In his quest for wisdom, Rosencreutz had traveled to the Holy Land, Egypt, Morocco, and Spain; his teachings reflected the influences of alchemy, Alexandrian Hermetism, Christian gnosticism, Jewish mysticism (Qabbalah), and the Paracelsian medical tradition. Following his own preparation and study, Rosencreutz, with three companions, established the Society of the Rose Cross. This fraternity was to have no other profession than (in the manner of Paracelsus) to attend to the sick for free. Members were also required to travel in order to gain and to disseminate knowledge, to report yearly by letter or in person to the center Rosencreutz had founded (called the Home of the Holy Spirit), to wear no distinctive garb, to seek worldly successors, and to employ the rose cross as their seal and symbol.
Significantly, both the publication of the aforementioned Rosicrucian documents and the purported opening of Rosencreutz's tomb occured in the early seventeenth century, thus placing Rosicrucianism directly in the context of Reformation and Counter-Reformation currents. Further, the documents originally appeared in Bohemia, which at the time was a haven for alchemists, freethinkers, millenarians, and adherents of diverse religious traditions. The authorship of the three key texts has been attributed to Johann Valentin Andreae (1586–1654), a Lutheran theologian and mystic.
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