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Cagliostro |
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Diego Antolini |
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SOLID
SALTPETRE
Count
Cagliostro was born as Giuseppe Balsamo perhaps on June 2, 1743 in
Palermo, Italy, but his origins remain for the most part a mystery.
Goethe, in his Italian Journey wrote that Cagliostro and
Giuseppe Balsamo being one and the same was confirmed by a lawyer of
Palermo who was requested to make an official research. He compiled a
dossier and sent it to France. Goethe met the lawyer in 1787 and saw
the content of the dossier. In it, is stated that Balsamo grand grand
father had two daughters, Maria who married Giuseppe Bracconieri, and
Vincenza who married Giuseppe Cagliostro. Maria and Giuseppe had
three children: Matteo, Antonio and Felicita’. The latter married
with Pietro Balsamo (the son of a Bookseller, Antonino Balsamo, who
had declared bankruptcy before his death.) The child of Felicita’
and Pietro Balsamo was Giuseppe, named so in honor of his uncle,
whose last name he later took as well. Felicita’ Balsamo was still
alive when Goethe visited Italy, and he met both her and her daughter
personally.
Cagliostro
himself, during the process for the “Affair of the Diamond
Necklace” said that he was born from Christians of noble origins
but was abandoned as an orphan on the island of Malta (according to
other sources, though, he was born in Alberghiera, the old Jewish
ghetto of Palermo). He claimed to have traveled a lot when he was a
child, to Medina, Mecca and Cairo, and to have been admitted, once he
was back, to he Military Sovereign Order of the Knights of Malta
under which he studied Alchemy, Qabbalah and Magick. In spite of the
precarious financial conditions of the family, the grandfather and
his uncles imposed a solid education to Giuseppe, first through a
guardian and then as a novice in the Catholic Order of St. John of
God, from which he will later be expelled.
He lost his father
at an early age and his mother, unable to take care of him alone,
sent him to live with his uncle. But Cagliostro fled almost
immediately; he was taken back and sent to a monastery,
from where he managed to escape again. He was eventually locked up in
a Benedictine monastery where he discovered his talent for medicine
and chemistry. Cagliostro
was a good student, always trying to look beyond the basic
information he received.
After
several years spent in the monastery Cagliostro escaped to join a
gang of vagrants who committed all sorts of crimes, from theft to
murder. He was always captured from the police because of his
involvement in the gang but thanks to his uncle, he was never
arrested. When he was seventeen, along with the actions of the
brigands, Cagliostro had developed a great interest for Alchemy. In
1794 goldsmith Vincenzo Marano arrived to Palermo and came into
contact with Cagliostro, then on his twenties. Having known many
alchemists who claimed of being capable of turning metals into gold,
Marano declared that the young Cagliostro was indeed the only one
able to do so.
Taking
advantage of the trust that Marano gave him, Cagliostro asked seventy
ounces of gold (an amount equals to more than 20.000 Euros today) to
conduct magical ceremonies, with the promise of leading the goldsmith
to a place outside the city, presumably on Mount Pellegrino, where a
great treasure had been hidden several centuries earlier. The
treasure was guarded by magical creatures and for that, the knowledge
Cagliostro had of the occult was essential to protect both of them
from evil spells.
Marano hesitated, but eventually gave the gold
to Cagliostro and the same night at midnight he was taken to the
fields outside Palermo.
Instead
of the treasure Marano found some of the brigands (paid by
Cagliostro) who attacked him and left him on the ground beaten and
bleeding. He was however convinced of having suffered the attack of
the Djiin that guarded the treasure. When, the next day, the
goldsmith went to Balsamo’s house in Perciata street, he discovered
that the young man had left Palermo. In fact Cagliostro had fled
together with two accomplices and took refuge in Messina. From there,
he began a series of journeys that took him to Malta (1765-66), where
he became an auxiliary of the SMOM (Sovereign Military Order of
Malta) and a skilled pharmacist. |
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![Cagliostro]() |
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FLUID
MERCURY
At
the beginning of 1768 Cagliostro was in Rome where he was appointed
secretary of Cardinal Orsini, but he found that work boring, and soon
he began to lead a double life: secretary and seller of magic
amulets, painted reliefs and other sundries. In that period
Cagliostro met with many Sicilian expatriates and ex-convicts, and
one of them introduced him to Lorenza Seraphina Feliciani
(1751-1794), a seventeen years old girl also known as Serafina, with
whom he married that same year.
After
the wedding the new couple moved, together with Serafina’s family,
in the Vicolo delle Cripte adjacent to the Strada dei Pellegrini, but
Cagliostro’s vulgar language and his insistence on encouraging
Serafina to expose her body in public clashed with the Feliciani’s
deep religious traditions. This eventually degenerated in a big
quarrel, so that Cagliostro and Serafina decided to move out (however
some sources suggest that the real reason was to flee from the Roman
Inquisition that had begun to suspect Cagliostro of heresy.) After
few years in Spain, the couple went back to Palermo, where Marano,
recognizing Cagliostro, had him arrested. Cagliostro was saved by a
noble man and then, after tricking an alchemist and robbed him of
100,000 crowns (equal today of about $1.5 million,) he and Serafina
moved to another city.
In
1768 Count Cagliostro returned to Naples where he resumed contacts
with one of the brigands who had attacked Marano in the fields
outside Palermo. The two men decided to open a casino to rob wealthy
customers, but the local authorities discovered their plan and
ordered them to leave the city. In the meantime Cagliostro met
Agliata, a forger and a cheater, who proposed him to teach him how to
falsify letters, diplomas and many other documents; in return,
however, Cagliostro had to allow him to have sexual encounters with
Serafina. Cagliostro agreed.
He later took his wife to London
where the famous meeting with the Count of Saint Germain allegedly
took place. It seems that Saint Germain initiated Cagliostro to the
rites of Egyptian Freemasonry, and revealed him the recipe for the
Elixir of Youth and Immortality.
After their stay in London,
Cagliostro and his wife traveled to Courland (Russia), Poland,
Germany and France. Cagliostro’s fame grew so much that he was
recommended to Benjamin Franklin as a trusted doctor during his stay
in Paris.
On
April 12, 1776 Cagliostro became a Freemason
in the Esperance
lodge No. 289,
Gerrard Street, Soho District, London.
On December 1777 he and
Serafina left London, and in 1779 they were in Mitau, Russia. Later
they traveled to Strasbourg (September 1780) and Lyon (October
1784.)
On December 24, 1784 Cagliostro founded in Lyon La
Sagesse Triomphante
Grand Lodge, based upon the rites of the Egyptian Freemasonry, and
then opened other lodges of the same nature in Germany, Russia and
France. On January, 1785 Cagliostro went to Paris in response to the
invitation of Cardinal Rohan. King Louis XVI had been curious about
Cagliostro since 1772 when he sold medicines and elixirs and held
seances. The king invited him to Versailles to organize dinners of
magic and entertain the court. During his traveling to Egypt, Greece,
Persia, Rhodes, India and Ethiopia, Cagliostro had
studied
Occult Magick and Alchemy based on local sources.
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![Cagliostro]() |
![Cagliostro]() |
FUMES
OF SULFUR
For
many years Cagliostro was favored at the French court, but in 1785
his fate changed completely following his involvement in the Affair
of the Diamond Necklace, one of the most important events that
sparked the French Revolution in 1789. Because of that scandal,
Cagliostro was imprisoned inside the Bastille for six months, and
then released for lack of evidence. However he was expelled from
France forever.
The
Diamond Necklace Affair happened between Marie Antoinette, Queen of
France, and Prince Louis de Rohan. In 1772 Louis XV of France decided
to donate to Madame du Barry, of whom he had a strong infatuation, a
diamond necklace worth two million liveries (about 15 million of
Euros today.) The work was commissioned to the Parisian jewelers
Boehmer and Bassenge. The craftsmen took several years and a large
amount of money to collect all the necessary elements, especially the
diamonds suitable for the scope. During this time, however, Louis XV
died of Smallpox and Madame du Barry was expelled from court by the
king’s nephew and successor of the crown.
The necklace
consisted of a series of diamonds arranged in an elaborate pattern of
decorations, pendants and ribbons. After
the king’s demise the
jewelers had
hoped
that the necklace could be purchased by the new Queen of France,
Marie Antoinette. In fact in 1778 King Louis XVI offered it to his
wife as a gift, but she refused it saying- according to
Jeanne-Louise-Henriette Campan- that the money ought to be better
spent to equip an army. Others argue that Marie Antoinette was
perfectly aware of whom the jewel had been made for, and would have
never worn something designed for another woman, especially for a
courtesan she despised. A third version suggests that it was the King
who changed his mind at the last moment.
After
failing to sell the necklace outside France, the jewelers attempted
to offer it again to Marie Antoinette after the birth of Louis
Joseph, the Dolphin of France (1781), but the necklace was
rejected.
It was never clear why Cagliostro had been arrested in
connection with the Diamond Necklace Affair, but it seems that the
episode was used to get rid of a controversial character, accused of
being a Freemason, an occultist, and a heretic (two of those titles
were against a Papal edict of the time.) Above all, the arrest of
Cagliostro was to reinforce the propaganda that the Freemasons were
responsible to causing the French Revolution, although this was only
a scheme of an even larger conspiracy to bring down all the monarchy
in Europe.
On
December 27, 1789 Cagliostro was back in Rome where he was arrested
and imprisoned in Castel Sant’Angelo under the charge of being a
Freemason.
The initial death sentence was converted to life
imprisonment by the Pope. Cagliostro tried to escape but was taken
and transferred to the San Leo Stronghold where he died shortly
after, on August 26, 1795.
Cagliostro is one of the most
controversial figures in the history of Alchemy. He was considered by
many a charlatan, and yet he indisputably possessed such charisma and
knowledge to influence many notable and erudite personalities of his
time. This alone proves that Cagliostro was not a common man. Suffice
it to say that his death was not immediately believed, and only an
official report from the panel established by Napoleon for that
purpose made people accept the fact that Cagliostro had actually
passed away. |
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25/05/2020 14:23:02 |
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