The Occult Review 11, no. 1 (January 1910) 11-15. ^[1]

One day in the year 1884 I was talking with H. P. Blavatsky in her room at Adyar. We spoke about reincarnation and other things, and in the course of conversation I expressed a wish to have her portrait. Without answering she went to a drawer and produced a picture of Cagliostro,^[2] which she presented to me and of which a copy is reproduced in the present article. Her whole manner made upon me the impression that the picture represented her as she was in her previous incarnation; but before I could ask her about it, our conversation was interrupted by another visitor.

          The history of Cagliostro and that of H. P. Blavatsky have many similar aspects. Of the lives and characters of each many accounts have been written, and nevertheless both have remained a mystery. Both used to perform occult phenomena whose genuineness could not be disputed by those who were eyewitnesses; both were admired as great Adepts by their friends and denounced as swindlers by their enemies. Cagliostro became a victim of the “holy inquisition” and was imprisoned in the fortress San Leone. Blavatsky was persecuted by the protestant clergy in India and went into voluntary exile to London. About the death of Cagliostro nothing certain is known.

          In 1882 a man by the name of Marco Perazzoni died at the age of 96 years. He left a written account giving his version about the burial of the body of Cagliostro. According to it Perazzoni was a boy of nineteen years when on a very hot day in August he saw four men carrying the body of Cagliostro, tied upon a board, down the narrow staircase of the fortress of San Leone at Montefeltro. The body was not covered and everybody could see its features, while the carriers left the corpse at the foot of the stairs near a small fountain and went to a little inn to get some refreshments. After a while they returned and lifting the corpse upon their shoulders, they carried it to a burial place in the vicinity of the fortress. There they deposited it in a grave after putting a brickbat under the head of the corpse and an old handkerchief over its face. A few years afterwards when the Polish legion under the command of General Dombrowsky took possession of the fortress, some soldiers opened the grave of Cagliostro, filled the skull with wine and drank it in honor of the patriots. Contrary to this statement H. P. Blavatsky in one of her books (Secret Doctrine, Vol. III) chides Eliphas Levi for saying that Cagliostro perished in the fortress of San Leone and asserts that Eliphas Levi “knew better.”

          Moreover she told the writer of these pages, that Cagliostro escaped from his prison^[3]; that long after the supposed time of his death (1795) he was met by different persons in Russia and that he remained for some time at the house of Count Hahn von Rottenstein at Ekatarinoslaw (father of Madame Blavatsky). Moreover she claimed that he then and there, in the midst of winter, produced by magical power a plate full of fresh strawberries for a sick person who was craving for it.

          Possibly these two statements may not appear irreconcilable to an occultist, for it is said that an Adept has the power to leave his physical body and to clothe his astral form with another material or to take up another physical body. Cagliostro’s body may have been buried, but not Cagliostro himself. Moreover we may distinguish in Cagliostro two distinct personalities. He called himself “Count Cagliostro,” and it was claimed that he was a son of Emanuel de Rohan, the 68th Grand Master of the order of the Knights of Malta. Others claim that his real name was Josef Balsamo and that he was born at Palermo on June 7, 1743. he, like the Count de St. Germain and others of that kind, claimed to have already existed for centuries and been personally acquainted with certain people known in history, who lived in olden times. All this may be true, if we take into consideration that a person may remember his previous incarnations. The personality of “Joseph Balsamo” may, for all we know, have been only a vehicle in which a very old Ego was incarnated. According to the writings of the Buddhists, Gautama Buddha remembered his experiences in all of his previous incarnations. If we regard the Divinity as our own real Self, we find that we all are as old as the world, and by becoming conscious of that divine state, we may well remember our experiences in bodies which we occupied before our present incarnation.

          It is hardly necessary to rehearse in these pages the different accounts which have been written about the life of Josef Balsamo, called Count Cagliostro. His history may be gathered to a certain extent from descriptions given in the encyclopaedias; but these have been mostly collected from the writings of his enemies, while the book containing his defense has been destroyed by the clergy and it seems now very difficult to obtain a copy of it.

There is one in the library at Adyar. It appears certain that in the year 1766 he and his teacher, the sage Althotus, were residing as guests at the house of Pinso de Fonseca at Malta, and occupying themselves with making alchemical experiments.

In 1770 Cagliostro went to Rome, where he met Seraphine Feliciani, a very beautiful woman, and married her. Afterwards, he became acquainted with the celebrated Count St. Germain who initiated him into the mysteries of the Rosicrucians. He then traveled extensively in Germany, France, Spain and Portugal, associated himself at London with the masonic fraternity and strove to inspire spiritual life into the decaying body of masonry.^[4]

          It is very remarkable that the enemies of Cagliostro while denouncing him as an impostor, are at the same time forced to acknowledge his wonderful gifts and the admiration which he received wherever he went. Among all classes of society he was regarded as a newly arisen prophet and benefactor of mankind. He sought the company of no one; but all were attracted to him. Innumerable were the cures he performed by means of his personal influence; he had a hospital full of cripples and a large collection of crutches laid aside by those who were cured, went to show his success. As Strassburg he made the acquaintance of the cardinal Prince Edward de Rohan and was surrounded by persons of high standing and intelligence, doctors and scientists. His conduct of life was without reproach, and when at a later period his enemies attempted to besmirch his character by means of false accusations and calumnies, he publicly requested the authorities and the people to show whether in all of his actions a single fact could be found where he had acted against the laws of morality or religion.

          He left Strassburg on a visit to a dying friend. We meet him again at Bordeaux, where his house was continually surrounded by a multitude of people seeking relief from suffering; men and women, the sick, the halt and the blind crowded around him, but, as may well be imagined, the regular physicians being jealous of his success, arose against him and forced him to depart. He then went to Lyons and afterwards to Paris. There took place the great and historically known scandal about the diamond necklace, obtained under false pretenses by Madame de la Motte from the enamored Cardinal Rohan and on which A. Dumas has founded his well-known novel. Cagliostro had nothing whatever to do with this affair; but being suspected on account of his long acquaintance with the accused parties he was imprisoned in the Bastille. His innocence was proved and he was set free; but the government, owing to certain undesired revelations that came to light during the investigation of the case, became afraid of him. He was granted only one day to leave Paris and given three weeks to leave the kingdom. Such was the order of the King. Owing to his enforced hasty departure he lost nearly his whole fortune.

          Cagliostro resumed his travels, and went to Rome in May 1789. He well knew the dangers which he incurred and that the clergy, being mortal enemies of freemasonry, were watching for an opportunity to seize him by means of the holy inquisition; but the desire of his wife to visit the country of her birth again prevailed. On December 29, 1791, he was imprisoned in the Castel San Angelo under the accusation of being a freemason. Other accusations were added to it and in April 1791 he received by his clerical court the sentence of death.

          Then, as H. P. Blavatsky tells, something curious happened. A stranger came to the Vatican and demanded a private interview with the Pope. To the cardinal secretary he gave only a certain word instead of his name. He was immediately admitted but remained only a few minutes with the Pope. Immediately after he had left his Holiness gave orders to change the death sentence of Cagliostro into imprisonment for life within the fortress of San Leone and to observe the strictest secrecy in this matter.

          The order was executed and Cagliostro disappeared from view. It has been claimed that he died of apoplexy in his prison in 1795; but in the registers of the prison nothing is said about his death. Some people believe him to have escaped from San Leone and be still working for the great cause of mental freedom and enlightenment.

Notes

^[1] Cagliostro. Franz Hartmann. The Occult Review 11, no. 1 (January 1910) 11-15. {This article was reformatted from the original, but with the content unchanged other than minor typos, by Robert Hutwohl, ©2020}

^[2] illustration – copy of portrait of Cagliostro presented by HPB to Dr Hartmann as a portrait of himself — anon

^[3] [See my (Robert Hutwohl) published: “Cagliostro. A Lost Page of History”. By an unknown writer.]

^[4] Neue Metaphysische Rundschau, vol. iii [February 1900], p. 10.