Max Heindel was a Danish-American Christian magician, astrologer, and mystic. He was born Carl Louis von Grasshoff on July 23, 1865, and died on January 6, 1919. He was born in Aarhus, Denmark, into the noble family von Grasshoff, which had ties to the German Court during the time of Prince Bismarck. Heindel left home when he was 16 to study engineering at the shipyards in Glasgow, Scotland. As the Chief Engineer of a trading steamer, he moved a lot. Eventually, he got a job on one of the big passenger steamships of the Cunard Line, which ran between the United States and Europe. Heindel said that he had already decided to go back home because he felt like he had given up his work in America for nothing by going on this trip. Then, he was visited by the vital body of a spiritual being who said he was an Elder Brother of the Rosicrucian Order, which was founded in the inner worlds in 1313 and has nothing to do with physical groups that use the same name.
