Alessandro Cagliostro 1

Alessandro Cagliostro

Alessandro Cagliostro

Count Alessandro di Cagliostro (2 June 1743 – 26 August 1795) wasthe alias of the occultist Giuseppe Balsamo (also called JosephBalsamo), an Italian adventurer.

Origin

The history of Cagliostro is shrouded in rumour, propaganda andmysticism. Some effort was expended to ascertain his true identitywhen he was arrested because of his possible participation in the Affairof the Diamond Necklace.

Goethe relates in his Italian Journey that the identification ofCagliostro with Giuseppe Balsamo was ascertained by a lawyer fromPalermo who, on official request, had sent a dossier with copies of thepertaining documents to France. Goethe met the lawyer in April 1787 and saw the documents and Balsamo'spedigree: Balsamo's great-grandfather Matteo Martello had two daughters, Maria who married Giuseppe Bracconeri,and Vincenza who married Giuseppe Cagliostro. Maria and Giuseppe Bracconeri had three children, Matteo,Antonia, and Felicitá who married Pietro Balsamo. The latter couple's son was Giuseppe Balsamo who waschristened with the name of his greatuncle and eventually adopted his surname too. Pietro Balsamo was the son of abookseller, Antonino Balsamo, who had declared bankruptcy before dying at age 44. Felicitá Balsamo was still alivein Palermo then, and Goethe visited her and her daughter.

Cagliostro himself stated during the trial following the Affair of the Diamond Necklace to have been born ofChristians of noble birth, but abandoned as an orphan upon the island of Malta. He claimed to have travelled as achild to Medina, Mecca, and Cairo, and upon return to Malta to have been initiated into the Sovereign Military Orderof the Knights of Malta, with whom he studied alchemy, the Kabbalah and magic, much of the typical mysticalbackground asserted by many impostors and charlatans of those times. Goethe classifies this as "silly fairy-tales."

Early lifeHe was born to a poor family in Albergheria, which was once the old Jewish Quarter of Palermo, Sicily. Despite hisfamily's precarious financial situation, his grandfather and uncles made sure the young Giuseppe received a solideducation: he was taught by a tutor and later became a novice in the Catholic Order of St. John of God, from whichhe was eventually expelled.During his period as a novice in the order, Balsamo learned chemistry as well as a series of spiritual rites. In 1764,when he was seventeen, he convinced Vincenzo Marano—a wealthy goldsmith—of the existence of a hiddentreasure buried several hundred years prior at Mount Pellegrino. The young man's knowledge of the occult, Maranoreasoned, would be valuable in preventing the duo from being attacked by magical creatures guarding the treasure. Inpreparation for the expedition to Mount Pellegrino, however, Balsamo requested seventy pieces of silver fromMarano.When the time came for the two to dig up the supposed treasure, Balsamo attacked Marano, who was left bleedingand wondering what had happened to the boy—in his mind, the beating he had been subjected to had been the workof djinns.The next day, Marano paid a visit to Balsamo's house in via Perciata (since then renamed via Conte di Cagliostro), where he learned the young man had left the city. Balsamo (accompanied by two accomplices) had fled to the city of Messina. By 1765–66, Balsamo found himself on the island of Malta, where he became an auxiliary (donato) for the

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Sovereign Military Order of Malta and a skilled pharmacist.

TravelsIn early 1768 Balsamo left for Rome, where he managed to land himself a job as a secretary to Cardinal Orsini.[1]

The job proved boring to Balsamo and he soon started leading a double life, selling magical "Egyptian" amulets andengravings pasted on boards and painted over to look like paintings.[2] Of the many Sicilian expatriates andex-convicts he met during this period, one introduced him to a fourteen-year-old girl named Lorenza SeraphinaFeliciani, whom he married.The couple moved in with Lorenza's parents and her brother in the vicolo delle Cripte, adjacent to the strada deiPellegrini.[3] Balsamo's coarse language and the way he incited Lorenza to display her body contrasted deeply withher parents' deep rooted religious beliefs. After a heated discussion, the young couple left.At this point Balsamo befriended Agliata, a forger and swindler, who proposed to teach Balsamo how to forgeletters, diplomas and a myriad of other official documents. In return, though, Agliata sought sexual intercourse withBalsamo's young wife, a request to which Balsamo acquiesced.[4]

The couple traveled together to London, where Balsamo allegedly met the Comte de Saint-Germain. He traveledthroughout Europe, especially to Courland, Russia, Poland, Germany, and later France. His fame grew to the pointthat he was even recommended as a physician to Benjamin Franklin during a stay in Paris.

Affair of the diamond necklaceHe was prosecuted in the affair of the diamond necklace which involved Marie Antoinette and Prince Louis deRohan, and was held in the Bastille for nine months but finally acquitted, when no evidence could be foundconnecting him to the affair. Nonetheless, he was asked to leave France, and departed for England. Here he wasaccused by Theveneau de Morande of being Giuseppe Balsamo, which he denied in his published Open Letter to theEnglish People, forcing a retraction and apology from Morande.

Betrayal, imprisonment, death and legacyCagliostro left England to visit Rome, where he met two people who proved to be spies of the Inquisition. Someaccounts hold that his wife was the one who initially betrayed him to the Inquisition. On 27 December 1789, he wasarrested and imprisoned in the Castel Sant'Angelo. Soon afterwards he was sentenced to death on the charge of beinga Freemason. The Pope changed his sentence, however, to life imprisonment in the Castel Sant'Angelo. Afterattempting to escape he was relocated to the Fortress of San Leo where he died not long after.Portuguese author Camilo Castelo Branco credits to Balsamo the creation of the Egyptian Rite of the Freemasonsand intensive work in the diffusion of Freemasonry, by opening lodges all over Europe and by introducing theacceptance of women into the community.Cagliostro was an extraordinary forger. Giacomo Casanova, in his autobiography, narrated an encounter in whichCagliostro was able to forge a letter by 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 gooduse by starting and funding a chain of maternity hospitals and orphanages around the continent.He carried an alchemistic manuscript The Most Holy Trinosophia amongst others with him on his ill-fated journey toRome and it is allegedly authored by him.

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In popular culture

In music• He appears as a principal character in the 1794 opera Le congrès des rois, a collaborative work of 12 composers.• The French composer Victor Dourlen (1780–1864) composed the first act to Cagliostro, ou Les illuminés which

premiered on 27 November 1810. The second and third act were composed by Anton Reicha (1770–1836).[5] [6]

• The Irish composer William Michael Rooke (1794–1847) wrote an unperformed work Cagliostro.[7]

• Adolphe Adam wrote the opéra comique Cagliostro which premiered on 10 February 1844.[8]

• Albert Lortzing wrote in 1850 the libretto for a comic opera in three acts, Cagliostro, but did not compose anymusic for it.[9]

• Johann Strauß (Sohn) wrote the operetta Cagliostro in Wien (Cagliostro in Vienna) in 1875.• The French composer Claude Terrasse (1867–1923) wrote Le Cagliostro which premiered in 1904.[10]

• The Polish composer Jan Maklakiewicz (1899–1954) wrote the ballet in three scenes Cagliostro w Warszawiewhich premiered in 1938.[11]

• The Romanian composer Iancu Dumitrescu (1944–) wrote the 1975 work Le miroir de Cagliostro for choir, fluteand percussion.[12]

• The opera Cagliostro by the Italian composer Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880–1968) was performed on Italian radio in1952 and at La Scala on 24 January 1953.[13]

• The comic opera Graf Cagliostro was wrtiten by Mikael Tariverdiev in 1983.• In the new Kunze/Levay musical "Marie Antoinette," the entire story is told by an illusionist and an occultist:

Cagliostro. The musical most recently opened in Bremen, Germany after playing to sold out houses in Tokyo,Japan in 2006.

In fiction• Friedrich Schiller wrote an unfinished novel Der Geisterseher (The Ghost-Seer) between 1786 and 1789 about

Cagliostro.[14]

• Johann Wolfgang Goethe wrote a comedy based on Cagliostro's life, also in reference to the affair of the diamondnecklace, The Great Cophta (Der Groß-Coptha) which was published in 1791.

• Alexandre Dumas, père used Cagliostro in several of his novels (especially in Joseph Balsamo).• Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy wrote the supernatural love story Count Cagliostro where the Count brings to life a

long dead Russian Princess, materializing her from her portrait. The story was made into a 1984 Soviet TV movieFormula of Love.

• Vicente Huidobro: "Cagliostro: novela-film." Santiago, Chile: Zig-Zag, 1934; English version in translationpreceded publication of the original Spanish. "Mirror of a Mage." Trans. Warre Wells. New York: HoughtonMifflin, 1931.

• 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 daVinci as well as an ancestor of Zatara and Zatanna (Secret Origins 27). Also, the DC Comics supervillain knownas the Fadeaway Man wields an item called the Cloak of Cagliostro, which allows him to teleport.

• In the Image comic book series Spawn, a mystic entity known as Cogliostro is the mentor of Spawn.• Cagliostro is a character in Robert Anton Wilson's The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles.• In Robert Heinlein's Glory Road "Dr. Balsamo" is the name on the door that Oscar is directed to by Personals ads

placed in the New York Herald Tribune, the Starts and Stripes and a cutting placed in his mailbox at AmericanExpress. Later in the book, the character Star tells him Count Cagliostro was her uncle.

• 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).

Alessandro Cagliostro 4

• Jens Korbus: Cagliostro. Aufzeichnungen eines Magiers (novel), 1990, ISBN 978-3925192500,ASIN (amazon.de): 3925192506

• Cagliostro appears as a criminal mastermind bent on upsetting the world economy with lead bars temporarilyturned to gold in the Wonder Woman episode "Diana's Disappearing Act".

• Cagliostro is Dracula's arch-foe and Marie Laveau's lover in Marvel Comics' The Tomb of Dracula series, and isimpersonated by Sise-Neg, an enemy of Doctor Strange, in Marvel Premiere.

• Cagliostro is a character in Psychoshop, a novel by Alfred Bester and Roger Zelazny.• Josephine Balsamo, a descendent of Joseph Balsamo who calls herself Countess Cagliostro, appears in Maurice

Leblanc's Arsene Lupin novels.• Cagliostro makes several cameo appearances as a vampire in Kim Newman's Anno Dracula novels. In Dracula

Cha-Cha-Cha, he finds his magic defeated by Orson Welles' conjuring tricks, a sideways reference to the filmBlack Magic mentioned above.

• Cagliostro appears as a character in the anime series, Le Chevalier D'Eon, by Production I.G.• Cagliostro is referenced in Hoffman's "The Sandman", comparing Chodowiecki's portrait to that of Nathaniel's

physics teacher, Spalanzani.• In The Queen of Diamonds by Jean Plaidy, Cagliostro is a charlatan involved with the Cardinal de Rohan with the

Affair of the Diamond Necklace.• The manga Rozen Maiden reveals Count Cagliostro to be merely one of many different aliases adopted by the

legendary dollmaker Rozen. He was shown to be in prison whittling wood.• In "The Red Lion" by Maria Szepes Martin Allais reincarnates as Cagliostro (Balsamo), who appears as a

charlatan, travelling with his wife, Lorenza and meet with Saint-Germain.

In films• The French film director Georges Méliès (1861–1938) directed the 1899 film Le Miroir de Cagliostro.[15]

• Cagliostro has been played in film by• Hans Stüwe (Cagliostro, 1929, silent movie directed by Richard Oswald)• Orson Welles (Black Magic, 1949)• Howard Vernon (Erotic Rites of Frankenstein, 1972)• Nodar Mgaloblishvili (Formula of Love, 1984 (TV))• Nicol Williamson (Spawn, 1997)• Christopher Walken (The Affair of the Necklace, 2001)

• In the 1943 German epic Münchhausen, Cagliostro appears as a powerful, morally ambiguous magician,portrayed by Ferdinand Marian.

• Jean Marais played Count Cagliostro in the 1978 film Cagliostro in Wien.[16]

• The character of Cagliostro in films[17]

• The Prisoner in the Mirror (Thriller 23 May 1961) Henry Daniell portrayed Cagliostro.• The second Lupin III movie goes by the title of The Castle of Cagliostro, drawing on Maurice Leblanc's Arsene

Lupin novels (see above). Cagliostro appears as the main antagonist of the film, a ruler of a fictional countrybearing the same name who influences the world's economy through counterfeiting.

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Links and references[1] The cardinal in question would have been Domenico Orsini d'Aragona (1719–1789), nephew of Pope Benedict XIII. Miranda, "Cardinals of

the Holy Roman Church" (http:/ / www. fiu. edu/ ~mirandas/ bios1743. htm#Orsini).[2] Iain McCalman, The Seven Ordeals of Count Cagliostro, 2004.[3] Iain McCalman, The Seven Ordeals of Count Cagliostro, 2004.[4] Wilson, Pip. "Count Cogliostro — Alchemist who could turn people into gold" (http:/ / www. wilsonsalmanac. com/ count_cagliostro. html).

Wilson's Almanac. . Retrieved 22 September 2008.[5] David Charlton: "Dourlen, Victor-Charles-Paul", Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 28 June 2008)[6] Peter Eliot Stone: "Reicha [Rejcha], Antoine(-Joseph) [Antonín, Anton]", Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 28 June 2008)[7] W. H. Husk/W. H. Grattan Flood/George Biddlecombe: "Rooke [O’Rourke, Rourke], William Michael", Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy

(Accessed 28 June 2008)[8] Elizabeth Forbes: "Adam, Adolphe", Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 28 June 2008)[9] Clive Brown: "Lortzing, Albert", Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 28 June 2008)[10] David Charlton/Cormac Newark: "Terrasse, Claude (Antoine)", Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 28 June 2008)[11] Bogusław Schaeffer: "Maklakiewicz, Jan Adam", Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 28 June 2008)[12] Octavian Cosma: "Dumitrescu, Iancu", Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 28 June 2008)[13] Guido M. Gatti, John C. G. Waterhouse: "Pizzetti, Ildebrando", Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 28 June 2008)[14] Alessandro Cagliostro. Answers.com. The Oxford Companion to German Literature, Oxford University Press, 1976, 1986, 1997, 2005.

http:/ / www. answers. com/ topic/ alessandro-cagliostro, accessed 28 May 2008.[15] "Le Miroir de Cagliostro (1899)" (http:/ / ftvdb. bfi. org. uk/ sift/ title/ 64970). British Film Institute Film & TV Database. . Retrieved 28

June 2008.[16] Cagliostro in Wien (http:/ / www. imdb. com/ title/ tt0233768/ ) at the Internet Movie Database[17] IMDb.com (http:/ / www. imdb. com/ character/ ch0042935/ )

Further reading• W. R. H Trowbridge: Cagliostro: The Splendour and Misery of a Master of Magic (Chapman & Hall, London

1910)• Alexander Lernet-Holenia: Das Halsband der Königin (Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Hamburg/Vienna, 1962, historical

study on the Affair of the diamond necklace, including a description of Cagliostro's background)• Iain McCalman: The Seven Ordeals of Count Cagliostro, 2004: Flamingo (Australia) and Random House (UK);

published in the USA as The Last Alchemist, HarperCollins.• Thomas Carlyle: Count Cagliostro (http:/ / www. nd. edu/ ~carlyle/ cco. pdf), Fraser's Magazine (July, Aug.

1833).• Giovanni Barberi, The life of Joseph Balsamo commonly called Count Cagliostro (http:/ / books. google. com/

books?id=AEsDAAAAYAAJ), London, 1791.• Faulks, Philippa and Cooper, Robert L.D., The Masonic Magician; The Life and Death of Count Cagliostro and

his Egyptian Rite, London, Watkins, 2008.• Camilo Castelo Branco: "Compêndio da Vida e Feitos de José Bálsamo Chamado Conde de Cagliostro ou O

Judeu Errante", excerpts from the process against him in Rome, on 1790. Translated from the Italian by theauthor. Livraria Chardron, de Lelo & Irmão, editores, R. das Carmelitas, 144, Porto, Portugal. Date unknown.

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External links• Biography from TheMystica.com (http:/ / www. themystica. com/ mystica/ articles/ c/ cagliostro. html),

identifying him with Giuseppe Balsamo.• Biography from DJMcAdam.com (http:/ / www. djmcadam. com/ cagliostro-tarot. html), an account that just

denies this hypothesis without giving a reason.• Biography from The Psychic Investigator (http:/ / psychicinvestigator. com/ Occult/ Caglio. htm).• The Great Cagliostro: Master Illusionist and King of Liars (http:/ / www. lifeinitaly. com/ heroes-villains/

cagliostro. asp)

Article Sources and Contributors 7

Article Sources and ContributorsAlessandro Cagliostro  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=423285193  Contributors: AEriksson, Acj626, Agau, Ahoerstemeier, Al Pereira, Andycyca, Antonio Di Dio,Antrophica, Arafalov, Armbrust, Attilios, B33R, B9 hummingbird hovering, Billcito, Blueboar, Bmclaughlin9, BorgQueen, Borgio22, Brutaldeluxe, CactusWriter, Chiok, Cmdrjameson,Correogsk, Crusio, Cs-wolves, D6, DT29, Daibhid C, Deoxyribonucleic acid trip, Dudileti, Eaglizard, Eggsofamerica, Error, Flockmeal, Future Perfect at Sunrise, Gabbe, Gaius Cornelius, GarretBeaumain, Gary Lawrence 59, Gdr, Gill Avila, Gonzalo84, Groomtech, Hansel612, Horus86, Ian Pitchford, Ihcoyc, Illa nilla, Ishikawa Minoru, J04n, JASpencer, JMLofficier, Jack Upland,Jeanne boleyn, JeroenVanB, KHamsun, Kaisershatner, Keith Edkins, Kingturtle, Kraxler, Legion fi, Lotje, Lpgeffen, Lusitanian, Luwilt, MSJapan, Manfroze, Michael Bednarek, MisterHand,Modeha, Movingboxes, NSpossum, Nbarth, Nicolae Coman, Nixdorf, Nrswanson, Ohconfucius, Orville Eastland, Paddycomeback, R'n'B, Rjwilmsi, Roaryk, Robert.Allen, RossF18, Sc147,Silentaria, Sjones23, Skookum1, Smerus, Spudtater, Stefanomione, Str1977, Talicea, Tasogare, Tassedethe, Temlakos, The Anome, The Duke of Waltham, Vald, Varlaam, Vary, Vitruvius,Wasell, Wetman, Yuriybrisk, Zigzig20s, Шизомби, 125 anonymous edits

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