Max Heindel

The Rosicrucian Mysteries (Dodo Press) Max Heindel

Max Heindel (1865-1919), born Carl Louis von Grasshoff in Denmark, was a Christian occultist, astrologer, and mystic. In 1903, he moved to California and after attending lectures by the theosophist C. W. Leadbeater, he joined the Theosophical Society of Los Angeles, of which he became vice-president in 1904. He also became a vegetarian, and began the study of astrology, which gave him the key to unlocking the mysteries of man's inner nature. In 1907, during a successful period of lectures in Minnesota, he travelled to Berlin. It was then that he reported to have been visited by a spiritual being. The highly evolved entity that visited Heindel eventually identified himself as an Elder Brother of the Rosicrucian Order. Heindel returned to America in the summer of 1908 where he at once started to formulate the Rosicrucian teachings, the Western Wisdom Teachings, which he had received from the Elder Brothers, which he published as a book entitled The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception in 1909.