In February 1968, Frater Albertus gave a lecture, "Ancient Orders" (reprint ESSENTIA, Autumn 1983) at Tauhara Hall, an affiliation of the Golden Dawn in New Zealand, which he closed with the following words (emphasis ours):

"Men like Franz Hartman, Surya, Bernus, Chilar and the like known in the occult world for their various contributions are not among us anymore. Others have not taken their places as was commonly expected by many...

It is indeed a sad picture to conceive the future when those to take over are not qualified enough to be at least the equal of those who relinquish such positions of trust. Those following should become even superior to their predecessors by building upon the knowledge, which is theirs by right of succession.

If such leaders to come will have to probe again into rituals and ceremonies, the time has just not come to make known again what the entire world is waiting for, namely to have the laws revealed whereby men may become masters over their destiny. Unfortunately this search still goes on among so-called brotherhoods and fraternities who lack the teachers of this wisdom to prove the laws involved by actually demonstrating their validity on both planes of manifestation according to the law of polarity.

As long as any order cannot produce a teacher or teachers who can demonstrate this ancient wisdom they are not in valid association with the ancient orders, manuscripts and documents notwithstanding."

This heading is the title of the original German edition (GEHEIMNISSE DER ROSENKREUZER) of the report A ROSICRUCIAN NOTEBOOK (Samuel Weiser 1992) by Willy Schroedter. It shows the very advanced know-how of universal laws which sundry hermetic societies had possessed - most impressive the chapter "Transmutation" with the account on Benjamin and Abraham Jesse which also is abridged in Raphael Patai's THE JEWISH ALCHEMISTS (please see chapter I in the main section).

It should be noted that all of these hermetic societies were Rosicrucian orders although they would never use this name. The first mark of a Rosicrucian order is never to refer to themselves as Rosicrucian. The term "Rosicrucian" does not derive from the rose but is the name of the authoritative source of all knowledge and wisdom (as we have already seen in "The Mystery of the Cathedrals" in Appendix B) in a transliteration from the Hebrew language.

Willy Schroedter's book does set a standard by which contemporary occult or esoteric organizations must be measured, and it exposes their ignorance of even the most fundamental hermetic laws. But instead they have created a fog of mysticism which wallows up with fancy names, and besides "Rosicrucians" we can find the "Ancient and Hermetic Order Rosae Crucis", the "Brotherhood of Light, the "Brotherhood of Wisdom", the "Church of Light", the "Church of Science", and the "Keepers of the Arcanum" and "Agartha's School of Enlightenment". Further there's the "Kabbalah Association", the "Merlinist Order", the "Gnostic Order of the Ascended Masters" and the "Fraternity of the Hidden Knowledge", the "Order of the Golden Sunset", the "Lectures on Miracles", the "School for Hermetic Studies", and the "Fellowship of St. Germain", the "Collegium Rosicrucianum", and last but not least, there's the - much fancied about- "Great White Brotherhood"!