W Bro Stan Marut PPrJGD SLGR, Provincial Communications Team member, provides a brief insight to an interesting Masonic figure.
In the 18th Century there was an Italian of renown known for his healing abilities; a so-called masonic magician named Count Alessandro di Cagliostro from Sicily. Cagliostro was the alias of the Italian occultist Giuseppe Balsamo, an adventurer and self-styled magician. He became a glamorous figure associated with the royal courts of Europe where he pursued various occult arts, including psychic healing, and alchemy. His reputation lingered for many decades after his death, but continued to deteriorate, as he came to be regarded as a charlatan and impostor, this view being fortified by the savage attack of Thomas Carlyle in 1833, pronounced him the “Quack of Quacks”. Carlyle was an historian and essayist who wrote about Cagliostro after his death.
Cagliostro travelled extensively on his masonic pursuits and had a notion of setting up his “Egyptian Rite” of freemasonry. He briefly stayed in London residing in Soho which in the 18th Century was in Middlesex at that time. His motive for the founding of a so-called Egyptian Freemasonry was an effort to restore the original nature of the Craft as he saw it. He felt that the teachings of the Craft had fallen into disrepair and misunderstanding. All this was happening well into the days of Premier Grand Lodge. He had studied hermetic philosophy, the Kabbalah and alchemy. His story has merited a book in its own right. Suffice to say that his involvement in freemasonry led to condemnation at the hands of the Inquisition in 1789. He was an itinerant traveller across Europe when he stayed in London, ostensibly to promote his “brand of Freemasonry”. On 12th April 1777 “Joseph Cagliostro” was admitted as a Freemason into the Espérance Lodge No 238 (a French speaking Lodge) in Gerrard Street, Soho, London. In December 1777 Cagliostro and Serafina his wife left London.

Alchemy And Freemasonry
Alchemy is mentioned in certain rites from the 18th century, including Count Cagliostro’s Egyptian Rite, which refers to alchemy or chemistry—especially the way the process is said to transform certain substances. In these cases, alchemy is a metaphor for the journey of the Freemason as he (or she, in the case of Cagliostro’s Rite) continues through the higher degrees, transmuting to perfection through the discovery of the lost knowledge of the ancients. The symbol of the Ouroboros shown here is an alchemic symbol; the snake or serpent devouring its tail. This can also be found on the 18th Degree Collar of the Ancient & Accepted Rite; the Serpent being the symbol of wisdom thus forming a circle, the emblem of eternity. This symbol was a prominent emblem of the Egyptian Rite.
Hermeticism and alchemy were for him the pathway to divinity, to perfection of the soul and he was perplexed as to why they were regarded as separate entities. He firmly believed that all these principles be taught to achieve a balance; without one there could be no other – they co-existed as a total spiritual path. If regular Freemasonry could not understand this, then he would create his own ritual encompassing all the qualities he understood to be imperative for the perfection of mankind through the immortality of the soul, his healing practices, his alchemy and teachings in the Egyptian Rite were a blend of natural and supernatural sciences.
Cagliostro returned to Italy and in 1789 was denounced to the Inquisition because of his involvement in heresy and freemasonry which had been forbidden by the Papal Bull of 1738 – “In Eminenti Apostolatus Specula”. He was found guilty and sentenced to death, but Pope Pius VI commuted this to life imprisonment. Cagliostro died in prison in 1795. Ironically the pope who had sentenced him died in a French prison in 1799 at the time of Napoleon. Cagliostro’s life is an amazing story and well worth a read.

The Story of Cagliostro is a page turner, and it would appear that in his time he was larger than life.

The book shown above is currently available from Amazon.com. It is well worth a read and although Cagliostro is known in his native Italy, he is perhaps less well known in English freemasonry. A colourful and interesting character and now part of your daily advancement in masonic knowledge.