Description

Originally named "Rosicrucian Chess," this is a four-handed chess variant that can be played as a game, or used as a divination tool. (The divination version requires the use of a die and an additional piece.) The game was invented in the Victorian era by the adepts of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in England. Despite the existence of extensive original instructions, no surviving manuscript gives perfectly unambiguous rules for play, so different modern authors have published instructions that do not always agree in all details. The first published version was in The Golden Dawn (1941) by Israel Regardie.

There are four different 8x8 boards, corresponding to the classical elements, of which only one is used in a given game session. Setup configuration of the pieces depends on which of the boards is being used, with four further variations possible within that decision. Ordinary game play involves partners seated across from one another, with their opponents at right angles to them: air and fire vs. water and earth. Setup is on the right-hand half of the nearest two rows, so that pawns generate a sort of spiral motion on the board as a whole.

Each player has nine chessmen (4 pawns, knight, queen, bishop, rook, and king), and piece movement varies slightly from standard modern chess, especially in the case of the queen. Pawns are promoted only to the corresponding piece of their native file. Each of the 36 chessmen has a correspondence to a given Egyptian god or goddess, and all of the board squares correspond to letters in the Angelic Tablets of Renaissance magicians John Dee and Edward Kelly.