Darkness. Silence. Time. The world seemed to have stopped breathing, as if all of creation were suspended between one heartbeat and the next, waiting for a verdict it did not dare to pronounce. In that motionless space I found myself, a lost wanderer among the folds of being, at the center of a perfectly symmetrical cross, its arms stretching toward the cardinal points like the fingers of an invisible colossus, ready to draw back to itself every fragment of my scattered essence.
The light that permeated that place belonged neither to day nor to night: it was a lunar glow, diluted and unstable, stretching shadows beyond what reason could endure and rendering forms fluid, uncertain, as though the world were forgetting its own outline. It was then that a doubt, heavy as an unspoken sentence, crossed my consciousness: was this perhaps the moment of judgment I had been told about?
Confusion. Tremor.
I turned my gaze toward the North, and in that instant the first proof of my abandonment manifested itself. Before me appeared a man in a long black robe, the fabric dense with ancient embroidery, his face entirely concealed by the deep shadow of his hood. When he spoke, his voice was both angelic and inexorable, and he asked me to renounce everything that had come before me, all that had been handed down to me before I could even call it mine: the roots of my ancestors, the stories whispered through generations, bones and blood, the strength and integrity of my body. Behind him stretched a long line of people, silent and still, watching me with a gaze both joyful and curious, as if they had always known me. Among them, one shone more brightly than the others, with a light that did not wound the eyes but shook the soul. Shivers ran through me. I tried to speak to him, to call out, but my lips were sealed by an invisible force, and the man in black gently yet firmly led me back to his demand.
As the wind of the North blew without sound, I saw my limbs, my flesh, my blood rise and scatter into the air like clouds of golden dust. I understood then that what remained of me was already less than a dream, less than a shadow, less even than the thought that had once given me a name. I was barefoot, and the rock beneath my feet was cold, icy; yet I felt it as part of myself, as though I too had become stone, one among that infinite line of individuals, one of them.
And when nothing remained to offer to the North, and even memory trembled like smoke in the frozen air, my spirit turned toward the East.
White inhales.
Black exhales.
Cool air.
Sharp air.
There, where the rising sun paints the sky with promises that do not ask to be kept, a man in a long green robe awaited me, also embroidered with arcane signs. In his hand he held a long sword, grasped upside down by the hilt, as if it were an offering rather than a weapon. He was the one who called me to surrender what belonged to the mind: habitual thoughts, reasoning, the faculty of speech, every thread of intellect and ordinary consciousness. With each word I lost, with each mental pattern that dissolved, my identity unraveled like liquid mist on a sunless morning. In the end, no memory of my name remained, and yet, against all expectation, I felt no fear. Silence. A deep silence, like that which follows the fall of an empire, wrapped around me like a cloak. In that emptiness, I felt ready.
Creation.
I then turned toward the South, and a warm tremor, dense with desire and possibility, coursed through space. Fire. A man in a long red robe appeared before me, and behind him stood another man, towering beyond all measure, blond, with endless hair, his stature so exaggerated it seemed unreal. He looked at me, smiled, and in that gaze was a promise left unspoken. The man in red drew my attention back to himself and led me to his demands. Here I had to let go of what still bound me to time: the future, the path I was meant to walk, the fires of passion that propelled me forward, the unwritten chapters of the book of my life. Every ambition, every desire, every spark of will was suspended in the air, floating like golden leaves in the autumn of a world now devoid of gravity and memory. I remained at the center of the cross like an empty vessel, an urn without ashes, capable only of breathing the echo of my own dissolution.
White. Black. White. Black.
With unsteady steps I finally turned toward the West. There, among ancient shadows and faceless memories, I was called by two men in long blue embroidered robes, standing beside an enormous vessel whose contents were irresistible and yet impossible to describe. They asked me to surrender my most intimate emotions, the very fabric of my feeling: traumas and joys, love and anger, and that intangible substance from which, so often without noticing, I had built and destroyed meaning, sense, and beauty. The fibers of my essence, at last freed from my will, drifted toward the primordial horizon. I remained naked, defenseless, with a tiny, trembling spark suspended in the heart of the void, so fragile that a single breath could have extinguished it.
White. Black. White. Black.
And it was then, in that suspended instant when nothingness seemed about to devour everything, like a cosmic mouth ready to close upon every form and every memory, that a most subtle wave, an almost imperceptible tremor, rose at once from above and below, and from each arm of the cross returned toward the center. The silence, absolute until that moment, cracked like ancient glass, and from that fracture a song poured forth. The five men in long, embroidered robes, heavy with symbols and signs older than writing itself, slowly advanced toward the center. Their steps did not truly touch the ground, yet they governed its rhythm, and when they began to sing, their voices did not come from their throats but seemed to arise from space itself, as though the world were suddenly remembering its own name. Then I heard a howl rise from the South, a wild, primordial call, and I turned toward that direction. But before my body could obey the intent, I was stopped: invisible hands, emerging from infinity, seized me with a firmness that allowed no resistance, holding me fast in the unmoving heart of the cross.
In that instant a flame ignited above my head. It was white, utterly white, a light that did not burn but revealed, and a soundless voice spoke a single word within me: Father. The flame then descended beneath my right hand, leaving before me a trail of white fire that traced a living line in the air: Mother. It then moved beneath my left hand, completing the sign with another luminous trail: Spirit. Finally it returned above my head, closing the figure, which remained suspended before my eyes like a perfect, burning seal.
Immediately after, a second flame ignited at the height of my left shoulder: Mother. It shifted toward the right shoulder, leaving behind a furrow of light: Father. It then descended to the center of my pelvis: Spirit. This figure too closed, and now both, superimposed, floated in the air before me, intertwined like two alphabets of fire meant to speak the unspeakable.
One by one, the men of the directions then presented themselves before me. The one who wore green took my arms and opened them in the shape of a cross, and with a steady voice told me that he taught giving. The red advanced with arms outstretched toward me and declared that through him the gates of power were opened. The blue approached gently, extended his arms and cupped his hands, telling me that his teaching was receiving. Finally the black, immobile and severe, pointed his hands toward the earth, and with a voice rigid as stone pronounced his sentence: with him, the process ended.
I am a vessel. I am life. White. Black. White. Black.
The formula resounded within me like an ancient heartbeat, as if it were not thought but primordial memory. What was that? A voice? Or the reflection of something that had always dwelled within me, nameless? I turned toward the North, where I sensed the origin of that call, but every further impulse to move was denied me: I was held fast, not by chains, but by a necessity deeper than force. Before me, the two superimposed figures continued to blaze, intact, perfect in their burning geometry, as though time itself had renounced consuming them.
White. Black. White. Black.
I inhaled deeply, and with that breath something shifted in the invisible weave of space. From the East, sudden and solemn, a powerful flow of golden light burst into the right half of the hexagram. It entered like a river that knows its own bed, and immediately flowed out toward me, passing through me without harm, then continuing beyond my shoulders, where it stretched into infinity and, in its momentum, changed color, becoming red, as though ignited by the heat of becoming.
White. Black. White. Black.
That same flow then returned from behind my shoulders with silent violence and pierced me, not like a blade but like a destiny, now transfigured into white light. It entered the left side of the hexagram, passed entirely through it, and emerged toward the West. Nor did it stop there: from the West it returned once more, infinite, without beginning or end, to disappear again into the hexagram and dissolve into the infinity opening before me, like a path no foot can ever tread, and yet one every soul knows.
Deep breath.
Darkness.
Shivers.
And it was then, in that liminal instant when nothingness seemed about to devour everything, as if existence itself were holding its breath before going out, that a subtle wave awakened. It did not come only from above and below, but from within and without, from what I had been and from what I had never known myself to be; from each arm of the cross, visible and invisible, it returned to the center, like a call creation could not ignore.
And there was light.
A spark, the final echo of my dissolved being, trembled in the void, fragile as a newly born thought, and yet invincible. It ignited again, not by its own will, but in obedience to a law older than all form. And before me it unfolded, slowly, solemnly, taking the shape of a rosebud: no roots to bind it to the earth, no stem to support it, no leaves to protect it. Only a flower suspended in the air, pure in its waiting, full of a promise that asked for no words, ready to bloom at the call of the Divine.
In that silent apparition I understood, with a wonder beyond any human capacity to name, that the mystery of the Rosy-Cross does not reside in possession, but in stripping away; not in ascent, but in total surrender. To stand at the center means renouncing every orientation, every certainty, every shadow of self. It means letting fall the privilege of direction, of will, of knowledge, until only fragile, naked light remains, capable solely of responding to the echo of Divinity.
And in that silence, more eloquent than any word ever spoken, the path was revealed.
This article was originally written in Italian. If you want to read the original: Rosa, o Rosa.