Inevitably, Cagliostro, Rohan's colourful protégée, was dragged into the scandal and made its scapegoat. The king had him arrested, hastily tried and sentenced for fraud, and thrown into the Bastille in August 1785. There Cagliostro was to remain for nearly a year. Finally, in early June 1786, after much pressure from the Parisian public and behind-the-scenes manipulation by his Masonic friends, he was freed. It is reported that when Cagliostro walked out of the Bastille there was a huge Parisian crowd cheering him as a national hero.
Some historians have suggested that the trial of the Cardinal de Rohan and the unfair imprisonment of Cagliostro catalysed the growing discontent against the monarchy and led directly to the French Revolution. Rather than clear the queen's name in the scandal, the kangaroo courts set up to try Rohan and Cagliostro did the opposite. They highlighted the unpopularity and frivolity of the queen, the weakness of the king and his blatant abuse of the law. The German philosopher, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a Freemason, called the ‘Affair of the Diamond Necklace’ the ‘preface of the French Revolution!’30 The whole fiasco ended up making the Cardinal de Rohan and Cagliostro appear to be – as in a sense they were – the victims of a corrupt state ruled by a weak and pompous monarch.
Nonetheless, Cagliostro wisely decided to move to England. There he was at first greeted with much enthusiasm by the Masonic lodges but his ‘Egyptian Rite’ did not prove popular and he ended up being shunned and ridiculed.31
Prophet of Revolution plays with fire in Rome
Later in 1786, safely in London, Cagliostro published his famous Letter to the French People in which he urged them, with incredible premonition, to make a ‘peaceful revolution’, to destroy the Bastille and to replace it, perhaps, with a ‘Temple of Isis’.32
But Cagliostro left his place of safety. In the spring of 1789 he made the same fatal error as Giordano Bruno almost two centuries before: he decided to return to Italy. He arrived in Rome in May 1789, two months before the Parisian mob would storm the Bastille. In Rome Freemasonry had officially been banned since 1738, and Cagliostro, who tried to set up an ‘Egyptian Rite’ lodge there was, quite literally, playing with fire.
When the news of the fall of the Bastille reached Rome, it caused pandemonium at the Vatican, where the cardinals were alarmed by the virulent anti-clerical tone of the French anarchists. Rumors of Masonic plots were rife. By then the Vatican had a complete file on Cagliostro's activities, and he was promptly accused of subversion and heresy. On 27 December 1789 Pope Clement XII signed the order for Cagliostro's arrest. He was at first sentenced to suffer the same awful fate as Bruno and the Cathar perfecti of earlier eras, but it was thought to be unwise to have yet another public burning in such unsettled times. Accordingly the pope showed ‘clemency’ by altering the death sentence to one of life imprisonment. Cagliostro was taken to a prison at San Leo near Naples, cast into a dungeon there, and never seen again. It was eventually discovered that he had died in 1795, at the age of 52, in what can only be described as very suspicious circumstances.33
Historians downplay Cagliostro's role as a catalyst for the French Revolution, and he is often presented – we have to say understandably – as some sort of embezzler, charlatan or con man. The attitude of many Freemasons seems to be that his activities were a brief and best-forgotten embarrassment. Yet the furore caused by his trial in Paris, and the fact that an estimated 8,000 citizens, many of them Freemasons, came to cheer him when he was released from the Bastille, seem to tell another story.34 There is at least one Masonic historian, Manly P. Hall, who likewise seems to regard Cagliostro's career in a positive light: [Cagliostro] founded the Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry, which received into its mysteries many of the French nobility and was regarded favorably by the most learned minds of Europe. Having established the Egyptian Rite, Cagliostro declared himself to be an agent of the Order of the Knights Templars and to have received initiation from them on the Isle of Malta … Called upon the carpet by the Supreme Council of France, it was demanded of Cagliostro that he prove by what authority he had founded a Masonic lodge in Paris independent of the Grand Orient. Of such surpassing mentality was Cagliostro that the Supreme Council found it difficult to secure an advocate qualified to discuss with Cagliostro philosophic Masonry and the ancient Mysteries he claimed to represent. Court de Gébelin – the greatest Egyptologist of his day and an authority on ancient philosophies – was chosen as the outstanding scholar. A time was set and the Brethren convened. Attired in an Oriental coat and a pair of violet-colored breeches, Cagliostro was hauled before this council of his peers. Court de Gébelin asked three questions and then sat down, admitting himself disqualified to interrogate a man so much his superior in every branch of learning. Cagliostro then took the floor, revealing to the assembled Masons not only his personal qualifications, but prophesying the future of France. He foretold the fall of the French throne, the Reign of Terror, and the fall of the Bastille. At a later time he revealed the dates of the death of Marie-Antoinette and the King, and also the advent of Napoleon. Having finished his address, Cagliostro made a spectacular exit, leaving the French Masonic lodge in consternation and utterly incapable of coping with the profundity of his reasoning. Though no longer regarded as a ritual in Freemasonry, the Egyptian Rite is available and all who read it will recognize its author to have been no more a charlatan than was Plato.35
The noble traveller
Antoine Court de Gébelin, the man who confirmed Cagliostro's knowledge of Egyptian esotericism, was himself a prominent member of the influential ‘Nine Sisters’ lodge as well as a proponent of the view that the Tarot card system was of Egyptian origin. Interestingly, Court de Gébelin believed that the ‘Star’ in the Tarot deck labeled XVI was, in fact, Sirius, the ‘star of Isis’.36 Later we shall see how his Tarot became interwoven with the ‘higher degrees’ of Scottish Rite Freemasonry. Meanwhile it is reasonable to conclude that whatever one's opinion of Cagliostro the man, it is clear that Cagliostro, the ‘Great Copt’ and founder of the ‘Egyptian Rite’, had an enormous psychological impact on the events that were slowly unfolding in Paris.
It is reported, for example, that while he was in that city, and at very height of his fame, Cagliostro had much hoped that his Egyptian Rite would receive official recognition from the Duke of Orléans, Philippe, the king's cousin, who was at the time the Grand Master of the Grand Orient.37 Through the intervention of the Duke of Montmorency-Luxembourg, who was the official Protector of Cagliostro's Egyptian Rite as well as the chief administrator of the Grand Orient de France, it was arranged for Philippe d’Orléans to visit Cagliostro's Isis lodge in the Rue Saint-Claude. It seems that Philippe d’Orléans was duly impressed and offered his trust to Cagliostro.38 Such a connection, as we will see, almost certainly had some repercussions on the dramatic events that were soon to implicate the Duke of Orléans in the 1789 Revolution.
Apparently during his trial in Paris in May 1786 the judge had bluntly asked Cagliostro, ‘Who are you?’ to which Cagliostro replied: ‘I am a noble traveler’.39 Indeed, Cagliostro had often claimed that he had traveled extensively in the East, particularly in Egypt and other Islamic countries. Bearing this in mind, the historian and esoteric researcher Joscelyn Godwin highlights something that may further explain Cagliostro's mysterious reply to his French judges: The initiatic journey to Islamic soil has been a repeated theme of European esotericism, ever since the Templars settled in Jerusalem and the mythical Christian Rosenkreuz learnt his trade in Damascus. We find it in the lives of Paracelsus and Cagliostro, then, as travel became easier, in a whole host that includes P. B. Randolph, H. P. Blavatsky, Max Theon, G. I. Gurdjieff, Aleister Crowley, René Guénon, R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz, and Henry Corbin. There was very likely some element of this in Napoleon's Egyptian campaign of 1797, when he announced to an astounded audience that he, too, was a Muslim …40
Illuminated by Reason
Other researchers, however, have wondered whether Cagliostro's answer that he was a ‘n
oble traveler’ was not perhaps a coded message in Masonic language aimed at his judges in the hope that they would recognize him as an initiate of the anti-clerical and anti-monarchical Illuminati of Bavaria.41
Originally known as the ‘Order of the Perfectibilists’, we saw in Chapter Sixteen that these Illuminati of Bavaria were a very short-lived but controversial brotherhood known in particular for their radical anticlerical stance. The Illuminati were founded in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt, an ex-Jesuit priest who was professor of law at the University of Ingolstadt, and given an official structure in 1779 by the Baron Knigge, a Freemason and member of the Templar Order of the Strict Observance founded by the Baron von Hund.42 One of Weishaupt's remarks reveals the Illuminati's ambitious plans for social and cultural reform: Princes and nations will disappear without violence from the earth, the human race will become one family and the world the abode of reasonable men. Morality alone will bring about this change imperceptibly.43
According to Masonic historian Albert G. Mackey, the ‘professed object’ of the Bavarian Illuminati was: … by the mutual assistance of its members, to attain the highest possible degree of morality and virtue, and to lay the foundation for the reformation of the world by the association of good men to oppose the progress of moral evil.44
In short, what the Illuminati were after was nothing less than a massively ambitious global reformation programme, a sort of ‘new world order’, calling for the eradication of monarchies under one universal power run by ‘reasonable men’. It is therefore of great interest that in a rather curious statement made on the other side of the Atlantic by Thomas Jefferson, the name of Weishaupt crops up again in connection with the idea of rendering men ‘wise and virtuous’: As Weishaupt lived under the tyranny of a despot and priests, he knew that caution was necessary even in spreading information, and the principles of pure morality. This has given an air of mystery to his views … If Weishaupt had written here [i.e. in America], where no secrecy is necessary in our endeavours to render men wise and virtuous, he would not have thought of any secret machinery for that purpose.45
Although Jefferson does not specifically mention the word ‘reason’, it is evident that it was very much in his mind when writing this statement. Jefferson himself practically venerated ‘reason’ and was dubbed the ‘man of reason’ par excellence, as another of his famous statements clearly shows: It rests now with ourselves alone to enjoy in peace and concord the blessings of self-government, so long denied to mankind; to show by example the sufficiency of human reason for the care of human affairs …46
Indeed, ‘reason’ was to become the principal virtue of both the French and American Revolutions, and in France, as we recall from Chapter One, a ‘Cult of Reason’ was even proposed as a substitute for Christianity.
The eye in the pyramid
Meanwhile, the ultra-radical Illuminati of Bavaria, that curious and unholy progeny of Masons and Jesuits, began to send agents and emissaries all over Europe – hence, perhaps, Cagliostro's definition of himself as a ‘noble traveller’. Like the Rosicrucians before them, the Bavarian Illuminati were extremely secretive and preferred to travel incognito, often assuming pseudonyms and code names. Weishaupt himself took up the code name ‘Spartacus’. The town of Ingolstadt, where the Illuminati had their headquarters, was codenamed ‘Eleusis’ and the whole of Bavaria was codenamed ‘Egypt’. Perceived as highly revolutionary and anti-clerical, the Illuminati were violently opposed by the Church and, more specifically, the Jesuits, who eventually persuaded the elector of Bavaria, Karl Theodore, to outlaw them in Germany in 1784.47
Anti-Masonic groups often claim that the insignia of the Illuminati was the ‘eye in the pyramid’, and that the documents that bear proof of this were confiscated by the elector of Bavaria, and are today (for reasons that need not detain us) kept under lock and key at the British Museum.48 The same symbol, however, was well known long before the Illuminati came across it. It was widely used, for example, by Hermetists and Cabalists from the 16th to the 18th centuries.49
Weishaupt, it will be remembered, was a former Jesuit priest, and as such must certainly have been familiar with the works of Athanasius Kircher, the Hermetic-Cabalistic Jesuit we met in Chapter Fifteen – a magus, as the reader will recall, who had been particularly involved with Egyptian obelisks and, through a proxy, the exploration of the Giza pyramids in 1637. Kircher made profuse use of the ‘eye in the pyramid’ symbol. It can be seen, for example, on the cover of his book Ars Magna Sciendi, (the ‘Great Art of Knowledge’),50 and also on the top of an Egyptian obelisk surmounted by the so-called Hapsburg double-eagle that Kircher had designed specially for the German Emperor Ferdinand III.51 Let us point out in passing that the same ‘double-eagle’ symbol, as well as the ‘eye in the pyramid’ symbol, are commonly used in the Supreme Council of the 33rd Degree, the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry.52
In July 1776, the same year that Weishaupt founded the Illuminati of Bavaria – and presumably by a curious fluke of history – the same ‘eye in the pyramid’ or ‘eye in the triangle’ symbol was proposed for the Great Seal of the newly created United States of America.53 It was designed by Pierre-Eugène Simitière, a Swiss born artist who had emigrated to the colonies in 1766 and settled in Philadelphia. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, both signatories of the Declaration of Independence, were members of the committee set up to oversee the design, and a drawing of the Great Seal of the United States in the latter's own hand done in 1776 (preserved in the Library of Congress archives) clearly shows the ‘eye in the triangle’.54 We shall see later how also in that eventful July of 1776, Franklin left America for France as part of a congressional delegation to be based in Paris, and there was hailed as a hero of the American Revolution by the fashionable salons and the Masonic lodges.
The Illuminati and the Duke of Orléans
Historians of this period have noticed the coincidence of the nearly simultaneous events of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in America and the founding of Weishaupt's Illuminati in Germany. It is not known with certainty whether there had been any direct contact between Franklin, Jefferson and the Illuminati of Bavaria through the channel of French and German Masonic lodges, but it is nonetheless certain that both Franklin and Jefferson knew of Weishaupt's organisation – and we quoted above Jefferson's remarks on Weishaupt. Jefferson's own presence in Paris from 1784 to September 1789, makes direct contact between the two a strong possibility, as we shall see in Chapter Nineteen.
The general view is that the Illuminati of Bavaria simply died out after their persecution in Germany in 1784.55 Not everyone, however, is convinced. Some believe that Illuminati members infiltrated Masonic lodges and stirred up political unrest in several European countries, most especially in France where the Revolution would finally break out in 1789.
One of the most prolific proponents of the ‘Illuminati theory’ was the distinguished 1920s British writer and historian Nesta Webster. Webster argued that a variety of secret plots hatched by the Illuminati and the French Freemasons combined with other factors to precipitate the Revolution.56 Webster, and many others like her, see the Duke of Orléans, the Grand Master of the Masonic Order of the Grand Orient, as the main culprit and behind-the-scenes agitator of the Parisian revolutionary crowds and, more specifically, the crowd that would storm the Bastille on 14 July 1789.
That the Duke of Orléans played a vital role in the events of the Revolution cannot be denied; but to what extent, and how far-reaching was his influence, are matters that have long been debated by historians. There are records from the Masonic lodge La Parfaite Union in the city of Rennes, that leave little doubt that the Freemasons saw him as the main force driving the events that led to the Revolution: It is from our temples [lodges] and from those elevated into the holy philosophy [Freemasonry] that emanated the first sparks of sacred fire which, spreading rapidly from east to west and from south to north of France, embraced the hearts of all citizens … None of us, my dear Bret
hren, can ignore that it was our Grand Master, the Duc d’Orléans, who has participated more than anyone else in the happy Revolution that has just begun …57
If what this Masonic lodge says is true, then it is not impossible that the Duke of Orléans could have been in collusion with agents of the Bavarian Illuminati. French historian Jean-André Faucher shows that one of the Duke's closest associates and protégés, the Count of Mirabeau – the most outspoken of all the French revolutionaries, had in the year 1776, ‘visited the city of Brunswick and met up with the Illuminati of Bavaria.’58 And although some historians have raised doubts that Mirabeau was a Freemason, counter-evidence has surfaced that confirms Mirabeau's membership of the brotherhood from at least the year 1776.59
There are also telling statements made by two famous Masons of the time, the enigmatic Count of Saint-Germain and the hypnotic Franz Anton Mesmer, that strongly suggest the presence of Illuminati agents in Paris in the years preceding the Revolution. Several researchers have suggested that the term ‘noble traveller’ used by Cagliostro during his court trial may have been a secret password of theirs.60 It is surely also significant that Cagliostro, during his trial in Rome, admitted having been a member of the Illuminati.61
Out goes the Duke of Orléans, in comes Philippe Égalité
The Duke of Orléans was a descendent of Frederick V of the Palatinate and Elizabeth Stuart of England, that ill-fated royal couple of Bohemia who seem to have unsuspectingly catalysed the Rosicrucian fervour in Germany and the events of the Thirty Years War. The Duke's great-greatgrandfather, also named Philippe d’Orléans, was the second son of Louis XIII and thus younger brother to the Sun King Louis XIV. In 1661 Philippe had married Henrietta of England, daughter of Charles I, and in 1671 he married again, this time to Elizabeth Charlotte, princess of the Palatinate and daughter of Elector Palatine Charles Louis, son of Frederick V and Elizabeth of Bohemia.62
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