by J H Brennan
The confusion of the old (“superstitious”) and the new (“scientific”) in the practice of mesmerism did little for its reputation. In 1784 Louis XVI appointed a commission to examine Mesmer’s methods. Their report was damning. They found Mesmer unable to substantiate his scientific claims and concluded the phenomena of mesmerism had nothing to do with any invisible fluid but could be explained by the action of imagination alone.
Mesmerism subsequently declined in France, but the British, ever suspicious of Continental conclusions, remained happy to import the practice in the early nineteenth century. Here, too, mesmeric abilities included communication with spirits. The O’Key sisters, who exhibited precognitive talents while mesmerized, insisted they did not have direct knowledge of the future, but had it described to them by a spirit who had first appeared when one of them fell ill.26 A mesmeric experiment in Trinity College, Dublin, produced an observation from one mesmerized subject to the effect that great changes were taking place in the spirit world, including in the relations between men and angels.27 Five years after King Louis’s commission dismissed mesmerism as effectively as Mesmer himself had once dismissed exorcism, the spirits were back on Europe’s political scene, making mischief on a scale unheard of before.
12. REVOLUTIONARY SORCERER
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789 HERALDED THE MOST RADICAL changes in the political history of Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire. It marked the beginning of the end for absolute monarchy, the feudal system, aristocratic privilege, and the unquestioning acceptance of religious authority. Under sustained assault from new-formed left-wing groups, backed by discontented mobs in both town and country, old certainties perished, to be replaced by new principles of equality, liberty, and citizenship rights. Few historians recognize the part played by spirit influence in these massive changes or pay much attention to its channel, the rascally count Alessandro di Cagliostro.
Cagliostro, a rascally channel for spirit influence in the French Revolution
Cagliostro was born Guiseppe Balsamo in Sicily in 1743, a wild child with considerable artistic talents to complement his second sight. He ran away from school several times and, following a disgraceful Scripture reading,1 was finally expelled. Deciding to visit Rome, he posed as an alchemist in order to separate a wealthy goldsmith from his gold, but he was himself robbed later and thus reached Rome penniless. He lived on his wits and his artistic talents and somehow managed to survive.
Even at this early age, Balsamo’s interest in the occult was profound. He was attracted to a Greek alchemist named Altotas who, in his search for the Philosopher’s Stone, had stumbled on a valuable process for making flax fiber feel like silk. Together they visited Malta where Balsamo so impressed the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta (himself an alchemist) that this worthy gave him letters of introduction to several influential men in Italy. It was the first gust of a wind that was to blow the young occultist into the halls of the mighty.
On his return to Rome, Balsamo met and married Lorenza Feliciani, the beautiful fourteen-year-old daughter of an impoverished copper smelter. They traveled throughout Italy, on to Spain, and into France, where they met a man fated to become Europe’s most famous libertine—Giovanni Jacopo Casanova. Back in Spain, Balsamo worked for the Duke of Alva, but a year later he turned up with his wife in London and was swiftly jailed for debt. Lorenza used her good offices with Sir Edward Hales to have him released. The knight offered him employment painting the ceiling of his family seat near Canterbury. Balsamo accepted, made a ruinous job of the ceiling, then embarked with his wife for France. On the boat, they encountered the French advocate Duplessis, who fell in love with Lorenza. He brought the couple to Paris and permitted them to live in the residence of the Marquis de Prie, to whom he was steward. After two months, Duplessis finally succeeded in seducing Lorenza and she moved into apartments in the rue Saint-Honoré. Balsamo promptly petitioned the king, with the result that Lorenza was jailed in 1773. She remained there for a year.
Whatever the fate of his wife, Balsamo’s own fortunes took a turn for the better. He invented a skin lotion that actually worked and consequently made him money. His reputation as an alchemist was growing, so that he was able to take on paying pupils. By the time Lorenza was released from jail (with, apparently, no ill feelings toward the man who put her there), he had enough money for a flamboyant return to Italy, posing as the Marchese Pellegrini. He was foolish enough to visit his home in Palermo, where he was recognized by the goldsmith he had swindled and jailed.
Balsamo subsequently returned to London in 1776 and changed his name to Cagliostro (which was, in fact, the name of his Sicilian uncle). During this visit, both he and his wife became Freemasons, entering as apprentices on April 12, 1777.
Today the Masonic Order presents itself largely as a charitable organization. Although founded on a system of ritual initiations that contains some profound and interesting symbolism, it cannot readily be called an occult order in the generally accepted sense of the term. Masonry makes no claims to contact spirits or channel esoteric powers, but minds drawn to Masonic ritual are often drawn to ritual magic as well; and it is a fact of history that many magicians have also been Masons. It is also true to say that in earlier centuries, the search for arcane secrets within Masonry was carried out with much greater diligence than it is today.
Cagliostro was, of course, an occultist before he was a Mason and approached Freemasonry with the mind of an occultist. He discovered—or claimed he discovered—an Egyptian Masonic rite, incomparably older than anything worked by the Masons of his own day. On the basis of this rite, he set out to found an Order of Egyptian Masonry, headed by himself as Grand Copt and open only to Freemasons in good standing. Perhaps to add a little harmless excitement to the whole affair, he began to stir up a rumor that he had been a pupil of the founding prophets of the order, Elijah and Enoch, and thus was many thousands of years old.
About this time, his own prophetic abilities began to flower, but he was first and foremost a magician. He followed the traditional magical approach of using very young children as mediums to contact spirit entities and view the future.
Cagliostro began a tour of Europe preaching Egyptian Masonry and attempting, often successfully, to persuade more orthodox Masons to adopt his rite. His psychic abilities, which may have involved what we would now call “cold reading,”2 helped him enormously in the superstitious environment of his day. Furthermore, the Egyptian Rite ended in a demonstration of clairvoyance. This must have appeared enticing to Masons fed on no more satisfying fare than symbolic chatter about rough and smooth ashlars, but as there is little doubt Cagliostro presented well as a psychic, there is even less doubt that he was a charlatan. During a demonstration in St. Petersburg, the child medium abruptly announced the whole thing was a put-up job. Cagliostro fled to Strasbourg, in Germany, where his reputation remained unimpaired. Crowds lined the route to watch the Grand Copt in his black coach with its enticing magical symbols.
Confounding those critics who looked on him as nothing more than a swindler, Cagliostro set up headquarters in a simple room in one of the poorer quarters of the city and promptly began charitable work healing the sick and distributing alms. His reputation increased enormously, and not simply with the poor. His patients included nobles like the Marquis de Lasalle and the Prince de Soubise. The latter had been abandoned by his doctors as a hopeless case. Cagliostro cured him in three days. The Baroness d’Oberkirch also visited and, though she never really came to trust him, she was forced to admit to his clairvoyant abilities: he informed her the empress of Austria had died three days before the news reached Strasbourg by more orthodox channels. At this time too, Cagliostro met Cardinal de Rohan, who was duly impressed and eventually persuaded him to come to Paris.
It is a curious fact that the lives of many famous occultists follow a similar pattern. From obscure beginnings, they move into a period of mixed fortunes. Then comes a time during which they achieve great prominence
, followed by an eventual fall from grace. Often those concerned are the authors of their own misfortune, but in Cagliostro’s case, he appears to have been caught up in a sequence of events outside his own control.
Despite his calling, Cardinal de Rohan was something of a womanizer. In the days when he was bishop of Strasbourg, the future queen of France, Marie Antoinette, passed through the city en route to her wedding with Louis XVI. Even at fifteen she was a beauty and as de Rohan gave her Communion, he fell in love with her. The infatuation was a lasting one, probably heightened by the fact that Marie Antoinette’s husband failed miserably to take her virginity for several years—a fact that inevitably leaked beyond the nuptial bed. But if de Rohan loved the queen, the queen had very little love for de Rohan. No sooner had her husband succeeded to the throne than she had de Rohan dismissed from his post as ambassador to Austria. She also attempted to block his elevation to cardinal, although this time she was unsuccessful. One suspects a touch of the masochist in de Rohan’s character, for the more Marie Antoinette attempted to humiliate him, the fonder of her he became. It was not, however, an exclusive infatuation. When de Rohan was fifty, he fell in love with the twenty-five-year-old Countess de la Motte Valois (a title unlikely to have been genuine). It proved a more satisfying relationship; he managed to seduce her on their second meeting. She became his mistress and he introduced her into court, where she quickly became a favorite of the queen.
Unfortunately for all concerned, the countess had formulated an unsavory plan to make herself a fortune. Aware of de Rohan’s feelings toward the queen, she set about convincing him that the queen’s own attitude was changing and Marie Antoinette was slowly warming toward him. Eventually she undertook to deliver the cardinal’s letters to the queen and brought back what she claimed to be the queen’s replies. In fact, the queen knew nothing of the correspondence. The cardinal’s letters were destroyed. The queen’s “replies” were forgeries.
The reason for all this double-dealing was a 1.6-million-livre diamond necklace, which the queen wanted but could not afford. Countess de la Motte Valois persuaded de Rohan that he should obtain it for her (on credit), with the understanding that he would be suitably recompensed for his actions. In fact, the countess planned to abscond with the necklace herself as soon as she got her hands on it. At one point in the affair, the countess arranged a secret meeting between de Rohan and the queen in the Gardens of Versailles. The shortsighted cardinal kissed the royal slipper, without apparently noticing the foot inside belonged to a young prostitute hired by the countess.
Subsequent developments in the “Diamond Necklace Affair” are well known. The first payment fell due in the summer of 1785. Countess de la Motte Valois forged a letter from the queen telling the cardinal she could not meet the demand. At this point, the countess’s plan began to fall apart. She had been under the impression that de Rohan was fabulously rich and relied on his infatuation with the queen to make him quietly pay for the necklace himself. She may well have been right about the extent of his infatuation, but in the event, de Rohan could not raise the money. The jewelers went directly to the queen, who did not, of course, know what they were talking about. The king became involved and de Rohan questioned. When the whole story came out, Marie Antoinette was furious and insisted on the arrest of all concerned. Among those drawn into the net was Cagliostro.
A cool reading of history suggests Cagliostro was innocent. The worst that could be said of him was that he had once conjured an image of the queen into a bowl of water for the benefit of de Rohan. But despite his protestations, he was incarcerated in the Bastille for the better part of a year. His wife was also arrested, but she was released after seven months. There is unconventional evidence to suggest Cagliostro knew he would get his revenge. During a Masonic meeting at the home of the Count de Gebelin, he used his knowledge of Qabalistic numerology to make a prediction. King Louis, he said, was to die on the scaffold before his thirty-ninth year—“condemned to lose his head.” His queen, Marie Antoinette, was destined for an equally unpleasant fate. She would become wrinkled through grief, imprisoned, starved, and beheaded.
When he emerged from prison, Cagliostro was banished from France by the king. He went to London and mounted a lawsuit against the governor of the Bastille for the return of money stolen at the time of his arrest. The move was unsuccessful and, in something suspiciously like a fit of pique, he composed a pamphlet dated June 1786 and entitled Letter to the French People, which claimed the king had been deceived by his ministers, while Cagliostro himself was entirely innocent. The letter attracted considerable attention in Paris, possibly because it contained two predictions. Cagliostro attested that he would not return to France until the Bastille was pulled down to become “a public promenade,” and he finished his pamphlet with the words:
Yes, I declare to you, there will reign over you a prince who will achieve glory in the abolition of lettres de cachet, and the convocation of your States-General. He will feel that the abuse of power is in the long run destructive of power itself. He will not be satisfied with being the first of his ministers; he will aim at being the first of Frenchmen.3
Even to the most skeptical, the “prince” mentioned in this paragraph must sound at least a little like Napoleon.
Things were not going well with the French nobility. Although an innocent victim in the Diamond Necklace Affair, Marie Antoinette’s popularity plunged sharply because of it. Mobs booed her each time she appeared in public, and the feeling of the country grew steadily more threatening. Countess de la Motte Valois, who had been condemned to public flogging and branding, added to the pressure with the claim that the queen had been having an affair with Cardinal de Rohan. Cagliostro’s own embittered Letter helped the process along. Revolution was stirring in France. The country was at a turbulent turning point and an occultist who practiced contact with spirits was at the center of the storm.
But while now banned from France, Cagliostro was not particularly welcome in England either. Following an exposé in the Courier de L’Europe, a biweekly Anglo-French newspaper published in London, he and his wife went to Basel, then Turin. The police moved them on. They traveled to Roveredo, in Austria, with a similar result. They were in Trent when the Austrian emperor himself intervened, ordering them to leave the country altogether.
Cagliostro decided to return to Rome and there make an all-out effort to establish his curious brand of Freemasonry. Predictably, the Vatican reacted violently. Cagliostro was arrested and jailed in 1789. After his trial he was transferred to the Castel San Leo, where he was incarcerated in almost total darkness. The France he had left was plunging into the chaos of its revolutionary period. In 1792, Cagliostro’s Qabalistic prophecies came true with a vengeance and Louis was beheaded. By 1797, French troops had taken the Castel San Leo. They mounted a search for the magician, who was now considered a revolutionary hero. But the search came too late. Cagliostro had died two years earlier at the age of fifty-two. Or at least so orthodox history records. The more credulous within the ranks of occultism are not so sure. As Grand Copt of the Egyptian Rite, Cagliostro had taught a twofold system of moral and physical regeneration. According to the French magus Eliphas Levi, his precepts of moral regeneration were as follows:
You shall go up Mount Sinai with Moses; you shall ascend Calvary; with Phaleg you shall climb Thabor, and shall stand on Carmel with Elias. You shall build your tabernacle on the summit of the mountain; it shall consist of three wings or divisions, but these shall be joined together and that in the centre shall have three storeys. The refectory shall be on the ground floor. Above it there shall be a circular chamber with twelve beds round the walls and one bed in the centre: this shall be the place of sleep and dreams. The uppermost room shall be square, having four windows in each of the four quarters; and this shall be the room of light. There, and alone, you shall pray for forty days and sleep for forty nights in the dormitory of the Twelve Masters. Then shall you receive the signatures of the seven gen
ii and the pentagram traced on a sheet of virgin parchment. It is the sign which no man knoweth, save he who receiveth it. It is the secret character inscribed on the white stone mentioned in the prophecy of the youngest of the Twelve Masters. Your spirit shall be illuminated by divine fire and your body shall become pure as that of a child. Your penetration shall be without limits and great shall be also your power: you shall enter into that perfect repose which is the beginning of immortality: it shall be possible for you to say truly and apart from all pride: I am he who is.4
Levi considers this passage an allegory. He believed the “three chambers” to be physical life, religious aspirations, and philosophical life. The signatures of the genii represented a knowledge of the Great Arcanum and so on. But despite one spectacular attempt at spirit-raising in London, Levi was not a practicing magician, merely a student of occult theory. As such, he missed the point completely. But before examining what Cagliostro might really have been talking about—for the passage quoted is far more interesting than the allegorical jumble Levi saw in it—it is important to study the Grand Copt’s system for achieving physical regeneration.
Cagliostro advocated a forty-day retreat once every fifty years. The retreat was to begin during the full moon in May, with only one “faithful” person for company. During the forty-day term, a partial fast was to be observed, the menu consisting of a large glass of dew (collected from sprouting corn with a clean white linen cloth), followed by new, tender herbs, and ending with a biscuit or a crust of bread.
After seventeen days of this treatment, Cagliostro forecast the onset of slight bleeding, which was the sign to begin taking “Balm of Azoth.” The fifteenth-century physician and alchemist, Paracelsus, equates Azoth with the Universal Medicine, reputed to cure all ills including old age, but Levi suggests Cagliostro meant “Philosophical Mercury,” an alchemical substance that can be extracted from any metallic body. Hopefully, he referred to something different from ordinary mercury, for his dosage of six drops, taken morning and evening and increased by two drops daily until the end of the thirty-second day, would quickly prove fatal.