Cagliostro

by W. R. H. Trowbridge

As usual, on his arrival in Mittau, Cagliostro had denounced the excessive rage for magic and alchemy that the Freemasons of Courland, as elsewhere, displayed. But though he found a sympathetic listener in the Countess von der Recke while he discoursed mystically on the moral regeneration of mankind and the “Eternal Source of all Good,” her father and uncle, who were devoted to magic and manifestations of the occult, demanded practical proofs of the power he was said to possess. As he was relying on their powerful patronage to overcome the opposition unexpectedly raised to the foundation of an Egyptian Lodge at Mittau by some persons whose suspicions were excited by the mystery he affected, he did not dare disoblige them.

One day, after conversing on magic and necromancy with the von Medems, he gave them and a certain Herr von Howen a proof of his occult powers. Apart from his “miraculous” cures, nearly all the prodigies performed by Cagliostro were of a clairvoyant nature. As previously stated, in these exhibitions he always worked through a medium, known as a pupille or colombe, according to the sex—the pupilles being males and the colombes females. From the fact that they were invariably very young children, he probably found that they responded more readily to hypnotic suggestion than adults. Though these exhibitions were often impostures (that is, arranged beforehand with the medium) they were as often undoubtedly genuine (that is, not previously arranged, and baffling explanation). In every case they were accompanied by strange rites designed to startle the imagination of the onlooker and prepare it to receive a deep and durable impression of mystery.

On this occasion, according to the Countess von der Recke, Cagliostro selected as pupille the little son of Marshal von Medem, “a child of five.” “Having anointed the head and left hand of the child with the ‘oil of wisdom,’ he inscribed some mystic letters on the anointed hand and bade the pupille to look at it steadily. Hymns and prayers then followed, till little von Medem became greatly agitated and perspired profusely. Cagliostro then inquired in a stage whisper of the Marshal what he desired his son to see. Not to frighten him, his father requested he might see his sister. Hereupon the child, still gazing steadfastly at his hand, declared he saw her.

“Questioned as to what she was doing, he described her as placing her hand on her heart, as if in pain. A moment later he exclaimed, ‘now she is kissing my brother, who has just come home.’ On the Marshal declaring this to be impossible, as this brother was leagues away, Cagliostro terminated the séance, and with an air of the greatest confidence ordered the doubting parent ‘to verify the vision.’ This the Marshal immediately proceeded to do; and learnt that his son, whom he believed so far away, had unexpectedly returned home, and that shortly before her brother’s arrival his daughter had had an attack of palpitation of the heart.”

After proof so conclusive Cagliostro’s triumph was assured. Those who mistrusted him were completely silenced, and all further opposition to the foundation of his lodge ceased.

But the appetite of the von Medem brothers only grew by what it fed upon. They insisted on more wonders, and to oblige them “the representative of the Grand Cophta”—later he found it simpler to assume in person the title and prerogatives of the successor of Enoch—held another séance. Aware that he had to please people over whose minds the visions of Swedenborg had gained such an ascendency that everything that was fantastic appeared supernatural to them, he had recourse to the cheap devices of magic and the abracadabra of black art.

At a meeting of the lodge he declared that “he had been informed by his chiefs of a place where most important magical manuscripts and instruments, as well as a treasure of gold and silver, had been buried hundreds of years before by a great wizard.” Questioned as to the locality of this place, he indicated a certain heath on the Marshal’s estate at Wilzen whereon he had been wont to play as a boy, and which—extraordinary coincidence!—he remembered the peasants of the neighbourhood used to say contained a buried treasure guarded by ghosts. The Marshal and his brother were so astonished at Cagliostro’s description of a place which it seemed improbable he could have heard of, and certainly had never seen, that they set out at once for Wilzen with some friends and relatives to find the treasure with the occult assistance of their mysterious guest.

Now the Countess’s interest in the occult was of quite a different character from that of her father and uncle. Deeply religious, she had turned in her grief to mysticism for consolation. From the commencement of her acquaintance with Cagliostro, she had been impressed as much by the nobility of the aims he attributed to his Egyptian Masonry, of which he spoke “in high-flown, picturesque language,” as by his miraculous gifts. While others conversed with him on magic and necromancy, which she regarded as “devilish,” she talked of the “union of the physical and spiritual worlds, the power of prayer, and the miracles of the early Christians.” She told him how the death of her brother had robbed her life of happiness, and that in the hope of seeing him once more she had often spent a long time in prayer and meditation beside his grave at night. And she also gave the Grand Cophta to understand that she counted on him to gratify this desire.

As to confess his utter inability to oblige her would have been to rob him at one fell swoop of the belief in his powers on which he counted to establish a lodge of Egyptian Masonry at Mittau, Cagliostro evaded the request. His great gifts, he explained, were only to be exercised for the good of the world, and if he used them merely for the gratification of idle curiosity, he ran the risk of losing them altogether, or of being destroyed by evil spirits who were on the watch to take advantage of the weakness of such as he.

But as the exhibitions he had given her father and uncle of his powers were purely for the benefit of idle curiosity, the Countess had not unnaturally reproached him with having exposed himself to the snares of the evil spirits he was so afraid of. Whereupon the unfortunate Grand Cophta, in his desire to reform Freemasonry and to spread his gospel of regeneration, having left the straight and narrow path of denunciation for the broad road of compromise, sought to avoid the quagmire to which it led by taking the by-path of double-dealing.