According to some, the name is derived from their supposed founder, _Christian Rosencreutz_, who died in 1484. And they account for the fact of the Rosicrucians not being heard of till 1604, by saying that Rosencreutz bound his disciples by an oath not to promulgate his doctrines for 120 years after his death. The mystical derivation of the name is thus given in the _Encyc. Brit._:-- "The denomination evidently appears to be derived from the science of chemistry. It is not compounded, as many imagine, of the two words _rosa_ and _crux_, which signify _rose_ and _cross_, but of the latter of these two words and the Latin _ros_, which signifies _dew_. Of all natural bodies _dew_ was deemed the most powerful dissolvent of gold; and the _cross_ in the chemical language is equivalent to _light_, because the figure of the _cross_ exhibits at the same time the three letters of which the word _lux_, light, is compounded. Now _lux_ is called by this sect the seed or menstruum of the red dragon, or, in other words, gross and corporeal _light_, which, when properly digested and modified, produces _gold_. Hence it follows, if this etymology be admitted, that a Rosicrucian philosopher is one who, by the intervention and assistance of the _dew_, seeks for light; or, in other words, the philosopher's stone. "The true meaning and energy of this denomination did not escape the penetration and sagacity of Gassendi, as appears by his _Examen Philos. Fludd_, tom. iii. s. 15. p. 261.; and it was more fully explained by Renaudot in his _Conférences Publiques_, tom. iv. p. 87." The encyclopædist remarks that at first the title commanded some respect, as it seemed to be borrowed from _the arms of Luther, which were a cross placed upon a rose_. The leading doctrines of the Rosicrucians were borrowed from the Eastern philosophers[4]; the Christian Platonists, schoolmen, and mystics: mixed up with others derived from writers on natural history, magic, astrology, and especially alchemy. All these blended together, and served up in a professional jargon of studied obscurity, formed the doctrinal system of these strange philosophers. In this system _the doctrine of elemental spirits_, and the means of communion and alliance with them, and _the doctrine of signatures_, are the most prominent points. Let me refer MR. TAYLOR to Michael Meyer's _Themis Aurea, hoc est de legibus Fraternitatis Roseæ Crucis_, Col. 1615; the works of Jacob Behmen, Robt. Fludd, John Heydon, Peter Mormius, Eugene Philalethes; the works of the Rosicrucian Society, containing seventy-one treatises in different languages; the Catalogue of Hermetic books by the Abbé Lenglet du Fresnoi, Paris, 1762; Manget's _Biblioth. Chem. Curios._, Col. 1702, 2 vols. folio; and the _Theatrum Chemicum_, Argent. 1662, 6 vols. 8vo.