Four episodes of the Mystery Babylon series devote sustained attention to the Rosicrucian movement and the Rose Cross orders: MB19 in May 1993 and a three-part arc in MB36 through MB38 in February 1994. Across these broadcasts William Cooper argued that the Rose Cross organizations, whatever their public face as fraternal or spiritual societies, were in practice carriers of the same ancient initiatory religion he had been documenting since the series’ opening episodes. His evidence came primarily from two public-domain source texts: a 1916 convocation report and a 1917 college proceedings document, both published by the Fraternitas Rosae Crucis at Beverly Hall in Quakertown, Pennsylvania. The availability of those original texts makes this arc among the most verifiable in the series. This hub documents the episodes, the sources, the key figures, and where historical scholarship agrees or disagrees with Cooper’s interpretive framework.
As on every page of this site, the framing is documentary. These are the claims the broadcasts made. The site does not endorse them. For the full series, start with the complete episode guide.
How the Series Frames the Rose Cross
Cooper’s position on the Rosicrucians was consistent across all four episodes: the Rose Cross orders were one institutional expression of the same Mystery Religion he had traced from ancient Babylon and Egypt through Gnosticism, the Assassins, the Templars, and into Freemasonry. What distinguished the Rose Cross arc from earlier material was that Cooper read directly from the orders’ own published documents, which he argued constituted admissions of the connection. The 1916 Fundamental Laws text, he claimed, openly stated that the Illuminati was the public arm of the Rose Cross Order. The 1917 Rose Cross College proceedings showed members being ordained to the Church of Illumination, not to any mainstream Christian denomination. The 1952 Clymer text identified its author as Supreme Grand Master of a merged confederation that included not only Rosicrucian orders but the O.T.O., the Golden Dawn, and what Clymer himself called Illuminatae Americanae, which Cooper translated as the American Illuminati.
The Rose Cross arc connects laterally to the Freemasonry hub, since the 1916 convocation attendee list included high Masons and Eastern Star members alongside Rose Cross initiates, and to the mystery schools hub, since the initiation ceremonies Cooper describes in the Grove of Osiris reproduce the Osirian death-and-raising rite he argued was the original mystery school’s central drama.
The Rose Cross Arc: Episodes and Air Dates
MB19: Fundamental Laws Rose Cross (May 11, 1993)
Cooper opens by describing how he found the source book: a faded, originally red hard-cover volume on a dusty shelf at the back of a used bookstore, titled Fundamental Laws: A Report of the 68th Convocation of the Rose Cross Order, published in 1916 by the Philosophical Publishing Company of Allentown, Pennsylvania. He reads from the book at length, beginning with its cover symbols, an ouroboros encircling nested triangles with a skull and bones, wings around a globe, an anchor, and the letters T-R-Y. The introduction states that the Illuminati and its Soul Science work was born as the public-facing arm of the Rose Cross Order, which Cooper reads as a direct admission. He then covers the 68th Convocation’s proceedings, held at Beverly Hall in Quakertown in June 1916, during which the Ancient Mysteries of Egypt were performed in a Grove of Osiris illuminated by electricity, with initiates passing through three degrees and six scenes. A newspaper account, written by Grace K. Morey for the Buffalo Express on July 16, 1916, describes the convocation as the most remarkable conclave held during the last five thousand years. Cooper reads this as confirmation that Freemasonry, the Rose Cross, the Templars, and the Illuminati are all one organisation: the attendance list from the Masons and Eastern Star members in the same grove as Rose Cross initiates, he argues, settles the question. The episode closes with R. Swinburne Clymer’s 1916 passage asserting that America is not complete until Mexico is again part of the United States, which Cooper reads as the explanation for NAFTA and GATT.
MB36: Rose Cross Part 1 (February 22, 1994)
Opening a new three-part arc, Cooper begins with the Greek letter delta as a symbol of fire and the unspeakable name of God across the Scottish Rite, the Knights Templar, and the Rosicrucians. The Rosicrucian equivalent formula, Igne Natura Renovatur Integra, meaning by fire nature is perfectly renewed, is his entry into the episode’s primary source: R. Swinburne Clymer’s 1917 A Rose Cross College. Cooper reads from the proceedings of the October 1916 Rose Cross College convocation at Beverly Hall, including the ordination of two members to the Church of Illumination, the conferral of the degree Priests of Melchizadek on all delegates, and the initiation ceremonies in the Grove of Osiris on the evenings of October 11 and 17. He also reads the organization’s condemnation of rival groups using the Rosicrucian name without authority, including an admission that six members of what the text calls Black Brotherhoods had enrolled specifically to extract secrets. Cooper departs from direct reading to argue that the doctrines of Christian Identity and British Israelism originated from within this mystery tradition, not from genuine Christianity, and that both movements serve a hidden agenda to divide the population and advance a one-world government.
MB37: Rose Cross Part 2 (February 22, 1994)
The second hour of the same night’s double broadcast. Cooper reads Clymer’s account of the Arthurian legend of Merlin, interpreting the Holy Grail as representing the soul and the quest for the Grail as the mystery religion’s allegorical account of initiation. He reads a passage from the Clymer text asking whether Masonry can complete the Great Work, treats it as a frank admission that Masonry as it publicly exists is a shell from which the deeper philosophy has been separated, and reads the declaration that the Fire Philosophy is the basis of all religious mysteries and all secret occult brotherhoods. The episode then introduces a second source, Clymer’s 1952 revised edition of The Teachings of the Masters, the Wisdom of the Ages, whose title page identifies Clymer as Supreme Grand Master of the International Confederation of Initiates and of a merged list of fraternities that includes the Rosicrucian Order, the Hermetic Brotherhood, the Order of the Magi, the Sons of Isis and Osiris, and Illuminatae Americanae, the American Illuminati. Cooper reads a 1916 crisis prophecy from the text predicting that America would be drawn into a war and that an effort would be made to destroy Christianity secretly. The episode closes with extended Clymer material on the Great Seal of the United States, which Clymer’s text presents as an esoteric document encoding the destiny of the American nation.
MB38: Rose Cross Part 3 (February 24, 1994)
The final Rose Cross episode aired two nights after the double broadcast. Cooper continues reading from the Clymer material and returns to his sustained argument against Christian Identity and British Israelism, framing those movements as tools of the mystery tradition designed to destroy the United States through racial division. He reads directly from the 68th Convocation record’s passage separating the name Israel into three syllables, IS-RA-EL, arguing these stand for Isis, Ra-as-Osiris, and El-meaning-God, a fusion of Egyptian divine names encoded in the identity movement’s scriptures. The episode connects the mystery tradition’s symbols, particularly the two obelisks that Clymer’s text states belonged to the ancient Temple of On in Egypt, to monuments in London and New York, and extends the series’ argument that American civic architecture and symbolism encode the Mystery Religion’s doctrines.
Key Figures the Series Discusses
R. Swinburne Clymer (1878-1966)
Clymer is the central figure of the Rose Cross arc. He served as the head of the Fraternitas Rosae Crucis at Beverly Hall in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, for several decades and was one of the most prolific Rosicrucian writers in twentieth-century America. Cooper uses his published works as primary evidence because Clymer himself, on the title pages and in the introductions of his own books, claimed organizational descent from a string of merged occult fraternities and described their initiation ceremonies in detail. Three Clymer texts are involved across the arc: the 1916 Fundamental Laws, the 1917 A Rose Cross College, and the 1952 Teachings of the Masters. The first two are public domain.
Grace K. Morey
Secretary of the Rose Cross Sacred College, whose newspaper account of the 68th Convocation in the Buffalo Express of July 16, 1916, is quoted in the Fundamental Laws document. Cooper reads her description of the Grove of Osiris ceremonies and her characterization of the event as the most remarkable conclave in five thousand years as a window into what the organization believed about itself.
Key Concepts
The Rosicrucian manifestos and the date of 1516
The public history of the Rosicrucian movement begins with three printed pamphlets: the Fama Fraternitatis (1614), the Confessio Fraternitatis (1615), and the Chymische Hochzeit (Chemical Wedding, 1616). These are public domain texts. Cooper does not read from the original manifestos in this arc; his sources are Clymer’s early twentieth-century American organization, which claimed a founding date of 1516 that mainstream historians of Rosicrucianism do not accept. The actual manifestos predated Clymer’s order by about three centuries and emerged in German Protestant intellectual circles, not in the American fraternal milieu Clymer inhabited. The original manifestos are available at archive.org.
The Church of Illumination
The religious body associated with Clymer’s Fraternitas Rosae Crucis. The 1917 proceedings Cooper reads describe members being ordained to the ministry of the Church of Illumination with a formal confession of faith and allegiance to the Church, not to any mainstream Christian denomination. Cooper presents this as evidence that the organization was a non-Christian religious body operating under a Christian cover. The Church of Illumination was a real legal incorporation in Pennsylvania.
The Fire Philosophy
A term appearing in Clymer’s 1952 text and read at length in MB37. Cooper treats the formula, that the aim of all true initiation regardless of fraternity name is knowledge of a Secret Fire that grants immortality, as confirmation that all secret orders share a common theology. He connects this formulation to the astro-theology argument he developed in the mystery schools episodes: the original religion was worship of the sun as fire, and every subsequent initiatory tradition is a variation on that original flame.
British Israelism and the series’ anti-racism argument
A thread running through MB36, MB37, and MB38 is Cooper’s sustained rejection of white nationalist ideology. He argued that the doctrine of Anglo-Aryan or Anglo-Israelite racial supremacy was not a genuine Christian tradition but a manipulation generated from within the mystery tradition to keep populations divided. This argument is one of the series’ more emphatic moral positions. Cooper explicitly told listeners caught up in Christian Identity or British Israelism that they had been deceived and were serving the New World Order agenda rather than opposing it.
Primary Sources Cooper Read From in This Arc
- Fundamental Laws: A Report of the 68th Convocation of the Rose Cross Order (1916), Philosophical Publishing Company, Allentown, Pennsylvania. Public domain. Scanned edition on archive.org. The primary text for MB19.
- R. Swinburne Clymer, ed., A Rose Cross College: A Resume of the Teachings and Proceedings (1917), Beverly Hall, Quakertown, Pennsylvania. Public domain. Search archive.org for scans. The primary text for MB36 and MB37.
- R. Swinburne Clymer, The Teachings of the Masters, the Wisdom of the Ages (revised edition, 1952). Not public domain; read at length in MB37 and MB38. Available in libraries. Because it is under copyright it is treated here as a quoted source only.
- The Fama Fraternitatis (1614) and Confessio Fraternitatis (1615). Public domain. These original Rosicrucian manifestos, which Cooper does not read directly, are the historical foundation of the movement. Search archive.org.
The full cross-reference of every source to every episode is in the sources and bibliography hub.
The Historians’ View
R. Swinburne Clymer was a real and historically significant figure in American occultism; scholars of Western esotericism document him as one of the most prolific Rosicrucian writers of the early twentieth century. His organization, the Fraternitas Rosae Crucis at Beverly Hall, was a genuine institution, and the 1916 and 1917 publications Cooper reads are authentic documents verifiable at archive.org. The attendance at the 1916 convocation of Freemasons alongside Rose Cross members reflects the widespread overlapping membership of fraternal organizations in the period, which historians note was common and does not by itself demonstrate a unified command structure.
Clymer’s claim that his order traced back to 1516 is not accepted by historians of Rosicrucianism, who place the movement’s public emergence in the German pamphlets of 1614 to 1616. The identification of the Illuminati as the Rose Cross Order’s public arm, which Cooper reads from the Fundamental Laws text, is Clymer’s own organizational claim, not a statement about Adam Weishaupt’s 1776 Bavarian Illuminati. Mainstream historians treat the two organizations as separate, the Bavarian Illuminati being a short-lived rationalist secret society dissolved in 1785 and the Illuminatae Americanae being Clymer’s own coinage for his American Rosicrucian branch.
The identification of Novus Ordo Seclorum on the Great Seal as meaning a New World Order, which Clymer asserts and Cooper accepts, is a mistranslation. The phrase, drawn from Virgil’s Eclogues, means a new order of the ages, referring to a new era of history, not to a world government. Franklin was a Freemason; Adams was not; Jefferson had no recorded lodge membership. The committee’s design process for the seal is documented in congressional records and does not reflect esoteric programming.
Where the Rose Cross Arc Connects to the Rest of the Series
The arc sits between the Freemasonry episodes and the Third Reich arc in the series’ chronological broadcast order. In the series’ claimed lineage, the Rosicrucians run as a parallel stream alongside Freemasonry, both tracing to the Templars, with both eventually merging in the twentieth century institutions Cooper documents. The Freemasonry hub covers the Masonic side of the convergence. The mystery schools hub covers the ancient origin Cooper traces through Osirian initiation. The Luciferian Doctrine hub picks up the Fire Philosophy thread, which connects Clymer’s writings to the Lucifer-as-light-bearer argument Cooper developed in MB18. The lineage map diagrams the full claimed descent, and the series timeline dates every historical event Cooper cites across all four episodes.
Listen to the Rose Cross Episodes
All surviving audio is preserved at the Internet Archive: Mystery Babylon audio collection on archive.org. This site embeds and links the archive.org copies and never hosts or distributes the recordings. For Cooper’s biography and the context of the Hour of the Time program, see Who Was William Cooper.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which Mystery Babylon episodes are about the Rosicrucians?
Four episodes form the Rose Cross arc: MB19: Fundamental Laws Rose Cross (May 11, 1993), MB36: Rose Cross Part 1 (February 22, 1994), MB37: Rose Cross Part 2 (February 22, 1994, second hour), and MB38: Rose Cross Part 3 (February 24, 1994).
What books did Bill Cooper read from in the Rosicrucians episodes?
The primary sources are three publications by R. Swinburne Clymer: Fundamental Laws: A Report of the 68th Convocation of the Rose Cross Order (1916), A Rose Cross College (1917), and The Teachings of the Masters, the Wisdom of the Ages (revised edition, 1952). The first two are public domain and available at archive.org; the 1952 edition is under copyright and treated here as a quoted source only.
Who was R. Swinburne Clymer?
R. Swinburne Clymer (1878-1966) was an American physician and prolific occult writer who led the Fraternitas Rosae Crucis from Beverly Hall in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, for several decades. He claimed organizational descent going back to 1516 and described himself on his later title pages as Supreme Grand Master of an international confederation of occult orders. Scholars of Western esotericism document him as a significant figure in early twentieth-century American occultism, though his lineage claims are not accepted by historians of Rosicrucianism.
What were the original Rosicrucian manifestos?
The historical Rosicrucian movement began with three German pamphlets: the Fama Fraternitatis (1614), the Confessio Fraternitatis (1615), and the Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz (1616). These public domain texts, available at archive.org, describe a fictional brotherhood of learned physicians whose secret knowledge was to be revealed to Europe. Historians debate whether the original texts described a real organization or a literary fiction that later inspired real organizations. Cooper does not read the original manifestos in the series; his Rose Cross sources are all Clymer’s early twentieth-century American materials.
What did Cooper claim about the Illuminati and the Rose Cross?
Cooper read a passage from the 1916 Fundamental Laws text in which the document states that the Illuminati and its Soul Science work may be called the child of the Rose Cross Order. He interpreted this as a direct written admission that the two organizations were one, and extended the claim to Freemasonry, the Templars, and the Skull and Bones, arguing that all of these were branches of a single pyramid-shaped organization. The full argument appears in episode 19.
