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Historical Anomalies
When I was still living in San Jose I worked with a guy named Matt, who told me I should visit the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum. While I never got a chance to visit, it sounds like an amazing place, but I am really not sure I believe everything he told me about it.
The museum takes up an entire city block. The architectural design closely follows Egyptian motifs — “like a Fry’s” I joked, but he didn’t laugh. He seemed genuinely taken by the beauty of the place. He told me there is a lovely garden out back, with many varieties of roses and other plants, and fountains everywhere, but he said it was the interior that he found the most striking.
There is a large collection of artifacts, which is not surprising, and in the basement there is a detailed mockup of a burial chamber. Upstairs there is a reading room filled with religious pamphlets from the 19th and early 20th centuries, which sits adjacent to a temple with an altar, which did not seem to be used during the day.
“Is it a religion or a museum?” I asked. “It’s both — no question,” he said. ”When I asked to find out more about it, they told me to give them my phone number, and they’d be in touch.”
A few days later he said they got in touch. A couple of people came by his house and asked him some innocuous questions, to get some idea about his background I supposed, but he said the one thing they really wanted to know, was whether he believed in a Supreme Being.
“They didn’t care about which religion I belonged to, but it was important for them to know that I felt there was some sort of higher power. I told them yes, I absolutely believed that. They also asked if I would be willing to swear to complete secrecy. It seemed kind of weird, but I’ve signed a lot of NDAs, so it was no big deal to me. I never take that stuff seriously anyhow.” The topic of conversation quickly changed to mundane topics, and they left him.
It wasn’t until several weeks later that he mentioned it again.