the two Orders admits of no denial. Thus Yarker writes: "The symbolic tracing of the Rosicrucians was a Square Temple approached by seven steps ... here also we find the two pillars of Hermes, the five-pointed star, sun and moon, compasses, square and triangle." Yarker further observes that "even Wren was more or less a student of Hermeticism, and if we had a full list of Freemasons and Rosicrucians we should probably be surprised at the numbers who belonged to both systems."
Professor Bühle emphatically states that "Freemasonry is neither more nor less than Rosicrucianism as modified by those who transplanted it into England." Chambers, who published his famous Cyclopædia in 1728, observes: "Some who are no friends to Freemasonry, make the present flourishing society of Freemasons a branch of Rosicrucians, or rather the Rosicrucians themselves under a new name or relation, viz. as retainers to building. And it is certain there are some Freemasons who have all the characters of Rosicrucians."
The connexion between Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism is, however, a question hardly less controversial than that of the connexion between Freemasonry and Templarism.
Dr. Mackey violently disputes the theory. "The Rosicrucians," he writes, "as this brief history indicates, had no connexion whatever with the masonic fraternity. Notwithstanding this fact, Barruel, the most malignant of our revilers, with a characteristic spirit of misrepresentation, attempted to identify the two institutions." But the aforesaid "brief history" indicates nothing of the kind, and the reference to Barruel as a malignant reviler for suggesting a connexion, which, as we have