o Order My Brethren! And let us salute Those, amongst us , who are not anymore but are however…” Some Fraternal Circles welcome their members in this manner at the beginning of their sessions…

In this year France celebrates Its revolution. Is it not a duty, by extending beyond the aforesaid circles, to evoke the memory of those who stirred its flame and whom official history recalls not for what they accomplished but for all that they did not do: the Count of Saint Germain and Alexander of Cagliostro.

	Alexandre of Cagliostro

Regarding Saint Germain, called by his contemporaries “The Prodigy of his time” the general public only recalls the grotesque caricature made by a certain Gauve (also known by the name of Milord Gower).  According to this last, he paraded in Parisian salons of the eighteenth century so fond as they were of originality and exoticism, claiming that he was the real Count of Saint Germain and equipping his character with an attitude, a language and an expression of occultism which were wholly at variance with what an Adept, of the caliber of the real Count, would display.

Marvels and enchantments, it is true, surrounded his person but all this prodigy derived from His spiritual evolution that placed him high above the commonality of mortals. Ascetic in his nutrition and customs, a living example of highly ethical standards, he was, indeed, an Initiate and Adept and this state had as corollaries, what is commonly called “powers” in occultism, which can equally be defined as  “the expression of a complete mastery of the Universal Laws in the physical and mental Planes, as authorized by God in certain time.”

The fascination he exerted on all those who approached him extended to the elite of that time:  Clive,  Chatman, Walpole, Voltaire,  Rousseau, Prince Karl of Hesse, the King of Napoli, the Doge of Venice, the Medicis family, Frederic the Great of  Prussia, Peter III of Russia, the Shah of Persia and also…the King of France, Louis XV,  of whom he became a  friend and counselor ( we owe to Saint Germain the reforms of Maupéou) and with whom he “ alchemised” at the castle of Chambord… Because he was so uncommon, for whatever reason,  wonderments and diatribes gathered around him.       

He is said to have bee the legitimate son of Franz Leopold  Rakozci, Prince of Transylvania (1676-1735). The truth is that this Great Adept had filial bonds with that noble Hungarian family; However, that name and that place must be considered equally as indicative of an Hermetic Center, the Hungarian Lodge, linked to the Egyptian Lodge(the external manifestation of which was the Brotherhood of Luxor), both representing, one in The West and one in the Middle East, “The Transhimalayan Brotherhood” working since times immemorial for the benefit of Humanity.

Above all, it was as a member of that August fraternity that the Count of Saint Germain lived through the century to accomplish his mission. His exact title was: “Visible Hierophant to The West of Earth’s Esoteric Tradition.” Let us be more explicit:

• “Hierophant” for being the custodian of the Sacred Mysteries  (or occult knowledge: structure of the Universe, the Worlds and the Human Being, Alchemy, Magic, Esoteric Medicine, Astrology, techniques of spiritual development aiming to accelerate the contact between Man and God)  and responsible for their diffusion.
  
  
• “Visible” for representing, in reality, the true Hierophant (one of the greatest Adepts of Earth living in the East, He who is “The” Unique Hierophant (Christ and “secondly”, The Master Koot Hoomi.);
  
  
• “To The West” for it concerned essentially the Western expression taken by those Mysteries: the Egyptian filiation of the Western Tradition, manifested later by the symbolism of the Rose and the Cross, which was expressed by Pythogoreasnism,( then developed by Platonism and its Successive Schools: Christian Esotericism, Gnosis, Kabbalah…)
  
  
• “Earth’s Esoteric Tradition” for whatever spot on the globe is chosen to understand the Universe and Man, it is always about the same Universe and the same Man and, consequently, the same knowledge. The way by which the Mysteries are conveyed varies, depending on place and time, but the essence remains the same.

This title, although it will certainly not be of the liking of every reader, is nevertheless fundamental in understanding Saint Germain’s role in Europe, notably in the eighteenth century. As “Custodian of the Tradition of Western Expression” it is obvious that this Adept wanted to influence the Great of his time for political and judicial changes in society, without which no massive diffusion of  Occultism would be possible. Herein lies the essence of the mission of the Count of Saint Germain. We will better understand it, however, by evoking the memory of his disciple, the Count of Cagliostro.

He who was called  “The Divine Cagliostro” is to the general public, at least, the victim  of a double denial:

• By the Roman Catholic Church;
• By Atheist and Materialist Masonic Obediences.

He was not spared the label of  “quack” even “ crook” and  it is regrettable that the same ones that still partially claim kinship of his Initiation , in order to consolidate their biographies, rely on a document written in 1791, under the influence of the Roman Inquisition by father Marcelleo (Jesuit of his own right; please read the Jesuit conspiracy unveiled by Louis Claude of Saint Martin: “ Life of Joseph Balsamo known as the Count of Cagliostro”).

In reality, Alexandre of Cagliostro anything but a Sicilian bandit. The Roman Catholic Church conceded a false identity to the Hermetist Cagliostro to soil his reputation and destroy the credibility of his facts, deeds and thus the whole philosophy, indeed the ideology, the foundation which he tried to demonstrate. During the course of that degrading operation, the Church was supported by the Jesuits, jealous of the Freemasonry and vexed at not being able to completely infiltrate and subdue It. (See Louis Claude of Saint Martin).

Alexandre of Cagliostro was born in Malta, as he himself declared before his judges, and raised, since his early childhood in Arabia, by his tutor Althotas. He travelled much in his adolescence and when he came to La Valetta (Malta) in 1766, he and Althotas were welcomed and hosted, by Cardinal Pinto, Great Master of the Order of Malta, with honours witch would not be addressed to a Sicilian of  low birthright  and wanted for his mischiefs. Pinto invited Cagliostro to become Knight of Malta but he declined and left for Rome in the company of the Knight of Aquinas who stopped in Sicily. Upon his arrival in this ancient city, he was invited by Cardinal Orsini (no one ignores that the Orsinis were, for centuries, Rome’s most powerful political clan, giving three popes to the Church!) who introduced him to many “ eminencies” (amongst which was the Cardinal of York) and the future pope Clement XIV… Would the Roman elite welcome a miserable Sicilian? “Plebeian” in addition?

However, it is a fact that the Church had since tried to court Cagliostro for his Hermetic knowledge and poise represented a real danger: These occult sciences would certainly reinforce the machinations of the still patently turbulent Masonry (Bull of pope Clement XII of 1738 that excommunicates the Masonry) which was dreaming of radical transformations and consequently the questioning of the power of the Church on mentalities and thus the whole society.

Thence began the conspiracy that tarnished the memory of Cagliostro.  We could continue with this tale, showing, time after time, the flagrant imposture of Rome against the praises and testimonies articulated by the aristocracy of that time upon Cagliostro… Let it be known, from here on, that the injustice and strictness of the fate that afflicted Cagliostro can be easily understood because his mission represented a real  danger:

• In the short term, to the ecclesiastical Institutions because of the eventual questioning of religious dogma.
• In the mid to long term, to all forms of obscurantism working via sects of totalitarian nature, such as the Illuminati of Bavaria of the execrable Adam Weishaupt, and so many others commonly called at present “Black Lodges” and about which Louis Claude of Saint Martin illustrated the pernicious action in his tale: “The Crocodile”.

It was a matter of proving by so called “miraculous” events (Magic, Alchemy, Esoteric Medicine…) the existence of universal laws, not yet put in action by Man but providing well being and improved living conditions, not only at the industrial, economic and medical levels, but also at the spiritual level. That accounted for the marvels performed by Saint Germain and Cagliostro: To win the conviction of their contemporaries on the reality of the Hermetic Teachings.2

These teachings were not, and we stress, the attribute of the masonic lodges(although some masons had access to them) but of the fraternity of the Rosae+Crucis, which , as we have stated before, was the name by which the Transhimalayan Brotherhood manifested in The West.

According to this “Programme” of the Adepts, these teachings had:

1. To reconcile, from the first, all intitiatic fraternities under a consensus of evidence: Unification of rites and return to the source, Egypt.  The Masonic lodges, indeed, venerated more the “letter” than “the spirit” of what founded their rites and traditions.  What became to the Masonry introduced in France by the English at the beginning of the eighteenth century?  The elites that were admitted within, hoping to find marvels and strangenesses, were quickly disappointed. Therefore, on May 10, 1785, a French Masonic convention invited Alexander of Cagliostro to Paris, he whose effective knowledge of the Mysteries was known and praised… In fact, had this plan succeeded, it would allow the diffusion to a large extent, but only to the intitiatic orders (open to both sexes), after serious studies and duly accomplished trials, what was called in the eighteenth century, “the Arcana Arcanorum” (Knowledge possessed by Saint Germain and firstly Althotas and transmitted to Cagliostro, Aquinas, and some others, relative to rites of High Evocatory Theurgy, secondly the essence of Alchemic and finally techniques of accelerated evolution, based on Theurgy, identical — but under a different symbolism — to those of the Mahamudra of the Orient).
   
   
2. To open  progressively to both sexes in a second phase the so called “Hermetic Knowledge” that simply deals with the universal laws and their practical applications by Humanity...

That diffusion was to be followed by the establishment of schools during the nineteenth century.

These measures, as a whole, constituted the way to the “Path to Wisdom”, leading to a transmutation of the consciousness of Humanity and abolishing in due time the necessity to learn on Earth through suffering.

Within this “Programme” lied a genuine Revolution. The most frightening danger to the Black Lodges and the Roman Catholic Church which, since the  fourth  century A.D, has been one of their  main instruments in The West...

It was in this “Programme” that resided the “Secret of Cagliostro” that made so much ink spill; and not in the documents confiscated by the Inquisition nor the ones his disciples could recover, for those papers did not contain much, despite the beginning of revelation that would allow Human Beings to apprehend the Hermetic Science...

This establishment of the accession of any man or woman to Initiation, in other words, the knowledge of the Mysteries relative to the origins of Man and the goal He has to  reach,  failed abruptly  at the end of the eighteenth century, in accordance with a Divine Plan mathematically determined.

However, it seems that patience and perseverance do belong to the character of the Adepts because a century later, through H.P. Blavatsky’s writings, they offered the same (theoretical) Knowledge, presented this time under an  oriental phraseology: “The Secret  Doctrine”. As for the practical expression, they looked to the theurgic works presided over George Bulwer-Lytton's father (le père de George Bulwer-Lytton) for a few years in London, and later, by the end of the 19th century, they relied upon the “Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn” of which they rapidly demanded the closure because of the deviation of some members…

Initiates, Adepts, Emissaries of light, Brothers of the Rosae+Crucis, Messengers of the Mahatmas, the Masters of Wisdom… How many were victims of doubt, sarcasm and calumny by that same Humanity they had strived to rescue?   Each one, in a very comprehensible lassitude, could have been the author of what Cagliostro declared:  “ I pass, doing the most good around me, but I am only passing…”

[1]Appendix 2 of the book “The Light over the Kingdom or Daily Practice of Sacred Magic”. by Alexandre Moryason.
[2] Did the phenomena produced by H.P. Blavatsky in the 19th  century, wanted and accepted by the Adepts for some time, have another goal? Before the derision which they aroused and the opprobrium cast upon the founder of the Theosophical Society, one can only ratify, twenty-five centuries later, the acknowledgement of the Pythagorans who punctuated regularly their speech with “…Men are so wicked…”
[3] A. of Cagliostro did not die in his dungeon on August 1795, as the Roman Authorities made it believe. He went exactly out of it on a night of August 1795 under the pressure of the European Freemasonry, notably the French one. He got back to the island of Malta where he lived for another 5 years under the protection of the Order of this name. In the note n°1 of the page 313 of the Vol. V ("The Secret Doctrine" - French Ed. of 1971) - H.P. Blavatsky (who knew a lot about Cagliostro) said, replying more than amazed to Éliphas Lévi's assertions (in the text p. 313) on Cagliostro's death in his prison, what follows : "It is false and Abbé Constant (Éliphas Lévi) knew it. Why did he publish a lie? " ("knew" is put in italic by H.P.B.). Let us add, for the record, that by the end according to noon of June 16, 1798, the General Bonaparte, in departure for Egypt and having just released - for few time - the island of Malta of the English occupation, visited the old Magus who was seated, paralyzed, on a wheelchair (his legs had almost burst under the vaticanes tortures which he suffered during the incarceration in Rome); Cagliostro taught Bonaparte his own future, the part which he would have to play in the necessary liberation of Europe of ancient feudal systems which were still prevailing, the warning against the excessiveness of the Power…