The Last Alchemist: Count Cagliostro, Master of Magic in the Age of Reason

If this book were a historical novel--say by someone like Gary Jennings--you'd say the author had gone so far overboard in piling up incidents that he strained credulity. That makes it all the more remarkable that Mr. McCalman's is a work of non-fiction. Giuseppe Balsamo, Count Cagliostro (1743-95) led a life filled with love affairs, cons, duels, frauds, pimping, scandals, encounters with the famous and infamous, and shrouded it all in so much mystery--especially Masonic mythology--that it has invited artists from Mozart to Dumas to Goethe to William Blake to Umberto Eco draw upon it for their works. But as this fascinating narrative biography amply demonstrates the topic is nowhere near exhausted. You can get some sense of Cagliostro's intriguing multiple personalities just from the chapter titles--Freemason; Necromancer; Shaman; Copt; Prophet; Rejuvenator; Heretic--and the Epilogue, appropriately subtitled: Immortal. As the chapters suggest, to some degree, Cagliostro represents the persistence of the supernatural and mystical at the very center of the Age of Reason. Stripped down to essentials that can't possibly begin to do the story justice: Giuseppe Balsamo was low born in Sicily, but styling himself Count Cagliostro, loaning out his beguiling wife, Seraphina, and claiming magical healing powers and both a legitimate background in Freemasonry and a bogus one in an occult Egyptian-rite Freemasonry was able to gain entree to the best social circles in Europe, though he proceeded to be chased from Russia by Catherine the Great, imprisoned in the Bastille by Louis XVI over the notorious "Affair of the Necklace," and died in the prison he'd been sent to by the Inquisition. If all of that sounds entertaining be assured that Mr. McCalman makes it very much so. However, in the end there's a dark side to the tale too, for the author convincingly argues that Cagliostro did much to make possible the myriad conspiracy theories that did so much damage to Europe in the ensuing decades and some of which persist to this day. Mr. McCalman notes that, on the one hand, popular writers conflated him into the mythical Wandering Jew and made him "a fashionably moody and anguished rebel, tilting against oppressions of the spirit" while, on the other, his presence lurks behind many of the delusions about Masons and Illuminati secretly controlling the world and says: "It would be unfair to blame Cagliostro for the actions of mythologizers, but Umberto Eco has shown that the idea of Masonic conspiracy has borne some terrible fruit. During the early twentieth, Jews rather than Masons became the prime target. By the time it reached a bitter young man in Vienna called Adolph Hitler, the idea had taken a new and monstrous shape. Templars, Illuminati, and Egyptian Masons had given way to the Protocols of Zion, the Twelve Tribes of Israel, and the world conspiracy of Judaism. Whatever one may think of Cagliostro, it is devastating to think that he was in some way

This book is a delightful insight into one of the most fascinating and influential periods in the history of Western Civilization. This book will be of interest and entertainment to Masons and non-Masons (even anti-Masons) alike.Professor McCalman is a historian who delights in literary form. In his paper "Cultural History and Cultural Studies: the Linguistic Turn Five Years On" Iain McCalman tells us "Ever since a boy I have always believed intensely in the 'storyness' of life. Our world is suffused with stories. Consciously or not we use them continually to make sense of the mass of incoherent facts and sensations that immerse us."This shows in his book "The Last Alchemist". Indeed by the fourth page of his introduction he has wasted no time to paint for us with a vivid brush of words:"The Ballaro market that abuts Cagliostro's birthplace looks, feels, and smells like a casbah. It reminded me of parts of Cairo or even of Zanzibar: frying peanut oil, saffron, cloves, garlic, and rotting garbage. The flagstones are streaked with dust blown from North African deserts or smeared with slops tossed from windows and balconies. You have to step carefully because the tenements cast deep shadows. The paint on most of the buildings is covered in fungal-like stains. Bits of iron hold up the door frame; washing flaps on rigging strung between the houses."The tone set and our attention grabbed, McCalman does not disappoint and continues to draw us into a very different time when a newborn Age of Reason battled with the institutions that had dominated Humanity since its beginning. A world where a common flimflam man can rise up from the gutter, lie and steal his way to prominence, and before his death help change history itself.Which brings us to the subject of this book, one Guiseppe Balsamo who in the process of altering the history of Europe also contributed heavily to the burden still carried by the Freemasons of our modern time. That he was able to do so, we learn from McCalman, is due to a youthful mastery of chemistry and religious symbology, an intervening period of roguery and flimflam, and the social contacts earned from a job he talked his way into with the Knights Hospitalier of Saint John. McCalman runs us quickly through this period but with the benefit of his scholarship and passionate writing style we are led to understand this formative period of the man the world would later come to know as Count Cagliostro.How does all this relate to modern Freemasonry? In a direct sense it does not relate at all - today's Masons will not find much modern Freemasonry as they read McCalman's accounts of how different Masonic lodges in different part of Europe embraced Cagliostro while repeatedly suspending their better judgements. As with all con-men Cagliostro simply plays on their greed, lust, and other flaws. Most Masons of this time were learned and successful men, interested mainly in an education and social activity unburdened by the offi

Wow. I wasn't sure I'd really get into this book when I first started it, but I was hooked almost immediately. What an incredible and complex individual! The Last Alchemist: Count Cagliostro, Master of Magic in the Age of Reason by Iain McCalman is a remarkable biography of what amounted to a world class con-artist. What makes him such an enigmatic individual is the fact that he was not simply a sociopath, but exhibited a compassion for the poor that endeared him to many. From the point of view of history, as I've often said before, one often learns more from fringe figures and marginal places about periods in history than one does from those on center stage. The story of Count Cagliostro confirms once again that belief. Although the author, and in fact many of the Count's contemporaries, credit him with "causing" the French Revolution and other disastrous events, I would say that he was more a symptom of the times than the cause of their events. This is in fact the stance of at least one of the author's sources as well. The world of the 18th Century was one of transition (although one could plausibly argue that this is true of every age!). The highly centralized, aristocratic and tyrannical political systems of the time were gradually being confronted with issues and intellectual concepts with which they were unprepared to deal. The Catholic church, the other major political player, had been playing a losing game with science, intellectualism, and protestantism for well over two centuries, and had retreated to the old stand by of incarcerating its enemies when they presented the opportunity. The arbitrary abuse of individual rights, the desperate poverty of the bulk of the European population, the marginal existence that was reality for even the middle class in times of economic down turn, made it obvious that changes were well overdue. This was the age of the philosophers of the American and French revolutions, of Paine, Voltaire, Hume, Rousseau and others whose literary support of human rights and of elected self government created a foment of intellectual unrest that ultimately produced much of what we consider to be the "modern" way of life. The selfish, greedy and often foolish individuals in positions of power and privilege made ready targets for someone of the Count's talent and predilections. It is no accident that this was also the period of Casanova and Jeane de Mott, and other major imposters. Concerned only with personal vanity, accumulation of wealth and power, in short with the status quo at all levels, the wealthy of Europe were easy prey for someone with promises of physical youth and increased sexual prowess, with unlimited wealth and personal power, and with immortality. If it had not been so tragic in other ways, the tales of some of these people and their encounters with the Count would have made wonderful comedy. It is no wonder that the Count and his exploits provided creative people with plots for opera

Like Le Comte de Saint Germain and Michel Nostradamus, there have been some truly mysterious figures who stalked Europe in the past.Nostradamus came on the scene in the early 16th century, and many still believe that he could foretell the future. Certainly Europe's leaders, including royalty, listened to him closely.Saint Germain, who first came on stage a couple of hundred years later, it is often rumored lived more than one lifetime, and even claimed to have known Jesus of Nazareth. And there have been others down through the ages.One of the most notorious, though less well known than Nostradamus and St. Germain perhaps, was born in Palermo, Sicily, in 1743. He was Giuseppe Balsamo, but is better remembered as Count Alessandro de Cagliostro, and sometimes as Colonel Joseph Pellegrini--another alias. He traveled throughout Europe, Russia and Northern Africa mostly with his young and beautiful wife, Seraphina, whose feminine favors opened many doors for the pair. Apparently, although he is proclaimed to have "loved" her, he considered her his property, and took full advantage of her "assets". and jealousy was not a hindrance.The pair traveled in rags, as pilgrims, and in lacquered carriages as royalty. Cagliostro (the name taken from a relative) was revered as a near saint, who succored the poorest of the poor with his healing arts, and as a mountebank and chalatan, who bilked the wealthy with his schemes.This account of his life is not a true biography, but rather an account of only seven of his adventures, which Iain McCalman, the author, has researched and with which he entertains us.Count Cagliostro made many powerful enemies, as well as admirers, including Goethe, who was inspired by him to write Faust, and who detested him; Mozart who was inspired by him to write The Magic Flute, Marie Antoinette, from whom he attempted to steal a valuable necklace, and which affair got him thrown into the Bastille by Louis XIV; and Catherine the Great had him booted out of Russia as a political subversive when he tried to convert her to Freemasonry. But, perhaps his greatest undoing was the hostile impression he made on Casanova, who turned him in to the Inquisition for being a practitioner of magic (inspired by jealousy, no doubt) and Pope Pius VI had him imprisoned for heresy, where he spent the last five years of his life, dying at the age of fifty-two.He was a champion of Egyptian Freemasonry, had ties with the Illuminati, was an alchemist, magician, healer, and of course, a confidence man.An intriguing story. I recommend it to you.Joseph (Joe) Pierreauthor of The Road to Damascus: Our Journey Through Eternityand other books

The new biography of Count Cagliostro, The Last Alchemist, is a fascinating read, the biographical equivalent of a beach book, as it were. Its author, Iain McCalman has done a commendable job of detailing all the important events in the life of this interesting product of this time. The age of enlightenment produced a bursting forth of superstitions and charlatans and the Count Cagliostro will always stand as the supreme example, achieving an immortality that would have thrilled him. His story nicely touches the lives of many other important figures of his time, such as Catherine the Great, Casanova, and many figures of pre-Revolutionary France through his invovlement in the Affair of the Diamond Necklace. The story is told well and swiftly and makes for a great read. It could have been a little longer, though, with added context, such as more information on the political situation in Russia and France or further details on Freemasonry or Rosicrucianism for example, to help the reader understand more fully the world the Count was traveling through and, often, manipulating. Still, a very interesting biography.