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A Mystery School Delivered by Post
The Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis is the most successful example of a distinctively modern form: the initiatic order run as a correspondence course.
Monographs, not a temple
Founded in the United States in 1915 by the author and businessman Harvey Spencer Lewis, who claimed a transmission of Rosicrucian authority from Europe, AMORC delivers its teaching through graded home-study lessons called monographs. It describes itself as a philosophical and initiatic body rather than a religion, and draws on Hermetic, Egyptian and Rosicrucian symbolism. Its headquarters at Rosicrucian Park in San Jose includes an Egyptian-style museum and a research library.
Membership at a distance
The postal monograph made membership possible without a local lodge or a resident teacher, and it is the mechanism by which AMORC grew into an international organisation administered through global jurisdictions. That same structure places the whole weight of authority on the literature of the order and its officers rather than on any face-to-face initiatory chain, which distinguishes it sharply from the lodge-based orders it otherwise resembles.
Cross-Tradition Connections
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