Conte di Cagliostro

FOR 150 years Alessandro Cagliostro has been defamed as the arch-impostor of the eighteenth century. Why? Because it is claimed that Cagliostro was one of the many aliases assumed by the notorious adventurer Giuseppe Balsamo. This claim is based, first, upon the lies of Theveneau de Morande, a French spy and blackmailer who, in the words of a brilliant study by M. Paul Robiquet, was "from the day of his birth to the day of his death utterly without scruple"; and, second, upon a Life of Balsamo published anonymously in 1791 under the auspices of the Inquisition. In 1890 H. P. Blavatsky boldly took issue with these two "authorities" by declaring that "whoever Cagliostro's parents may have been, their name was not Balsamo." In 1910 W. R. H. Trowbridge, in his book on Cagliostro, asserted that the statement that Cagliostro and Balsamo were the same person "would appear to be directly contrary to recorded fact." As Cagliostro gave out his own story through his advocate, Thirolier, common justice demands that some attention be paid to his words. In these Memoirs, Cagliostro frankly admitted that he knew neither the name of his parents nor the place of his birth. He had been told that his parents were Christians of noble birth who had left him an orphan at the age of three months. He believed that he had been born on the Island of Malta. His earliest recollections took him back to the holy city of Medina in Arabia, where he was called Acharat and where he lived in the palace of the Muphti Salahaym. Four persons were attached to his service, the chief of whom was an Eastern Adept named Althotas who instructed him in the various sciences and made him proficient in several Oriental languages. Although both teacher and pupil outwardly conformed to the religion of Islam, Cagliostro later wrote, "the true religion was imprinted in our hearts." When the boy was twelve years old, he and Althotas began their travels. The first stopping place was Mecca, where they lived for three years in the palace of the Cherif. On the day of their departure the aged Cherif pressed the boy to his bosom and exclaimed: "Nature's unfortunate child, adieu!" In Egypt they "inspected those celebrated Pyramids which to the eye of the superficial observer appear as enormous masses of granite," but which, to the Adept-eye of Althotas, were holy fanes of initiation. Certain Temple-priests of that ancient land took the boy into "such palaces as no ordinary traveller has ever entered before." Finally, after wandering through Asia and Africa for three years, the two reached the Island of Malta, where they were entertained in the palace of Pinto, Grand Master of the Knights of Malta. There Althotas donned the insignia of the Order, and the young wanderer assumed European dress for the first time and received from his teacher the name of Cagliostro. Althotas died in Malta, and Cagliostro, accompanied by the Chevalier d'Acquino, then visited Sicily and the Isles of Greece, stopped for a while in Naples, and finally reached Rome, where he made the acquaintance of Cardinal Orsini and the Pope. It was in Rome, when Cagliostro was twenty-two years old, that he met and married Lorenza Feliciani, who proved to be a tool of the Jesuits and the chief cause of his troubles. In 1776 the Count and Countess Cagliostro were occupying apartments in Whitcombe Street, Leicester Fields, London. Cagliostro, now a man of twenty-eight, spent most of his time in his chemical laboratory, while his attractive wife amused herself with her new-found friends. Cagliostro's extreme good nature and the blind confidence which he placed in his friends made him their easy victim, and when he left London eighteen months later he sadly confessed that they had swindled him of 3,000 guineas. On April 12, 1777, Cagliostro became a Freemason. His life in Egypt, his association with the Temple-priests, and his probable initiation into some of the Egyptian mysteries had fired him with a determination to found an Egyptian Rite in Masonry based upon these Mysteries, the aim of which was the moral and spiritual regeneration of mankind. The Masonic authority, Kenneth Mackenzie, says: His system of Masonry was not founded on shadows. Many of the doctrines he enunciated may be found in the Book of the Dead and other important documents of ancient Egypt. And though he may have committed the fatal error of matching himself with the policy of Rome and getting the worst of it, I have not yet been able to find one iota of evidence that he was guilty of anything more reprehensible than an error of judgment during his various journeys.