Alessandro Cagliostro

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Count Alessandro di Cagliostro (June 2, 1743 – August 26, 1795) was a traveller, occultist and Freemason. "Cagliostro" is widely held to have been an alias for the charlatan Giuseppe Balsamo, born to a poor family in Palermo, Sicily. Balsamo was a petty criminal who, in his most famous crime, claimed aptitude in alchemy to swindle a man out of his gold. The identification of Cagliostro with Giuseppe is not certain, however, being based mainly upon the untrustworthy testimony of the French spy and blackmailer Theveneau de Morande, and later upon his confession to the Inquisition, obtained through torture.

Cagliostro himself claimed to have been born of Christians of noble birth, but abandoned as an orphan upon the island of Malta. He claimed to have travelled as a child to Medina, Mecca, and Cairo, and upon return to Malta to have been initiated into the Sovereign Military Order of the Knights of Malta, with whom he studied alchemy, the Kabbalah and magic.

1 Life and travels
2 Affair of the diamond necklace
3 Betrayal and imprisonment
4 In fiction
5 Links and references

[edit] Life and travels

What we do know is that Cagliostro became well-known in Naples and later Rome, where he met and married his wife Lorenza Feliciani. They travelled together to London, where he was initiated into Freemasonry, possibly by the Comte de Saint-Germain. He adopted as his secret sign the symbol of Ouroboros; the snake that bites its own tail. He soon founded the Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry in The Hague, which initiated men and women in separate lodges and had an influence on the foundation of the masonic Rite of Misraim. He travelled throughout Russia, Germany, and later France, spreading the influence of the Egyptian Rite and also claiming to be a magnetic healer of great power. His fame grew to the point that he was even recommended as a physician to Benjamin Franklin during a stay in Paris.

He was an extraordinary forger. In his autobiography, Giacomo Casanova narrates an encounter with Cagliostro who was able to forge a letter of Casanova despite being unable to understand it.

Occult historian Lewis Spence comments in his entry on Cagliostro that the swindler put his finagled wealth to good use by starting and funding a chain of maternity hospitals and orphanages around the continent.

[edit] Affair of the diamond necklace

He was prosecuted in the affair of the diamond necklace which involved Louis XVI of France and Marie Antoinette, and was imprisoned in France for fraud. He was held in the Bastille for nine months, but finally acquitted, when no evidence could be found connecting him to the affair. Nonetheless, he was asked to leave France, and left for England. This was where he was accused by Theveneau de Morande of being Giuseppe Balsamo, which he refuted in his Open letter to the English People, forcing a retraction and apology from Morande.

[edit] Betrayal and imprisonment

Cagliostro left England to visit Rome, where he met two people who asked him to initiate them into the Egyptian Rite. However, they proved to be spies of the Inquisition. Some accounts hold that his wife was the one who initially betrayed him to the Inquisition. On December 27, 1789, he was arrested and imprisoned in the Castel Sant'Angelo. Soon afterwards he was sentenced to death on the charge of being a Mason. The Pope changed his sentence, however, to life imprisonment in the Castel Sant'Angelo. After attempting to escape he was relocated to the Fortress of San Leo. He died on August 26, 1795.

[edit] In fiction

Alexandre Dumas, père used Cagliostro in several of his novels.
Maurice Leblanc created the character of Josephine Balsamo, a.k.a. Countess Cagliostro as the arch-enemy of Arsène Lupin.
The Phantom comic book featured Cagliostro as a character in the story "The Cagliostro Mystery" from 1988, written by Norman Worker and drawn by Carlos Cruz.
In the DC Comics universe, Cagliostro is described as an immortal (JLA Annual 2), a descendant of Leonardo da Vinci as well as an ancestor of Zatara and Zatanna (Secret Origins 27).
In the Image comic book series Spawn, a mystic entity known as Cogliostro is the mentor of Al Simmons (aka Spawn)
A more modern Count Cagliostro would antagonize antihero Lupin III in the animated Japanese film Lupin the Third: The Castle of Cagliostro.
In a story arc of the Belphegor webcomic, written by Declan O'Connell.
Caligostro has been played in film by Orson Welles (Black Magic, 1949), Howard Vernon (Erotic Rites of Frankenstein, 1972) and Christopher Walken (The Affair of the Necklace, 2001).
Cagliostro is a character in Robert Anton Wilson's The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles.
Cagliostro is frequently alluded to in Umberto Eco's novel Foucault's Pendulum.
Mikhail Kuzmin wrote a novella called The Marvelous Life of Giuseppe Balsamo, Count Cagliostro (1916).
Caligostro makes brief appearances as a vampire sorcerer in Kim Newman's Anno Dracula Series.
Cagliostro appears as a criminal mastermind bent on upsetting the world economy with lead bars temporarily turned to gold in the Wonder Woman episode "Diana's Disappearing Act". His accomplice was Morgana La Fay, but it appears that that was simply a stage name and she was not the same villain as represented in the DC comic.
Cagliostro is Dracula's arch-foe in Marvel Comics' Tomb of Dracula series, Marie Laveau's lover and an enemy of Doctor Strange.
Cagliostro appears as a Grand Master of the Cabal in GURPS Cabal
Cagliostro is compared to author Ken Kesey in Tom Wolfe's book "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" (1968).
Cagliostro is a side character in Le Chevalier D'Eon, a historical fantasy animation from Japan. He is loosely based on the historical figure.