When the spirit enters a human body it takes up a cross, the cross of matter, the synthesis of the four elements. There is not much point in wearing crosses round our necks or putting up crosses in churches and cemeteries if we fail to understand that it is humans themselves who are the cross. Man is the cross, and it is this cross that we must work with.

We often associate the cross in our minds with death and negation and that is a mistake for, when the spirit enters into the cross, it becomes the beginning of life. When an Initiate prays he faces towards the four cardinal points of the universe in turn, thus marking the sign of the cross to show that his spirit is about to work on matter.

What it means to cross oneself
Each of the cardinal points is ruled by an Archangel: in the East is Mikhaël, in the West Gabriel, in the North Uriel and in the South Raphaël. This rite of turning to face the four cardinal points before praying has been perpetuated in the Christian religion in the form of the Sign of the Cross.

When a Christian touches their forehead, their solar plexus, their left and then their right shoulder with the fingers of their right hand, saying ‘In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen’, they are communicating with the four dimensions of space, the matter on which their thought and love are about to work.

The Rose Cross is the symbol of the perfect human being
The Rosicrucian symbol consists of a red rose in the centre of a cross. The rose represents the heart, the full flowering of the heart chakra in man, seen as the sublimation of the cross. This chakra can only be made to blossom by love, the colour and fragrance of which are those of the rose. This is why the Rose Cross is the symbol of an Initiate who has worked so diligently at his own nature that Christ’s love, the divine love that transforms and gives life to matter, has flowered within him.

One who walks in the way of Christ becomes a Rosicrucian even if their name never appears in the membership records of the Society. The rose at the centre of the cross, therefore, is the perfect human being whose heart chakra is in full blossom

Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov

Complete Works Volume 32, The Fruits of the Tree of Life – The Cabbalistic Tradition