Wisdom has built her house; she has carved out her seven pillars.
- Bible Hub Proverbs 9:1 - The Way of Wisdom
“built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, with Christ himself as the chief cornerstone.” - Ephesians 2:20
“you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood” - 1 Peter 2:5
A stone structure of 7 sides that is the dwelling place of wisdom. The Temple of Wisdom(Sophia)
Containing 7 cabinets and 7 books of wisdom Inside is the never-decaying body of CRC On his coffin is a circular altar
seven sides, seven books, seven symbolic trials
• Relation to the Grail Castle: Both are hidden, both require a quest, and both represent the perfected soul as a vessel of divine mysteries. The vault is the “inner Grail Castle,” accessible through initiation rather than arms.
Seven-sided chamber (heptagonal)
• Each wall representing one of the seven classical planets
• Seven Books, one in each cabinet
• Ever-burning lamp above the sarcophagus
• The body of CRC lies uncorrupted on a circular altar at the center
• Inscribed motto: “Jesus mihi omnia” (Jesus is everything to me)
tomb-womb, where the old self dies and the adept is reborn
The light without source symbolizes the inner illumination of gnosis.
• Christian Rosenkreutz is not dead—he is occulted, waiting to guide initiates who find the Vault.
the Pastos (magical tomb) of Christian Rosenkreutz
- the Vault of the Adepti, CRC lies beneath the Temple of the Holy Spirit.
- His tomb contains seven walls, seven books, seven symbolic trials—a Rosicrucian initiatory structure.
- He is not dead, but asleep in stasis, awaiting those worthy to awaken the Rose Cross mysteries.
- The ever-burning lamp above him = the inner light, the flame of Christ, the esoteric sun.
From Womb to Tomb
The 7 pillars - the 7 liberal arts
The seven sages of Greece named by Plato
Dante’s Inferno - Castle - 7 sided castle
The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, who await the coming of the age of Light
The Tomb of CRC can be seen as the sleeping vault of King Arthur
the Sleeping One in the Hidden Tomb, awaiting the destined moment of awakening
death-like sleep before resurrection, of purity sealed in glass, stone, or vault, untouched by time, awaiting the kiss, trumpet, sword, or light that shall rouse the soul.
Sleeping Snow white (Sophia) surrounded by 7 dwarves - who represent 7 vices/virtues - Clumsy, Dopey, Sleepy, … • The seven dwarves = seven virtues, vices, planets, metals, or stages of initiation who guard her. Snow White is the fallen Sophia - she fell asleep after eating the apple - the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil
Snow White = purity, the virgin feminine, waiting for her divine Bridegroom to kiss her awake
She sleeps inside a glass coffin. purity preserved, yet inert—untouched by corruption but also by life. The prince’s kiss = spirit’s return, or the divine bridegroom’s love that resurrects the soul.
The Grimm Brothers based their story on multiple older germanic myths and stories, one of them about Maria Sophia
In the Italian version of the legend she is protected by 7 Holy Knights, instead of dwarves.
The Castle of the Seven Shields
- The Castle appears in later Arthurian romances, especially in Perlesvaus (The High History of the Holy Grail), a deeply mystical and esoteric version of the Grail story.
- It is not one of the canonical locations like Camelot or Corbenic but serves as an allegorical and initiatory fortress—a kind of spiritual trial ground for Grail Knights.
- Seven Shields hang within the castle—each with a unique emblem and association.
- These shields are often connected to seven knights who were formerly defenders of the castle but were slain or driven off. Each shield represents a virtue or challenge.
- The castle is typically occupied by evil knights or forces. A Grail knight (sometimes Perceval or Lancelot) must reclaim it.
- The quest involves choosing and taking up a shield—not merely a physical act, but a symbol of adopting a spiritual quality or virtue.
- The knight must defeat seven guardians or conquer the perils associated with each shield.
- The shields may be seen as facets of the soul’s armor, or the higher qualities the initiate must earn to ascend toward Grail consciousness.
- The castle itself is like an inner fortress of the soul—the egoic or unconscious self that must be purified and reclaimed.
“However the Grimm brothers were not alone in their creation of the legend. They had drawn upon known legends of the time, thankfully preserving them for a future generation. Many such legends were in circulation and one of the more ancient versions was recorded in the 4th century by Jacob of Saron. This time all seven figures of the legend fall asleep as a collective group. There is no coffin but instead a cave. The famous legend is titled 'the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus' and is a Christian tradition recounting a group of early faithfuls who hid themselves within a cave at about 150 AD, in order to escape persecution. Accordingly they fell into a miraculous sleep and awoke some 200 years later, only to discover that the whole Empire had become Christian. (This story is also mentioned in the famous Suras of the Koran.) Another important point for later is how Goethe in Germany writes that the seven sleepers were guided to their cave by a shepherd, who appears to be none other than Hermes-Mercury and leaves his shepherd watchdog to stand guard over them during their timeless slumber.” - https://pansophers.com/secret-origins-of-the-rosicrucian-tomb-in-the-king-arthur-tradition/
Maria Sophia von Erthal, born June 25, 1725, in Lohr am Main, Bavaria, is considered a possible inspiration for Snow White. Daughter of Prince Philipp Christoph von Erthal, she lived in a castle, now a museum. After her mother’s death in 1738, her father remarried Claudia Elisabeth von Reichenstein in 1743, who reportedly favored her own children, earning a “wicked stepmother” reputation. Lohr was known for its high-quality mirrors, one of which, a “talking mirror” from 1720, was in the castle, possibly inspiring the fairy tale’s magic mirror. The nearby Bieber mining town, set among seven mountains, employed short-statured miners who wore bright hoods, potentially inspiring the seven dwarfs. The region’s glassworks may connect to the glass coffin, and deadly nightshade, abundant in Lohr, could link to the poisoned apple. Maria Sophia fled her stepmother’s hostility, lived briefly in the woods, and died in 1796 at 71 in a convent, blind and unmarried.
Comparing the Two Vaults of European Tradition
In comparing the Tomb of Christian Rosencreuz and the Vault of King Arthur we find similarities:
Tomb of CRC
- Located beneath the College of the Holy Spirit
- The tomb is interior to the cloister
- Discovered as predicted by a prophecy
- Vaulted tomb with symbolic walls
- An ever burning lamp lights the center above
- Treasure: books of knowledge
Vault of King Arthur
- Located beneath the Castle of Sewingshields
- The vault is interior to a subterranean cavern
- A magical thread guided the shepherd in
- Vaulted hall with carved walls
- An ever burning fire without fuel at the center
- Treasure: spell dissolving horn, sword, garter
King Arthur & The 7 Shields
in Sewingshields
- He sleeps in a vaulted hall beneath a ruined castle, surrounded by knights, hounds, and talismans.
- The ever-burning fire echoes the eternal light of the soul or the alchemical fire of transmutation.
- The bugle, sword, and garter represent call (sound/air/spirit), action (will/fire), and bond (flesh/earth).
“The tale is connected with a place named ‘Sewingshields’ in Northumberland, in north east England, where this fortress, now in utter ruin, is just a short distance from the Roman Wall and is just nearby the Northumberland Lakes. In Hodgson’s version of the story seven of Arthurs Knights of the Round Table slumber and wait with him for the day of his awakening.” - https://pansophers.com/secret-origins-of-the-rosicrucian-tomb-in-the-king-arthur-tradition/
Immemorial tradition has asserted that King Arthur, his Queen Guenever, his court of lords and ladies, and his hounds were enchanted in some cave of the crags, or in a hall below the castle of Sewingshields, and would continue entranced there till someone should first blow a bugle-horn that lay on a table near the entrance of the hall, and then with “the sword of the stone” cut a garter also placed there beside it. But none had ever heard where the entrance to this enchanted hall was, till the farmer of Sewingshields, about fifty years since, was sitting knitting on the ruins of the castle, and his clew fell, and ran downwards through a rush of briars and nettles, as he supposed, into a deep subterranean passage. Full in the faith that the entrance into King Arthur’s hall was now discovered, he cleared the briary portal of its weeds and rubbish, and entering the vaulted passage, followed, in his darkling way, the thread of his clew. The floor was infested with toads and lizards; and the dark wings of bats, disturbed by his unhallowed intrusion, flitted fearfully around him. At length his sinking courage was strengthened by a dim, distant light, which as he advanced, grew gradually brighter, till all at once he entered a vast and vaulted hall, in the centre of which a fire without fuel, from a broad crevice in the floor, blazed with a high and lambent flame, that showed all the carved walls and fretted roof, and the monarch and his queen and court reposing around in a theatre of thrones and costly couches. On the floor, beyond the fire, lay the faithful and deep-toned pack of thirty couple of hounds; and on a table before it, the spell-dissolving horn, sword, and garter. The shepherd reverently but firmly grasped the sword, and as he drew it leisurely from its rusty scabbard, the eyes of the leisurely from its rusty scabbard, the eyes of the monarch and his courtiers began to open, and they rose till they sat upright. He cut the garter; and as the sword was being slowly sheathed, the spell assumed its ancient power, and they all gradually sunk to rest; but not before the monarch had lifted up his eyes and ands, and exclaimed:— O woe betide the evil day, On which this witless wight was born, Who drew the sword,— the garter cut, But never blew the bugle-horn. Terror brought on loss of memory, and the shepherd was unable to give any correct account of his adventure, or to find again the entrance to the enchanted hall.”
Sir Walter Scott’s version of the Sewingshields legend
A shepherd one day, in quest of a strayed sheep, on the crags, suddenly had his attention aroused, by the scene around him assuming an appearance he had never before witnessed. There seemed to be about it a more than wonted vividness, and such a deep solemnity hung over its aspect, that its
features became as it were palpably impressed upon his mind. While he was musing on this unexpected occurrence, his steps were arrested by a ball of thread. This he laid hold of, and pursuing the path it pointed out, found it led into a cavern, in the recesses of which, as the guiding line used by miners in their explorations of devious passages, it appeared to lose itself. As he approached, he felt perforce constrained to follow the strange conductor, “that had so marvellously come into his hands. After passing through a long and dreary vestibule, he was ushered into an apartment in the interior. An immense fire blazed on the hearth, and cast its broad flashes with a wild— unearthly glare, to the remotest corner of the chamber. Over it was placed a huge caldron, as if preparations were being made for a feast on an extensive scale. Two hounds lay couchant on either side of the fire-place, in the stillness of unbroken slumber. The only remarkable piece of furniture in the apartment was a table, covered with green cloth. At the head of the table, a being considerably advanced in years, of a dignified mien, and clad in the habiliments of war, sat, as it were fast asleep, in an arm-chair. At the other end of the table lay a horn and a sword. Notwithstanding these signs of life, throughout the chamber there prevailed a dread silence, the very feeling of which made the shepherd reflect that he had advanced beyond the limits of human experience, and that he was now in the presence of objects that belonged more to death than to life! The very idea made his flesh creep. He however had the fortitude left, to advance to the table and lift the horn. The hounds pricked up their ears most fearfully, and the grisly veteran “started up on his elbow,” and raising his half unwilling eyes, told the staggered hind, that if he would blow the horn and draw the sword, he would confer upon him the honors of knighthood, to last through time. But such unheard of dignities from a source so ghastly, either met with no appreciation from the awe-stricken swain, or the terror of finding himself alone in the company it might be of malignant phantoms, who were only tempting him to his ruin, became too urgent to be resisted, and therefore proposing to divide the peril with a comrade, he groped his darkling way, as best his quaking limbs could support him, back to the “blessed” daylight. On his return with a reinforcement of strength and courage, all traces of the former scene had disappeared; the crags presented their usual cheerful and quiet aspect; and every vestige of the opening of a cavern was obliterated. Thus failed another of the repeated opportunities, for releasing the spell-bound king of Britain from the “charmed sleep of ages.” Within his rocky chamber, he still sleeps on, as tradition tells, till the appointed hour, or if invited by his enchantress to participate in the illusions of the fairy festival, it has charms for him no longer. “Wasted with care,” he sits beside her— the banquet untasted—the pageantry unmarked, by constraint. Her guest, and from his native land withheld by sad necessity."
Scholars have commented the myth may have arisen to account for the name of the place as ‘Sewingshields’ is old English for ‘Seven Shields’
“In light of these discoveries and histories, we can now see that the Rosicrucian tomb and manifestos are none other than the fulfillment of both a German prophecy as well as an Italian call for cultural reformation. These combined together form the basis of the Rosicrucian legend and breathe life into the seven sided tomb we have explored, seeing that we as modern Rosicrucians, if we are to call ourselves by that name, are intended to become the living activity of an idea, an idea of enlightenment and hope for the future, bringing change, even radical change, when civilization needs us most. As this paper suggests, CRC and his seven brothers are the incarnations or representatives of the Seven Sages of Greece and Apollo himself at the center, answering the great call for change in our world, thus setting an example for us to represent and embody the same ideas and the myths in flesh, demanding of us that we, as living contemporary Rosicrucians, must enliven and enable this great philosophy of Gold, becoming the pillars of Wisdom’s Temple and becoming, like knights, champions of a better world. As an initiate of the German system and finally looking back and pondering upon the way the tomb of Christian Rosencreuz mirrors all these qualities, including the seven sages, ancient fairy tales, and Apollo himself, all within the knightly romantic realm of King Arthur and his tomb, as well as the other ancient cave slumbering kings of Germany, is why for me the Tomb of CRC is not a myth, but rather a place to close my eyes and meet the ghost of the past, of ancient kings, philosophers and gods who wished to inspire us. And sometimes, just sometimes, if we listen carefully, we can hear them.” - Samuel Robinson - https://pansophers.com/secret-origins-of-the-rosicrucian-tomb-in-the-king-arthur-tradition/
