A Teacher
Johann Valentin Andreae
Lutheran theologian who penned the founding Rosicrucian allegory.
The transmission
Johann Valentin Andreae was a German Lutheran theologian and writer from Württemberg. He is generally regarded as the author of the Rosicrucian text ‘Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosencreutz’, published in Strasbourg in 1616 and based on a manuscript he wrote around 1607.
In later life he distanced himself from the work, calling it a youthful jest, and pursued church reform and Christian utopian projects.
What they gave
His ‘Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz’ became the third and most literary of the founding Rosicrucian manifestos, shaping the order’s symbolic and alchemical imagery. He also wrote ‘Christianopolis’, an influential Christian utopian vision.
The line they stand in
Though never a member of any literal order, he is the named or reputed author behind the early-17th-century Rosicrucian manifestos that inspired later Rosicrucian and Hermetic societies.