Thread by @DavidCranmerUn1

Invisible College - Wikipedia

Invisible College is the term used for a small community of interacting scholars who often met face-to-face, exchanged ideas and encouraged each other. One group that has been described as a precursor group to the Royal en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible…

Society of London consisted of a number of natural philosophers around Robert Boyle.

Emblematic image of a Rosicrucian College; illustration from Speculum sophicum Rhodo-stauroticum, a 1618 work by Theophilus Schweighardt. Frances Yates identifies this as the "Invisible College

of the Rosy Cross".

The concept of "invisible college" is mentioned in German Rosicrucian pamphlets in the early 17th century. Ben Jonson in England referenced the idea, related in meaning to Francis Bacon's House of Solomon, in a masque The Fortunate Isles and Their Union from

1624/5. The term accrued currency for the exchanges of correspondence within the Republic of Letters.

The Rosicrucian manifestos heralded a "universal reformation of mankind", through a science allegedly kept secret for decades until the intellectual climate might receive it.

Controversies arose on whether they were a hoax, whether the "Order of the Rosy Cross" existed as described in the manifestos, and whether the whole thing was a metaphor disguising a movement that really existed, but in a different form. In 1616, Johann Valentin Andreae famously

designated it as a "ludibrium".

In later centuries, many esoteric societies have claimed to derive from the original Rosicrucians. The largest and most influential of these societies has been the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which consisted of several well known members of

society, including the British occultist Aleister Crowley.

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (Latin: Ordo Hermeticus Aurorae Aureae; or, more commonly, the Golden Dawn (Aurora Aurea)) was a secret society devoted to the study and practice of the occult, metaphysics, and

paranormal activities during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The three founders, William Robert Woodman, William Wynn Westcott and Samuel Liddell Mathers.

Woodman was born in England in 1828. He studied medicine and was licensed in 1851 and volunteered as a surgeon

during Napoleon III's coup d'etat.

William Wynn Westcott (17 December 1848 – 30 July 1925) was a coroner, ceremonial magician, theosophist and Freemason born in Leamington, Warwickshire, England.

Samuel Liddell (or Liddel) MacGregor Mathers (8 or 11 January 1854 – 5 or 20

November 1918), born Samuel Liddell Mathers, was a British occultist.

In addition to many supporters, he had many enemies and critics. One of his most notable enemies was one-time friend and pupil Aleister Crowley, who portrayed Mathers as a villain named SRMD in his 1917 novel

Moonchild.

Born to a wealthy family in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, Crowley rejected his parents' fundamentalist Christian Plymouth Brethren faith to pursue an interest in Western esotericism. He was educated at Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, where he

focused his attentions on mountaineering and poetry, resulting in several publications. Some biographers allege that here he was recruited into a British intelligence agency, further suggesting that he remained a spy throughout his life.

In 1880, in Munich, Theodor Ruess

participated in an attempt to revive Adam Weishaupt's Bavarian Order of Illuminati. While in England, he became friends with William Wynn Westcott, the Supreme Magus of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia and one of the founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

Adam Weishaupt was born on 6 February 1748 in Ingolstadt in the Electorate of Bavaria. Weishaupt's father Johann Georg Weishaupt.

He adopted the name of "Brother Spartacus" within the order.

He received the assistance of Duke Ernest II of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg (1745–1804), and

lived in Gotha writing a series of works on illuminism.

“Campus Westend” of the University Kf Goethe is dominated by the IG Farben Building by architect Hans Poelzig, an example of the modernist New Objectivity style.

Goethe was acquainted with the court of Darmstadt, where his inventiveness was praised. From this milieu came Johann Georg Schlosser (who later became Goethe's brother-in-law) and Johann Heinrich Merck.

Merck & Co., Inc. is an American multinational pharmaceutical company

headquartered in Kenilworth, New Jersey. It is named after the Merck family, which set up Merck Group in Germany in 1668.

In 1827, Merck Group evolved from a pharmacy to a drug manufacturer company with the commercial manufacture of morphine. Merck perfected the chemical process

of deriving morphine from opium and later introduced cocaine, used to treat sinus problems and to add to beverages to boost energy levels.

The family first appeared in Hammelburg in the 15th century. The family has a long history in pharmacy going back to the 17th century. In

1668 Friedrich Jacob Merck purchased the second town pharmacy in Darmstadt, known as the Engel-Apotheke or Angel Pharmacy, which would evolve into the major company Merck, the world's oldest operating pharmaceutical and chemical company.

Merck & Co. was also led by family member George W. Merck (son of George F. Merck) from 1925 until 1950.

World War I prevented him from pursuing an advanced degree in Germany. Instead, he joined his father at the company. He was made president of the company in 1925, succeeding

his father shortly before his death, while his father became chairman of the board. During the interwar years, he oversaw Merck's involvement in the development of synthetic vitamins, sulfas, antibiotics, and hormones. During World War II, he led the War Research Service, which

initiated the U.S. biological weapons program with Frank Olson.

In the spring of 1943 the U.S. Army Biological Warfare Laboratories were established at Fort (then Camp) Detrick in Frederick, Maryland.

Though initially, under George Merck, the WRS contracted several

universities to participate in the U.S. biological weapons program, the program became large quickly and before long it was under the full control of the CWS. By November 1943 the biological weapons facility at Detrick was completed, in addition, the United States constructed

three other facilities - a biological agent production plant at Vigo County near Terre Haute, Indiana, a field-testing site on Horn Island in Mississippi, and another field site near Granite Peak in Utah.

Vannevar Bush retired as president of the Carnegie Institution and

returned to Massachusetts in 1955, but remained a director of Metals and Controls Corporation from 1952 to 1959, and of Merck & Co. 1949–1962. Bush became chairman of the board at Merck following the death of George W. Merck, serving until 1962. He worked closely with the

company's president, Max Tishler, although Bush was concerned about Tishler's reluctance to delegate responsibility.