Mystics

"From ridicule to calumny is but a step, and for every voice raised in defense of his honesty there were a dozen to decry him."

"On the day he was set at liberty (for he had no difficulty in proving his innocence) eight or ten thousand people came en masse to offer him their congratulations... But this ovation... was Intended less as a mark of respect to him than as an Insult to the queenQueen, who was known to regard the verdict as a stigma on her honour."

"It was a universal custom in all religious associations that one of their number during meals should read aloud to the others passages from the Lives of the Saints. This dull and unpopular task having one day been allotted to Giuseppe (probably as a punishment) he straightway proceeded, careless of the consequences, to read out whatever came into his head, substituting for the names of the Saints those of the most notable courtesans of Palermo. The effect of this daring sacrilege was dire and immediate. With fist and foot the scandalized monks instantly fell upon the boy and having belaboured him, as the saying is, within an inch of his life, indignantly packed him back to Palermo as hopelessly incorrigible and utterly unworthy of ever becoming a Benfratello."

"The band of young desperadoes to which he belonged frequently came into collision with the night-watch, whose prisoners, if any, they would attempt to set free."

"The "noble traveler," as he described himself... on his examination, confessed that Cagliostro was only one of the several names he had assumed in the course of his life. An alias (he had termed it incognito) is always suspicious."

"Even his valet was supposed to have discovered the secret of immortality. This fellow, a veritable Scapin, assisted him admirably in mystifying the credulous. "Your master," said a skeptic one day, seizing him by the collar, "is a rogue who is taking us all in. Tell me, is it true that he was present at the marriage at Cana?" "You forget, sir," was the reply, I have only been in his service a century.""

"He more than once saw the inside of the Palermo jail; but from lack of sufficient proof, or from the nature of the charge against him, or owing to the intercession of his estimable uncles, as often as he was arrested he was let off again."

"After a long imprisonment and many examinations by the inquisitors of the Holy Office, Cagliostro was finally condemned to death as a heretic, sorcerer and FreeMason, on March 21, 1791; but Pope Pius VI commuted the sentence to life imprisonment."

"That he believed in his mission to enlighten the world through his mystic doctrines admits of no doubt in my mind. Had he been a mere charlatan he would not have practiced his system of medicine and Masonry in such a humanitarian manner."

"Though much has been written about Cagliostro... It is based on contemporary records inspired by envy, hatred and contempt in an age notoriously passionate, revengeful and unscrupulous. It is, moreover, extremely superficial, being merely a repetition of information obtained second-hand by compilers apparently too ignorant or too lazy to make their own investigations."

"Cagliostro is supposed by some writers to have been an agent of the Illuminati, a secret order pledged to overturn the thrones of Europe and establish democracy... hence this trampling upon the lilies alluded to the stamping out of the French monarchy by the Illuminati, which was an order grafted on Freemasonry."

"Egyptian Masonry he asserted to have been instituted by Enoch and Elijah, who taught its divine mysteries, and he reintroduced adoptive or androgynous Masonry..."

"All religions were tolerated under this system: a belief in God was the sole qualification..."

"Whatever sympathy for Cagliostro my researches may have evoked it has always been exceeded by contempt of those who, combining an unreasoning prejudice with a slovenly system of compilation, have repeated the old charges against him with parrot-like stupidity. The object of this book is not so much an attempt to vindicate Cagliostro as to correct and revise, if possible, what I believe to be a false judgment of history."

"He knows everything and divines what he knew not. He is the contemporary of all time. He has lived through all ages. He speaks—the Lord forgive me! and forgive him for such blasphemy! not only of Alexander the Great, Cæsar and Charlemagne, as though he had known them, albeit I believe they were dead ever so long ago, but also of the high priest Caiaphas, Pontius Pilate and Our Lord Himself, whose martyrdom he claims to have witnessed."

"Seldom did he speak of love, and I remember me of no caresses save a kiss night and morning"

"I am not myself when he is by, but his; whatever he wills, I must do; one look fascinates me and subdues me."

"I am ignorant what he is. I only know that no king inspires more respect—no idol commands more adoration—than he from those to whom he deigns to reveal himself."

"He was a man about thirty, taller than the average, but so wonderfully well built that the utmost strength and skill seemed to circulate in his supple and nervy limbs."

"He is a dangerous man, terrible too, before whom everything bends, snaps and crumbles away. When he is taken to be defenseless he is armed at all points; when believed alone, he stamps his foot and an army springs up; or at a beck of the finger—smiling the while."

"His countenance was a notable mixture of power and intelligence, with all the play of Southern races; his glance, able to display any emotion, seemed to pierce any one on whom it fell with beams that sounded the very soul. His cheeks had been browned by a sun hotter than that of France. His mouth was large but finely shaped, and parted to reveal magnificent teeth, all the whiter from his dark complexion. His hand was small but muscular; his foot long but fine."

"Accordingly, what Century, since the end of the Roman world, which also was a time of skepticism, simulacra and universal decadence, so abounds with Quacks as that Eighteenth? Consider them, with their tumid sentimental vaporing about virtue, benevolence,—the wretched Quack-squadron, Cagliostro at the head of them!"

"Documents and books relating to him abound, but they possess little or no value. The most interesting are frequently the most unreliable. The fact that material so questionable should provide as many reasons for rejecting its evidence (which is, by the way, almost entirely hostile) as for accepting it, has induced theosophists, spiritualists, occultists, and all who are sympathetically drawn to the mysterious to become his apologists. By these amiable visionaries Cagliostro is regarded as one of the princes of occultism whose mystical touch has revealed the arcana of the spiritual world to the initiated, and illumined the path along which the speculative scientist proceeds on entering the labyrinth of the supernatural."

"Schiller and Goethe were among his great admirers, and remained so to their deaths. Goethe while travelling in Sicily devoted much labour and time to collecting information about “Giuseppe Balsamo” in his supposed native land; and it was from these copious notes that the author of Faust wrote his play “The Great Kophta.”"

"Why this wonderful man is receiving so little honour in England, is due to Carlyle. The most fearlessly truthful historian of his age he, who abominated falsehood under whatever appearance, has stamped with the imprimatur of his honest and famous name, and thus sanctified the most iniquitous of historical injustices ever perpetrated by prejudice and bigotry."

"Asks Bottini, 'Why, if he really possessed the powers he claimed, has he not indeed vanished from his jailors, and thus escaped the degrading punishment altogether?' We have heard of another prisoner, greater in every respect than Cagliostro ever claimed to be. Of that prisoner too, it was said in mocking tones, “He saved others; himself he cannot save . . . let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe..."

"People are unable to understand that this “enchanter and magician” (read “Charlatan”) could ever legitimately produce such an impression as he did on his contemporaries... that reputation which made a believer in him, a brother Mason, say, that (like Prince Bismarck and some Theosophists) “Cagliostro might well be said to be the best abused and most hated man in Europe.”"

"Oh, you privileged beings to whom heaven has made the rare and fatal gift of an ardent soul and a sensitive heart, you who have experienced the delights of a first love, you alone will understand me, you alone will appreciate what after ten months of torture the first moment of bliss is like!"

"What is singular about Cagliostro, is that in spite of possessing the characteristics that one associates with a charlatan, he never behaved as such all the time he was at Strasburg or at Paris. On the contrary, he never took a sou from a person, lived honourably, always paid with the greatest exactitude what he owed, and was very charitable."

"As indeed had been obscurely foreshadowed by Cagliostro prophetic Quack of Quacks, when he, four years ago, quitted the grim durance;—to fall into a grimmer, of the Roman Inquisition, and not quit it."

"The mention of Cagliostro’s name produces a twofold effect. With the one party, a whole sequence of marvelous events emerges from the shadowy past; with others the modern progeny of a too realistic age, the name of Alexander, Count Cagliostro, provokes wonder, if not contempt."

"I do not know whether my enemies will reply to me, or adopt the role of silence. Whatever they may do I declare to them that this letter will be my only reply to all their calumnies, past, present or future; and I give my word of honor to the public that whatsoever they may say or do, I shall not write a single line more in my justification. (Postscriptum)"

"I amuse myself, not by making people believe what I wish, but by letting them believe what they wish. These fools of Parisians declare that I am five hundred, and I confirm them in the idea since it pleases them."

"On the whole, therefore, has it not been fulfilled what was prophesied, ex-postfacto indeed, by the Archquack Cagliostro, or another? He, as he looked in rapt vision and amazement into these things, thus spake: “Ha! What is this? Angels, Uriel, Anachiel, and the other Five; Pentagon of Rejuvenescence; Power that destroyed Original Sin; Earth, Heaven, and thou Outer Limbo, which men name Hell! Does the EMPIRE Of IMPOSTURE waver? Burst there, in starry sheen updarting, Light-rays from out its dark foundations; as it rocks and heaves, not in travail-throes, but in death-throes? Yea, Light-rays, piercing, clear, that salute the Heavens,—lo, they kindle it; their starry clearness becomes as red Hellfire!..." This Prophecy, we say, has it not been fulfilled, is it not fulfilling?"

"I quitted the Bastille, about half-past eleven in the evening. The night was dark, the quarter in which I resided but little frequented. What was my surprise, then, to hear myself acclaimed by eight or ten thousand persons. My door was forced open; the courtyard, the staircase, the rooms were crowded with people. I was carried straight to the arms of my wife."

"A torrent of tears streamed from my eyes, and I was able at last, without dying, to press to my heart..."

"In his magical seances, Cagliostro made use of a young boy (pupille) or young girl (colombe) in the state of virgin innocence, to whom power was given over the seven spirits that surround the throne of the divinity and preside over the seven planets."

"In his own day, with very few exceptions, those whom he charmed or duped—as you will—by acts that in any case should have inspired gratitude rather than contempt observed a profound silence."

"He taught that the Philosopher's Stone was no fable, and that belief many before and since his time have shared..."

"The people will rise, and at last royalty will have arrayed against it philosophy, which is intelligence, Parliament, which is the middle class, and the mob, which is the people; in other words, the lever with which Archimedes can raise the world."

"Balsamo walked over to the elevator, and with a stamp of the foot, caused it to carry him down to the other floor. Mute, crushed by the genius of this wizard, he was forced to believe in impossible things by his doing them."

"I arrived at Dover... Well-intentioned people had warned the customs authorities of my arrival and of the nature of the effects I brought with me; so my trunks were emptied...and each thing they contained was unfolded and scrutinized with the most minute exactitude."

"You are right not to meet my glance, my lord, for then I see into your heart too clearly. It is a mirror which retains the image which it has reflected."

"There is little loss. I let the boiling go on the hundredth of a minute too long. Trifles are enormous in the hermetical art, but anyway, here are two crucibles empty and two ingots cast, and they amount to a hundred weight of fine gold."

"Your highness is forgetting that I see as clearly in your heart what is going on now as I saw your carriage coming from the Carmelite convent, traversing the town and stopping under the trees fifty paces off from my house."

"Finding this quiet appropriation of my property a little too much, I took the liberty to ask for their return; they gravely replied that my diamond and other jewels were confiscated to the profit of Great Britain I returned sadly to my inn... I resigned myself, however, and slept the most profound sleep. I do not know what passed during the night; but the next morning, when I returned to the Custom House, I found the greatest change in manners and faces. The customs authorities spoke to me in the most respectful tone. They made a million excuses and gave me back my jewel box..."

"Once for all I beg you to lay aside this pack of puerile beliefs brought from Rome, and all the rubbish of absurd superstitions which you have carted about with you since you ran away from the nunnery. Indeed, a nunnery is much to be deplored."

"What are you saying—and you a Christian woman? Is your creed which bids you return good for evil but a hypocrisy, that you pretend to follow it, and you boast of revenge—evil for good?"

"Heaven forgets, or tolerates—waiting for you to reform"

"Perchance your prayers will earn your grace, but then you will see nothing of what comes to pass, as you will rest in the arms of the angels. Pray, lady; continue to pray!"