Jan van Rijckenborgh

Jan van Rijckenborgh was born Jan Leene, at Haarlem, the Netherlands in 1896. From an early age he showed a pronounced feeling of justice, which lead him to look intensively for the truth and the sense of all life. The obvious discrepancy between church faith and life practice, which as often noticed by young van Rijckenborgh with theologians and religious, distanced him ever more from the reformed church, to which his parents belonged, and brought him into contact with professor Dr. A. H. de Hartogh (1869-1938).

This liberal preacher often referred to the ideas of Jakob Boehme, whose hermetic definition of the two nature orders also inspired Jan van Rijckenborgh. In 1924, together with his brother Zwier Willem Leene (1892-1938), he joined the Rosicrucian Fellowship, created in 1909 by Max Heindel, and in 1929 both brothers became entrusted with the line of the Netherlands branch of the Rosicrucian Fellowship.

Here Jan van Rijckenborgh became acquainted with the manifestos of the Rosicrucians and the writings of Paracelsus and Comenius. Henriette Stok Huyser (1902-1990), who later assumed the name Catharose de Petri, followed the Leene brothers in the year 1930. Their subsequent common spiritual search led to the fact that all three separated from the Rosicrucian Fellowship  in the year 1935. Thus Jan van Rijckenborgh, with his two companions, created in Haarlem the School of the Rosycross.

In the British Library in London van Rijckenborgh meanwhile encountered a work by Johann Valentin Andreae, "Republicae Christianopolitanae Descriptio", in English translation, which he was allowed to study. To this writing he wrote a comment, which he published 1939 together with his translation of the text in the Netherlands under the title "Christianopolis". He then also translated the manifestos of the Rosicrucians, the Fama Fraternitatis, Confessio Fraternitatis and the Alchemical Wedding of Christian Rosycross into the Dutch language. In these writings he found what moved him: the call to a general reformation, which had above all the fundamental change in humans as a goal.

In the war years 1940-1945 the School of the Rosycross was closed by the German forces in the Netherlands, and all activities of the school was forbiden. During this time Jan van Rijckenborgh immersed himself in the study of the Corpus Hermeticum (the gnostic philosophy of Hermes Trismegistos), the writings of the Manichans and other gnostic groups, and concerning the history of the Cathars.

In 1956 the work of Jan van Rijckenborghs and Catharose de Petris recieved an important impulse through their contact with Antonin Gadal (1877-1962), the the guardian the of the Cathars inheritance in France. They connected themselves with the gnostic treasure from this religious community destroyed by the Inquisition.

Jan van Rijckenborgh died in 1968. With his approximately 40 writings, some written together with Catharose de Petri, he leaves humankind with a large treasure of notes and assistance for those on the gnostic path, searching for truth and liberation.