The life and death of Count Alessandro di Cagliostro is still somewhat of a mystery. He appears as an enigma, a challenge, an unfathomable puzzle. Freemasons love mysteries; they are always debating where, when and who they originated from. Historians love a mystery, always hoping there will be untold hidden depths to their research. This is why the legend of Count Cagliostro still tantalizes us and continues to evoke such strong opinions. Born in the progressive Enlightenment era of the 1700s, he was just one of a multitude of ‘characters’ that brightened the gloom left over from the Restoration period of the century before. He was an unquenchable flame of a man, existing ahead of his time, worshipped and condemned in equal measure. However, Cagliostro’s light continued to flicker where others faded away, his role as world traveller and philosopher gave way to the more important work as gifted healer and ‘rejuvenator of mankind’. His involvement in the moral work of Freemasonry triggered a vision of a kind of utopia whereby every man and woman could become divinely perfect. After much study of Hermetic philosophy, Cabala and alchemy, Count Cagliostro produced a Masonic ritual like no other; a ritual that would ultimately lead to his downfall and condemnation at the hands of the Inquisition. In 1789, he was arrested, tortured and condemned to death by the hand of the Roman Catholic Church. The crime was that of heresy … and of being a Freemason. His death sentence was mysteriously commuted to life imprisonment by Pope Pius himself, and he was incarcerated in the Inquisition fortress of San Leo in a rural area of Urbino, Tuscany, until his death in 1795. His memory lives on in that small village, his cell still visited and flowers laid in homage to a misunderstood and underestimated visionary.
Cagliostro saw himself as a reformer of mankind; he truly believed that it was his divine mission to spread the wisdom of Freemasonry throughout the world. However, it was a particular brand of Freemasonry that he discovered was to be his life’s work. His immense knowledge of ancient teachings led him to found his Rite of Egyptian Masonry, whereby he claimed that his followers could reach a state of spiritual perfection. Cagliostro was deemed to be a spiritual Master and his work as a healer and mystic was legendary throughout Europe. Letters of official commendation followed him on his travels and several very well-heeled dignitaries were indebted to him, becoming his sponsors. His mystical séances were popular amongst genteel society and his clairvoyant prophecies were uncannily accurate, often to the dismay of the recipient.
Deified by some and condemned by others, it did not take long for the tide to turn against him and some very unwelcome attention came in the form of a public accusation that he was in fact a notorious conman named Giuseppe (Joseph) Balsamo, a forger and thief born in humble surroundings in Palermo, Italy. Cagliostro’s own ‘memoirs’ recall a more noble beginning to his life, with his belief that he was brought up as an orphan by various dignitaries and his mentor, the alchemist Althotas. He answered the accusation in this way:
All over Europe I called myself Cagliostro. Concerning this noble title, one should judge according to my education and consider the honours which I received from persons so distinguished as the Mufti Salahaym, the Sherif of Mecca, Grand Master Pinto, Pope Rezzonico Clement XIII and other European greats. Isn’t therefore my title rather an underestimation than an exaggeration?
The shadowy figure of Joseph Balsamo has continued to follow him, and in modern times if you ask most people, particularly Italians and Freemasons, ‘Who was Count Cagliostro?’ they will invariably say,‘the charlatan, Giuseppe Balsamo.’ This popular consensus has sprung from various books written over the centuries which have often documented conflicting views and evidence as to the true identity of Count Cagliostro. For all the terrible things that have been reported about Cagliostro over the centuries by various biographers and commentators, there are those accounts that have taken his actions beyond face value and have read clearly between the lines. If we consider the works of W H R Trowbridge, Henry Ridgely Evans, Manly P Hall, Kenneth Mackenzie and possibly Arthur Edward Waite, they contain a much more sympathetic view. Not only were these authors able to see the good within the man but they understood Cagliostro’s spiritual values and his belief in an important ‘divine’ mission. It is very easy to dismiss him as just a mere charlatan or ‘an arch quack’, if only the negative qualities are discussed. After all, it is neither particularly exciting nor fashionable to be a good, spiritually inclined philanthropist – much more fun to peddle the image of a cheating, manipulative revolutionary with the intent to ruin nations and a 2,000-year-old religion.
We do not wish to attempt to prove this theory one way or another; one book could never contain everything about Cagliostro, and so our aim is to concentrate on the Count’s Masonic and spiritual work that in turn will reveal the teachings of Egyptian Freemasonry.
Forgotten for decades, the hand-written French manuscript of Egyptian Masonry has lain in the Library and Museum of the Grand Lodge of Scotland. It was donated by the widow of Scottish surgeon and Freemason, Charles Morison, who had recovered the text along with many others from the ruins of the Parisian Lodges destroyed during the French Revolution. It is thanks to the swift recovery of the manuscript by Morison, that we are now able to offer the first full English translation of one of the most important mystical rites of the past 300 years.
Within the Ritual of Maçonnerie Egyptienne we found a wealth of knowledge and wisdom; a path of initiation, of alchemical transmutation, a journey to enlightenment. Cagliostro had imbued his work with a hybrid of ancient wisdom; the teachings of the Old Testament, the arcana of Egypt and Persia, the eternal secret of alchemy. His vision was of perfection for mankind; could he be the man to show a way to eternal life? It was a very dangerous vision to have in 18th-century Europe and to the Catholic Church it implied heresy!
The term ‘heresy’ can be quite subjective and obviously for Cagliostro and his wife, being Catholic by birth and upbringing, they would be in severe trouble for breaching the doctrine. Not only did they risk excommunication but, if they continued with their heretical path, they would be prone to imprisonment, or worse – sentenced to death.
Soon a volatile mixture of unorthodox political and religious ideas crept into Cagliostro’s life and, combined with his often bombastic and over confident proclamations, it ensured that his life would be, to say the least, eventful. This man was destined to do great things but his character would also cause him to make powerful enemies.
On 28 April 1738, Pope Clement XII (1716–40) had issued a papal bull to make Masonic allegiance a sin and one for which a Roman Catholic would be immediately excommunicated. It has been said that certain secret societies existed in Europe during the 1700s, of which the most infamous were those of the Rosicrucians, the Hermeticists and the Illuminati. The Catholic Church and many of the aristocrats of the time were convinced that the Illuminati, along with the Freemasons, not only were in league to bring down the monarchy but were attempting to destroy the Catholic faith. The Catholic Church vehemently believed that Freemasonry was a serious threat, not only to the faith but also to the political system. Pope Clement specifically declared in the bull that he:
…condemned Freemasonry on the grounds of its naturalism, demand for oaths, religious indifferentism, and the possible threat to Church and State.
Eventually Cagliostro’s involvement in Freemasonry and mysticism were to be his downfall. Revolution was imminent and the Holy Church was becoming unnerved by the movement of radicals throughout Europe. Cagliostro’s move to Rome in 1789 was a powerful mistake and he was watched by the eagle eye of the Roman Inquisition. On 27 December 1789, Cagliostro, his wife and his secretary were all arrested and taken to the Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome, to await trial and sentence.
The most serious charge laid at the feet of the Count was of being a Freemason and allegedly an ‘Illuminate’. He was also accused of being ‘an Enchanter occupied with unlawful studies’, of deriding the holy faith, of doing harm to society, and spuriously of having large amounts of money from unknown sources.
We have not been able to see the Vatican’s official minutes of the interrogations of Count Cagliostro or his wife; the only testimony we have is from the edited version of the interviews and trial which was compiled by a Vatican notary, Father Marcello, and published as an official booklet under the title La Vie de Joseph Balsamo (The Life of Joseph Balsamo) and distributed throughout Europe in 1791. However, the couple would have been interrogated at the hands of the Inquisition, which leaves no doubt that the evidence gained may well have been ‘encouraged’.
The Inquisition was probably one of the most dangerous and creative inventors of torture to have ever been assembled in the name of religious justice. First established in 1184, it was effectively a tribunal or institution that would stand as judge in the case of heresy against the Catholic Church. The main weapon would be to employ torture which was deemed a legitimate means of extracting confessions, names or other information from those arrested on suspicion of heresy. The ‘extraction’ of information was enforced by jailers, officially only carried out for 15 minutes at a time and supposedly under the supervision of a doctor. The methods used were barbaric and intensely painful, often leading to premature death before the victim had even achieved a trial. In 1542 the Roman Inquisition was established by Pope Paul III with the title of ‘Congregation of the Holy Office’, and flourished until the mid 1800s. In 1908 the ‘Holy Office of the Inquisition’ became ‘The Sacred Congregation of the Holy Church’, and then changed once again in 1965 to the ‘Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith’, which it is called to this day.
The most famous cases to have been tried by the Inquisition included the philosopher, priest and occultist Giordano Bruno (1548–1600), who was found guilty of heresy and burnt alive at the stake on 16 February 1600; and Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), physicist and philosopher, who maintained that the Earth revolved around the Sun. Unfortunately for Galileo, this was contrary to Holy Scripture which stated that the Earth was immovable, and he was condemned as a heretic in 1633 and placed under house arrest for the remainder of his life, which ended on 8 January 1642. The Church has gone some way to make amends for Galileo’s treatment: in 1737 he was reburied on sacred ground, Pope Benedict XIV rehabilitated him in 1741 allowing publication of Galileo’s complete published works, and finally on 31 October 1992, Pope John Paul II, as a result of an official investigation, expressed regret for the way the affair was handled. Other victims of the Inquisition, including Giordano Bruno, were also ‘honoured’ with an expression of ‘profound sorrow’ over their treatment, but there was no hope of rehabilitation for their views were still considered profoundly against those of the Church. It is unlikely therefore that Alessandro Cagliostro will ever receive the same sympathy.
The trial of Cagliostro was prolonged and drawn out further by the Inquisition’s inability to provide any real proof of his ‘crimes’. Nonetheless, after 15 months languishing in the Castle of St Angelo, he was condemned to death on 7 April 1791. After the verdict was read out, all his documents, Masonic Regalia, diplomas from foreign Courts, family relics, books, instruments and, most distressingly, his manuscript of Egyptian Freemasonry were burnt before a large crowd in the Piazza della Minerva. Why did the Church hate Freemasonry so much? Was his ‘heresy’ in fact nothing more than an excuse to persecute one in a long line of groups stretching as far back as the Knights Templar? Over the centuries Freemasons have repeatedly been attacked by others, not just the Catholic Church. How many people are aware that during World War II, about 80,000 Freemasons perished under the persecution of Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) and Benito Mussolini (1883–1945), either shot or consigned to concentration camps along with the Jews, gypsies and other unfortunates? How many of us know that Freemasonry has been banned in many countries over the centuries? Catherine II of Russia (1729–96) had a hatred of Freemasonry. She eventually ordered the closure of the Lodges in the 1780s. However, her son and successor Emperor Paul I (1754–1801) re-instated it during the early 1800s. It was forbidden in Spain from 1740–80, Austria followed suit in 1764 until 1780; Switzerland banned it from 1744–98 and in recent times General Franco (Francisco Franco Bahamonde 1892–1975) suppressed Freemasonry.
Today Masons are still faced with opposition, not only from the Church but also from individuals and the media. Anti-Masonry lives on; its legacy provides the means to make Freemasons the only group to have to declare their membership when applying for governmental jobs. Anti-Masonry is a fairly innocuous term. It does not, however, convey the hatred, spite and prejudice held by those who, for a variety of reasons, attack Freemasonry. Henceforth throughout this book we will use the words: Masonophobe; Masonophobic and Masonophobia where previously anti-Mason, anti- Masonic, etc. would have been used.1
Our main concern when writing this book was to show the positive sides to a man who has long been denigrated and denounced as an imposter or charlatan. We wished to give credence to the altruist and mystic, the visionary and ‘friend of humanity’ – to offer an insight into the spiritual work of an Enlightenment hero who never recanted his Freemasonry or his magic. Hopefully we have achieved that.