Freemasonary and Catholicism by Max Heindel

Max Heindel was a Christian occultist, astrologer, and mystic who was born Carl Louis von Grasshoff in Aarhus, Denmark on July 23, 1865. On January 6, 1919, he died in Oceanside, California, USA. Heindel left home at the age of sixteen to study engineering in Glasgow, Scotland's shipyards. As Chief Engineer, he traveled widely and was assigned to a huge Cunard Line passenger liner that sailed between America and Europe. He worked as a consultant engineer in New York City from 1895 until 1901.

Around this time, he married, but his marriage was ended by his wife's death in 1905. This union produced a boy and two daughters. After hearing C.W. Tolkien's theosophical lectures, he decided to pursue a career as a theosophist In 1904 and 1905, he became vice-president of the Theosophical Society of Los Angeles, which he founded.

He began studying astrology, which provided him with the key to understanding man's fundamental essence. Around this period, he met Augusta Foss, his future wife. In 1905, overwork and starvation caused him significant cardiac problems, and he was on the verge of death for months. During his rehabilitation, he became more aware of humanity's needs.

Throughout his sickness, he spent a lot of time out of his body, consciously working and searching for the truth in the invisible planes. From 1906 and 1907, he embarked on a lecture tour to disseminate his occult knowledge. Heindel claims to have been visited by a Spiritual entity who identified himself as an Elder Brother of the Rosicrucian Order, an inner-worlds organization founded in 1313 that has no direct relation to physical groups of the same name. Later, he discovered that during a previous visit by the Elder Brother, he had been subjected to a test to verify his eligibility to be a messenger of the Western Wisdom Teachings, and that only then was he given orders on how to access the etheric Temple of the Rose Cross, where he was in direct touch with and under the personal instructions of the Rose Cross Elder Brothers.