As illustrious as he was misunderstood was the Rosicrucian master Alessandro Conte di Cagliostro. His work was the last attempt to unite the Church of Peter with the Church of John. He was sent by the Knights of Malta to fulfil a mission in Europe, namely to restore the ancient mysteries, in conjunction with other initiates such as the Count of Saint Germaine and Giacomo Casanova. He was born under the name Acharat and studied alchemy under his master Althotas at Mecca. He was eventually initiated into the mysteries of Osiris at Giza in the Great Pyramid of Cheops.
Initiated into the highest degrees of several Masonic lodges scattered throughout Europe, he was able to tap into the secret source of Freemasonry through a very severe process of regeneration and meditation. In his wanderings through the courts of Europe, he cured the poor for free and surrounded himself with intellectuals and aristocrats. "In verbis, in herbis, in lapidibus," in magical words, in the vegetable and mineral realms lay his miraculous alchemical cures. Unfortunately, he attracted as many blessings as curses: especially the hatred of Marie Antoinette, who tried in every way to defame him. He foretold the destruction of the Bastille where he had been unjustly imprisoned for "the affair of the necklace."
After Cagliostro's expulsion from France, Marie Antoinette's accusations finally reached the armed arm of the Church of Peter, namely the Holy Inquisition, which tried in every way to defame the Master and finally succeeded in imprisoning him for life in the Fortress of San Leo. The Jesuits besmirched his memory by producing a false biography: with a historical forgery they combined the name of the fraudster Joseph Balsamo with that of Alexander Count of Cagliostro. Anyone who identifies Balsamo as Cagliostro is thus paying homage to the Inquisition rather than to the Rosicrucians.
From a revolutionary spirit, with a strong impulse for the evolution of the individual, society and humanity, Cagliostro elaborated the ritual of Egyptian Freemasonry, introducing Christian Hermeticism into Freemasonry. Much like the mithraic impulse of the early Rosicrucians, Cagliostro's Egyptian Freemasonry aimed to restore the original meaning to Freemasonry, which had now lost the vital impulse following its founding by what remained of the Templars. Cagliostro went far beyond Mithraism, recovering the symbolism that united Jews and Egyptians through the figure of Moses. He was the perfect representative of Italian esotericism, suspended between genius and accusations of charlatanism, fully embodying the Italian People's Spirit that recapitulated the Egyptian-Chaldaic Cultural Epoch.
As Steiner himself writes, Cagliostro thus recognized that Christ had already been announced in Egypt as Osiris. Mary was recognized as Sophia and thus Isis. Thus was born in Cagliostro the desire to restore a total and equal initiation that included both men and women, according to parallel Masonic rituals. He recognized in his wife, Serafina, his soul mate: linked by a common karma, they headed Egyptian Freemasonry together. She was the High Priestess at the head of the initiated sisters; he headed the brothers as the Grand Copht, the initiatory title of his inner master. Able to invoke spiritual beings, read people's destinies by looking into their eyes, and predict the future of peoples, Cagliostro became a harbinger of Rosicrucianism throughout Europe. His path of regeneration included knowledge of the mysteries of the pentalfa, or quintessence, and the philosopher's stone, which together led to the union of microcosm and macrocosm. His seal was a serpent holding an apple, pierced by an arrow: the symbol of the new clairvoyance that arose from the killing of the ancient Luciferic serpent.
When Cagliostro at the end of his life decided to travel to Rome, he met life imprisonment at the hands of the Inquisition. He made that final journey convinced that he would unite his Johannine church with the Catholic church in order to redeem the latter and from them extend regeneration to all mankind. Before he disappeared, he foretold the end of the Inquisition: and so it was. During his Parisian period he initiated into his Egyptian Freemasonry a young man named Napoleon Bonaparte, who, once in Italy went specifically to visit the place of death of his Master, whose remains were never found.
To get an idea of the initiatory stature of the figure of Cagliostro, separated from the figure of the impostor Giuseppe Balsamo, it is possible to see Daniele Pettinari's splendid 1975 film Cagliostro, whose screenplay by Pier Carpi closely follows the directions of Marc Haven and Rudolf Steiner.
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