Harvey Spencer Lewis

Born: 25 November 1883 in Frenchtown, New Jersey.

Died: 2 August 1939.

Harvey Spencer Lewis F.R.C., S:::I:::I:::, 33° 66° 95°, Ph.D., a noted Rosicrucian author, occultist, and mystic, was the founder in the USA and the first Imperator of the Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis (AMORC), from 1915 until 1939.

Life and career:

Lewis was born in Frenchtown, New Jersey, to Aaron Rittenhouse Lewis and a German-born teacher, Catherine Hoffman. He worked in advertising as an illustrator, and he used this experience to promote AMORC, through print ads, booklets and magazine illustrations. Lewis first learned of the Rosicrucians through his interest in paranormal phenomena. His membership of a group investigating and exposing more than 50 fraudulent mediums led to the formation of the New York Institute for Psychical Research, of which he was elected president at the age of 20.

He later related that he was initiated into a Rosicrucian order during a trip to France. Given the mission to both bring Rosicrucian ideas back to America (an immigrant German group had a settlement in Pennsylvania during the 17th century, but it had long been dissolved), and to promote them in a modern way, Lewis established AMORC, becoming its first Imperator. He translated from French and German what became the Order's first canon of lessons in mysticism, and spent the rest of his life working ceaselessly on AMORC's behalf.

Lewis engineered and supervised the creation of Rosicrucian Park, in San Jose, California designing its unique buildings - the Egyptian-style temple, the fifth planetarium in the USA, a science laboratory, lecture auditorium, library, and administrative offices. Today his internationally recognised Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in Naglee Avenue is a popular tourist attraction.

His second wife was Martha. They were married at least by 1917, according to his WW1 draft card, when they were living in Flushing, New York. In 1926 they sailed on the SS Majestic to Europe and made the first AMORC Grand Tour of Egypt, reported en route in The Mystic Triangle of December 1926.

Among Lewis's prodigious talents was a penchant for audio-visual technology. With a confident voice well suited to public speaking and broadcasting, he had inaugurated talk-back radio and directed a popular children's radio club in Tampa, Florida. In San Jose, one of Lewis's programs, "The Pristine Church", was broadcast from Rosicrucian Park on Sundays, with easy-listening sermons on interfaith and secular topics. His recordings of talks, chants and other items of interest to Rosicrucian students are still in demand by AMORC lodges around the world.

Under his nomen mysticum Sar Alden, Lewis was one of the three directors of FUDOSI (Federatio Universalis Dirigens Ordines Societatesque Initiationis) representing America, Europe and the Orient. This union of the world's authentic initiatic societies aimed to counter plagiarism of their ancient symbols and rituals by remnant groups and rivals. Lewis held a number of earned and honorary ordinations, titles and degrees, many granted in recognition of his goodwill work. His son, Ralph Maxwell Lewis (1904-1987), an accomplished philosopher and author, succeeded him in 1939 as the second Imperator of AMORC. One of Ralph Lewis's many books is the aptly titled biography of his extraordinary father, Cosmic Mission Fulfilled.