Mundane Schools of the Brotherhoods Q: In your book, you talked about the twelve Brotherhoods—an old one and the Seven Lesser Brotherhoods and their Mundane Schools. Is that right? Could you go into a little about which schools these are and how a person can contact them? RK: I can tell you which schools they used to be, but none of the schools are presently backed by the Brotherhoods because they drifted too far away from the founder’s backing. Literally, any one Lesser Brotherhood might have twenty different Mundane Schools in different parts of the world by quite different names. Just because certain ones in this country have been discontinued from the backing of the Brotherhoods doesn’t mean that they don’t have other ones working in other parts of the world. The Rosicrucian Brotherhood did give rise to a Rosicrucian school in Pennsylvania in this country: Beverly Hall was the one they created. Two other groups have adopted the name Rosicrucian without having the backing of the Brotherhoods since that time. The one that is over two hundred years that is still in Quakertown, Pennsylvania is now down to only one or two people on the staff and practically no students. Q: There main establishment is in San Jose, California? RK: That one is not associated with the Brotherhoods. That was a group that was formed about 1921 when a group of people who had pursued Rosicrucian teachings got together in a convention and commissioned a gentleman who founded the ? to promote the policies and beliefs of the Rosicrucians. But, most of those Rosicrucians really had started out as Freemasons and just kind of adopted writings and created a kind of a faction of the Freemasons in Europe. They passed that along to a gentleman who wanted to start—[Spencer] Lewis— Q: His son is now the grand master of whatever they call it— RK: There is also a Rosicrucian Fellowship in Oceanside, California which was started by Max Heindel—earlier than San Jose. I guess it all depends on which Rosicrucian group you want to take your teaching from. The Heindel group is the one that has been publishing things relative to text material and reference work for astrology for a long, long time. Maybe it has been the only good ephemeris publisher in the United States for quite a long time. So, they are primarily the prayer group, hidden group, and people who are interested in astrology. That is what that group is involved in today. AMORC which is the Ancient and Mystical Order of Rosae Crucis is in San Jose. They have all kinds of information of a mystical nature and occult nature which they have put together and that body of their teachings they take from the Kabbalah and from magical writings of the Arabians that came up through European agencies somewhere around 1200s to 1400s. They were pretty exciting for people when they first found out about these things. It was a result of the Crusades and bringing that information back to European awareness. Q: It started out a lot farther back than that with the ancient Egyptians in the Temple of the Sphinx along these lines. I have a little bit of background with the Rosicrucians. It seems to me their teachings go back a lot longer like The Ultimate Frontier book. RK: I agree. It all comes from the same base. One of the problems with the Rosicrucians at AMORC is that they added a whole bunch of things which obviously, very definitely work. Looking into a mirror, for instance, with a candle on either side and seeing spirits and what have you. They like to explain that it is your former lifetimes but actually these are actual spirits who are trying to gain control over the people who are looking into the mirror. Also, how to make a mist form over a pan of water or how to make clouds appear and disappear. These are powers of mind that we all have and they demonstrate some of those despite the fact that some of them are extremely, extremely dangerous and can lead to insanity when attempted. The fact that they do not warn you when you step outside the Brotherhoods teachings ??? danger to the ??? The Brotherhoods are dedicated to moving people forward and not at great risk to themselves. It may be slow but sure and in the right direction whereas some of these things which have been adopted from Kabbalistic and Arabian magic undoubtedly work, but you can all too easily become controlled by other spirits. And, of course, that is exactly the opposite of what the Brotherhoods are trying to get across to people. Spiritualism is fairly risky stuff to get involved in. Rosicrucians are an eclectic teaching. They have taken a whole bunch of things from many different areas and put them together. And they do work, but not necessarily can be done safety. There was one that was officially involved with the Rosicrucian Brotherhood. I have read some of their material and it was written in the style of 225-250 years ago and very difficult to penetrate. I think people cannot readily understand what they are teaching. They just do something else with metaphysics. So, essentially the one that was officially backed by the Rosicrucian Brotherhood no longer is. The next one would be the Hermetic Brotherhood which has most of its influence in southern and eastern Europe. The only thing that I know of involved with the term Hermetics in the name is the Mundane School that they had in the United States. The Luciferian is the one which has backed the Freemasons through the ages. Probably one of the most active things in the United States today, so far as those things are concerned is the Freemasons, but the are no longer backed, in this country at least, by the Luciferian Brotherhood mainly because it has deteriorated to being essentially a business mans’ club where you can make contacts and the like in a social organization. One of the things, of course, that they really do which is of value is when you get to be 32^nd degree, you can join the Shriners. They have a number of childrens’ hospitals which are free of charge in the country. It is a tremendous service. But, for the most part, if you have ever been in the area of a Shriner’s convention you understand why the Brotherhoods have dropped them. What is popularly known in this country as the Lemurian Brotherhood, had a school started in about 1936. Somewhere around 1956. They no longer back that one anymore mainly because after it was founded somebody drafted changes that were added to the teachings which They could not back. Somebody mentioned the Theosophists. They are part of the Brahmic Brotherhoods. The Brahmic Brotherhood is primarily operative in the Indian region of the world. Their main teaching is to overcome the effects of the caste [system] that was instituted in Indian a long time ago and to develop a sense of Brotherhood in many people. The Theosophical movement in this country is no longer backed by any of the Brotherhoods mainly because it was changed so radically from what it had been for the prior eight centuries. Blavatsky became a strong influence and essentially just redid the whole thing through her vast writings. She has written many books; all of them very thick. It is essentially a teaching which is designed to undermine the Brotherhoods. So, obviously, the Theosophical Society in the United States and Europe was dropped. Although Theosophy is about two-thousand years old by that name, its principle schools are operating in India and the Near East, but under a different name. They do not use the word Theosophy. Theosophy was invented by the Greek followers around the time of Christ. The Coptic Brotherhood has representation here in the United States which is called the Coptic Fellowship and has its headquarters in Michigan. But, it follows the teachings of a Hamid Bey who introduced so much garbage into the teachings that They had to drop that one. The Essene Brotherhood, of which there must be about twenty-five or maybe thirty organizations in the United States with the name Essene, none of which have any connection with the Brotherhoods any longer. The original one in this country was down in Tampa, Florida. It was designed to give esoteric teachings to those in the healing professions. They had to be a licensed physician or a registered nurse in order to take the teachings. Then they were opened up to all kinds of esoteric things for anybody who wanted to join and take the correspondence program. Because of subtle changes that occurred in the teachings, as opposed to what was originally started by the founders who kept it straight while they were still alive, those changes caused the Brotherhoods to no longer be able to support them. But they still have a lot of value and good in them: getting people acquainted with some of these ideas and providing a means of getting further information. So, they serve, in the long run, some of the Brotherhoods aims, but they cannot be directly connected any longer. There must be literally several hundred other organizations in the United States which reach people at whatever level they happen to be at the present time and give them the information and move them up to another lever where they can join still another group of metaphysical teachings and move themselves along even further. Meanwhile there is a need, after the cataclyms, to establish some new Mundane Schools and then we will have nice, fresh assurances that the teachings that are getting promoted are official. Q: What can people do these days? Is there any officially backed by the Brotherhoods? RK: No. Q: How do the Brotherhoods expect people to advance their Egos if there is nowhere to learn? RK: It is not a matter of expectation. The Brotherhoods went through the effort of setting these things up, but mankind has a general way of doing things which has confused the issues. What usually happens is that they look for more information and they find books that sound kind of close to it so they add those books to their libraries and they end up starting to sell some of these things and people cannot be sure what it is that is supposed to be accepted and not accepted. A lot of those books that has parallel information has a great deal of speculation or out-and-out errors and most people do not have the experience to discriminate what is right and what is wrong. But, people in those programs are still learning things and their job is to sort through what is true and what is false. One of the problems when you mix truth with error is that most people do not have the means to discriminate. As I have pointed out, the best way to learn discrimination is through bad experiences and that takes a long time. How do you know if something is worthwhile unless you try it out? If it is worthwhile and it works for you then that is true for you. It is probably true for other people if they try it. But, if the thing you read and try out does not work, then obviously there is something wrong either with it or with you. Then you have to try to decide what the problem is. Are you at fault or are you trying to make something happen which cannot happen? (03-1985) Could you Comment on the Mundane Schools? RK: Each of the Mundane Schools has a special appeal to a certain type of personality. The reason why there is Seven Lesser Brotherhoods, each with many Mundane Schools is that each one has a specific appeal to a certain personality type. They do not hardly mix between one type or another. The main object of any of these Mundane Schools is to find something which kind of “rattles your cage” enough to pay attention to them or grabs your attention in some way so that you begin to learn all there is to know of all the different schools. That is kind of like a half a lifetime process. It is mainly designed to bring you each person to the same kind of a balance in their personalities. Some persons may be extremely practical and you have to present your information according to things that they can use right now and things which will work immediately. Then there are other people who are interested in learning in how to become more loving people and to not be combative or hold these angry feelings or resentful feelings, desires for revenge, etc. That is the appeal that they are looking for; something to make them more spiritual perhaps. But, ultimately, if you go far enough in the Mundane Schools, they lead you to a balance between all these different extremes so that you are living in a state of effective moderation. (05-1983)
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