thumb|A Rose Cross with a [[fleur-de-lis design on its spokes]]
The Rose Cross (also called Rose Croix and Rosy Cross) is a symbol largely associated with the legendary Christian Rosenkreuz, a Christian Kabbalist and alchemist said to have been the founder of the Rosicrucian Order. The Rose Cross is a cross with a rose at its centre, which is usually red, golden, or white. It symbolizes the teachings of a Western esoteric tradition with Christian tenets.
As a key Rosicrucian symbol, the Rosy Cross was also used by the Order of the Golden and Rosy Cross (1750s–1790s), and is still used by the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (1865–present).
Symbolism
thumb|left|upright|The [[Luther rose, a symbol of Lutheranism and the Protestant Reformation]]
The Rosicrucian manifestos were written during the Protestant Reformation in Germany, and have an underlying theme of reform. In 1520, Martin Luther had a seal made with a five-petaled white rose encapsulating a heart, with a simple cross in the centre. Johannes Valentinus Andreae, a likely candidate for the authorship of the third Rosicrucian manifesto, the Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, came from a family whose crest featured an X-shaped cross with roses in the four corners.
Many allegorical and esoteric explanations for the Rose Cross have arisen over the centuries. Some groups, such as the Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis, purport that the rosy cross predates Christianity, where "the cross represents the human body and the rose represents the individual's unfolding consciousness.
It has also been suggested that the rose represents silence while the cross signifies "salvation, to which the Society of the Rose-Cross devoted itself by teaching mankind the love of God and the beauty of brotherhood, with all that they implied."
Others saw the Rosy Cross as a symbol of the human process of reproduction elevated to the spiritual:
: "The fundamental symbols of the Rosicrucians were the rose and the cross; the rose female and the cross male, both universal phallic ... As generation is the key to material existence, it is natural that the Rosicrucians should adopt as its characteristic symbols those exemplifying the reproductive processes. As regeneration is the key to spiritual existence, they therefore founded their symbolism upon the rose and the cross, which typify the redemption of man through the union of his lower temporal nature with his higher eternal nature."
It is further a symbol of the philosopher's stone, the ultimate product of alchemy.
Rosicrucianism
[[File:Fludd_summum_bonum.jpg|thumb|The rose gives the bees honey from title page of