Paschal Beverly Randolph was born in New York City in 1825. His father was said to have been a member of the “Randolphs of Virginia.” His mother, Flora, claimed to be the granddaughter of a Queen of Madagascar. She died before he was ten years old. Paschal was raised by his half-sister, Harriet, for a time before being passed on to an unidentified actress. He received less than a year of formal education, but spent time educating himself. As a teen, he took off on his own and spent about five years at sea before apprenticing as a dyer.  He also worked also as a barber.

After converting to Roman Catholicism, Randolph investigated Spiritualism and became a trance medium. By his mid-twenties he had established a public career as a lecturer and writer. Like many Spiritualists, he fought for the abolition of slavery. He took a leading role in recruiting Black soldiers for the Union army and in educating Freedmen in Louisiana during the Civil War. Afterward, he taught literacy to freed slaves in New Orleans.

Randolph traveled to England in 1853 and 1857 where he addressed the audiences as Sir Humphrey Davy and other well-known men. On later travels to France, Egypt and the Turkish Empire, he collected information on occult practices such as the magic mirror, hashish use and sexual magic. His teachings influenced many American occultists, including Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society.

In addition to his work as a medium, Randolph educated himself to be a medical doctor and wrote and published more than fifty books, both fictional and instructive. His writings spoke of spiritual beings from other planets, of elemental creatures, the mysteries of the human aura, and the existence of seven universes, each with seven sub-parts, making forty-nine in all.

In 1861, he visited Paris where he became acquainted with a few reputed Rosicrucians. He began using the pseudonym “The Rosicrucian” for his Spiritualist and occult writings. He founded the Fraternitas Rosae Crucis  in 1858 and their first lodge in San Francisco in 1861.

Randolph lived in many places, including Boston, New York state, New Orleans, San Francisco, and Toledo, OH. He married twice. His first wife was African-American, his second wife Irish-American. He died in Toledo, Ohio, at the age of 49, under mysterious circumstances. Authorities claimed his death was the result of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Later, R. Swinburne Clymer, who became Supreme Master of the Fraternitas, confessed on his death-bed to killing Randolph in a state of jealousy and temporary insanity. Lucus County Probate Court records list the death as accidental.