Books like The Rosicrucian Enlightenment

In the years leading up to the Thirty years war (1618-1648) as Catholic and Protestant princes vied for control of the Holy Roman Empire in the heart of Europe the age was extremely polarizing and ideological. In this period famous for heresy and witchcraft trials a strange intellectual movement developed. Certain treatises publish by the Brothers of the Rosy Cross, the Rosicrucians claimed to have tapped into ancient sources of knowledge. This shadowy brotherhood which combined hermetic, cabalistic, Neo-Platonic elements with Christian religious motifs started a secret movement and scares around Europe about a subversive group that may be in league with the devil. The intellectual progress of the west when reading a general overview looks like a straight line however when looked at more closely it looks like a zigzag and often goes off on weird tangents and strange interludes. So it is with the Rosicrucians. This movement seems to have influenced the likes of Francis Bacon and his writings of New Atlantis and even played a part influencing early founders of the Royal Society. Their seems to be an influence on Freemasonry but the links are obscure as with secret anonymous intellectual movements they don't leave a direct paper trail for historians. Still this movement which both hearkened back to Renaissance occult thought may also have been an invisible college of a proto-enlightenment movement just prior to the scientific revolution. A good book to get an incite into the minds of Early Modern Europeans.