangers and pitfalls.
But most impressive of
all was the Freemasons’ Tower or the Alchemist’s Tower. It looked like a stone building, but in fact,
apart from the cellar and the foundations, the walls were of oak panels made to
look like stone. And today only some remains of the foundations are still
there.
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| elevation diagram of the Alchemical Tower |
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| Prince Carl von Hessen engaged in alchemic work with the Count of St Germain |
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| Count de St Germain (image retrieved from http://fr.muzeo.com) |
The Count de St Germain (shown above) was a fascinating and mysterious
figure. Apart from being an alchemist, he was a physician, a composer, a
painter, a diplomat and much more. Undoubtedly he was not a real count. Some
people considered him a confidence trickster, but there is no doubt that he had
enormous knowledge and also enormous charm and charisma. Prince Carl came to
admire him greatly and worked with him on a number of projects, including
developing various remedies and a metal alloy, similar to gold in appearance,
which came to be called the Carl metal. So the kind of alchemy they were
pursuing was not about turning lead into gold but about refining substances,
making elixirs, creating alloys and so on. But it was also about raising the
alchemist himself to a higher spiritual level.
Now let me talk a bit about the project to rebuild the Tower. An architect,
Axel Brauer, has been appointed and has been working on some alternative
designs. The task is not so easy. For various reasons it’s not possible to
simply rebuild the Tower in its original form. The foundations are no longer
strong enough to hold a heavy structure, so probably the building will have to
be held by a skeleton of vertical steel girders, driven into the ground. Then
there’s the problem of what material to use for the walls. Wooden panels made
to look like stone (as shown below) would not be durable enough, and
stone would be prohibitively expensive.
One suggestion the architect made was to
use glass, but that didn’t meet with much enthusiasm, so he came up with another
idea, which was to clad the building with sheet metal. The building would then
look something like the computer simulation shown on the left. This has the merit
that the walls could be decorated with murals, such as alchemical images,
evoking the alchemical work that was carried out there.
It is intended that the Tower should contain a display about Freemasonry and an
alchemical museum, which would also be a working laboratory, so that one could
actually demonstrate alchemy as it was practised by Carl von Hessen and his
contemporaries. We’re fortunate to have acquired a set of exhibits from an
alchemical museum in Kutna Hora in the Czech Republic, founded by my friend
Michal Pober, which closed down a few years ago, and he very kindly donated the
exhibits to Louislund.
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The former Museum of Alchemy at Kutna Hora in
the Czech Republic
Here’s what the museum in Kutna Hora lookedlike (above), and the museum in the Tower would be somewhat similar.
So the reconstructed
Tower would be a wonderful resource for Masons, for visitors interested in
Freemasonry or the history of science, for pupils in the school, and for the
general public. It would mean that the key feature, the cornerstone of the
park would be restored,and with it this whole unique park would come to life
again and be a place of inspiration and uplifting symbolism – especially of
course for Freemasons but also for anyone who is receptive to the spirit of the
place. The project will cost an estimated $550,000, and we are appealing for
sponsors.
People involved in the
project include Princess Ingeborg of Schleswig-Holstein, whose husband
Friedrich, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, is a direct descendant of Prince Carl,
who created the park. The Advisory Board comprises, apart from myself, the school Director Dr. Peter Rösner, Dr. Alf Hermann, Head of the Park Archaeology
Guild at Louisenlund, Andreas Rothgaenger and Jörgen Jessen from local Masonic
lodges, the architect Axel Brauer, Dr. Kirsten Baumann, Director of the
Regional Museum of Art and Cultural History, Dr. Margita Meyer from the
Regional Ancient Monuments Agency, Gabriele Gruber, Burser of the school, Sven
Meier, P.R. Officer, Dr. Eva Witzel, Librarian, and two pupils, Magnus Salsali
and Jost-Hinrich Reemtsma, who are members of the school Archaeology Guild,
which is working to restore other parts of the park.
There are various
privileges that come with sponsorship, depending on the level of the donation.
All donors will get regular updates, a guided tour of Louisenlund on request
and an invitation to the inauguration of the Tower. For higher-level donations
the privileges will include an invitation to a gala dinner with Princess
Ingeborg and the school Director, and a certificate of appreciation signed by
the Princess, and – for the top donations – also a stay of three days as a
guest of the school with a guided tour
of the region. The Louisenlund Foundation is acharity, so donations are
tax-deductible.
Donations can be made by
bank transfer to:
Stiftung Louisenlund
Bank: Förde Sparkasse
BIC: NOLADE21KEI
IBAN: DE86 2105 0170
0000 6314 40.
Checks can be sent to
Dr. Peter Rösner at:
Stiftung Louisenlund
Louisenlund 9
24357 Güby
Germany
Tel. +49 4354 999 0
Further information,
including a leaflet about the project, can be obtained from Franziska Trautmann,
Project Management, Louisenlund: Tel: +49 4354 999-375
Email: franziska.trautmann@louisenlund.de
Email: franziska.trautmann@louisenlund.de
[1] Quoted in Christopher McIntosh, The Rose Cross and the Age of Reason (Albany, New York: SUNY Press, 2nd edition, 2011), p. 86.
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