Update: Jan 1848

[Ric]

" I was over at the Library Company and found a fascinating journal titled "The Nineteenth Century" published and edited by Charles Chauncey Burr. Published in Jan 1848 , 21 months before George Lippard came out with the Brotherhood of the Union.   Guess what, in this issue, there'a 20 page article titled "The Carpenter's Son".  The Article precisely outlines an organization that Lippard calls "The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross".

    Lippard is hard to get a handle on, but I've found perhaps a key.  He admired Poe and Brocken Brown and their writing.  Perhaps if we look on Lippard as the creator of historical fiction, but more of a 'counter-factual' history than a straight up newspaper article. Let's give him the literary license to create characters and situations that relate the counterfactual history.  George Lippard's works are filled with his take on mysticism and even an alternative christianity.   "The Carpenter's Son" is such a work.

    His short life was filled with lots of apparent contradictions, but its interesting trying to piece a biography together.  I feel called to do that too.

regards all,

   Ric