Cagliostro

Count Alessandro di Cagliostro (Palermo, Sicily, June 2, 1743 – August 26, 1795) whose real name was Giuseppe Balsamo, son of a poor family from Palermo, whose father died very young, leaving the family in charge of an uncle, Marco, who worked in the city's post offices. He was started in a Catholic school, but his gift for fraud and deception caused him to be expelled. This is how he committed crimes, being a member of different mafia gangs, which he knew how to take advantage of with his undeniable skills as a swindler. Later, after deceiving a banker, he escaped to Medina, with a lot of money stolen from the gold mine, where he met Althotas, who introduced him to oriental mysticism and it was with him that he had a method of refining flax, until he almost made it. look like silk. Thus he amassed a fortune and then appears in Europe.

With his acting skills and skill in the art of deception, he was also an alchemist, occultist, Rosicrucian and high Sicilian Freemason who toured the European courts of the 18th century.

Cagliostro claimed to have been born into a Christian family of noble birth, but was abandoned shortly after birth on the island of Malta. He also claimed that as a child he traveled to Medina, Mecca and Cairo, and upon returning to Malta, was initiated into the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, where he studied alchemy, the Kabala and magic. He founded the Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry in The Hague, where, like what continues to happen in the Masonic lodges of Saint John today, men and women were initiated into the same lodge and had influence in the founding of the Masonic Rite of Freemasonry. Misraim.

Life and travel

Cagliostro was well known in Naples and later in Rome, where he met and married Lorenza Feliciani. They traveled together to London, where he was initiated into Freemasonry on April 12, 1777. He adopted the Ouroboros (the snake that bites its own tail) as a secret symbol. Shortly thereafter he founded the Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry in The Hague.

He traveled through Russia, Germany and France, extending the field of influence of the Egyptian Rite and presenting himself as a "magnetic healer" of great power. His fame grew to such an extent that he was even recommended to Benjamin Franklin during a stay in Paris.

He was an extraordinary forger. In his autobiography, Casanova recounts his encounter with Cagliostro, who was able to forge a letter of his, despite being unable to understand it.

The Diamond Necklace Episode

He was persecuted because of the Necklace Affair, which involved Louis XVI of France and Marie Antoinette, and was imprisoned in France accused of fraud. He was in the Bastille for nine months, and was finally acquitted when his connection to the case could not be proven. However, he was asked to leave France, and traveled to England. Once there, Theveneau de Morande accused Cagliostro of being Giuseppe Balsamo, which he refuted in his Open letter to the English People, forcing Morande to apologize and retract his words.

Betrayal and death

Cagliostro visited Rome, where he met two people who turned out to be spies for the Inquisition. Some say that it was his own wife who had initially reported him to them. He was arrested on December 27, 1789 and imprisoned in the Castle of Sant'Angelo. He was soon sentenced to death on the charge of being a Freemason. The pope changed the sentence to life imprisonment in that same castle. After an escape attempt he was imprisoned again, this time in Fort San Leo, where he died shortly after.

In fiction

• The popular Japanese mobile device game GrandBlue Fantasy possesses a unity inspired by Cagliostro
• Alejandro Dumas used Cagliostro in several novels, the main one of them the saga of Memories of a doctor (José Balsamo).
• The comic The Phantom included Cagliostro as a character in the 1988 "The Mystery of Cagliostro", written by Norman Worker and drawn by Carlos Cruz.
• The anime Senki Zesshou Symphogear AXZ shows the reincarnation of Cagliostro in a woman of perfect figure, alchemist in the sect of the Bavarian Illuminated, interpreted by the Japanese vocal actor Aoi Shouta
• In the DC Comics universe, Cagliostro is described as an immortal (Yearbook JLA No. 2), a descendant of Leonardo da Vinci, as well as an ancestor of Zatara and Zatanna (Secret Origins No. 27)
• In the comic book series Spawn, a mystical entity known as Cogliostro is the mentor of Al Simmons.
• A modern Count Cagliostro is the antagonist of the antihero Lupin III in the anime The Castle of Cagliostro.

Cinematography

• Vicente Huidobro, "Cagliostro", film script, 1923.