The greatest occultist in western history?

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The Last Alchemist: Count Cagliostro, Master of Magic in the Age of Reason. By Iain McCalman. Perennial/Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 2004. ISBN: 0-06-000691-9. 272 pp. Softcover, $13.95.

In The Last Alchemist, Iain McCalman has written a fascinating historical biography of Joseph Balsamo, a man reputed to have been Europe's greatest alchemist and necromancer--the "Count Cagliostro." Born in 1743, Balsamo was a young street tough and local sorcerer hailing from the dangerous streets of Palermo, Sicily. During a stint at a local monastery, Balsamo learned ritualistic magic cons from a renegade priest which allowed him to embark upon a career parting the credulous from their gold. At the age of twenty during a treasure hunt, he foolishly incurred the wrath of a prominent citizen of Palermo by promising spiritual protection against demons for a sizable monetary sum. For his trust in the young wizard, the townsman was rewarded with some paltry special effects and a beating. After this incident, the young Balsamo quickly and wisely left the island of Sicily with several traveling companions. The party made landfall in North Africa, from where the future Count soon began his many adventures.

Joseph Balsamo crisscrossed Europe for three decades seeking wealth and celebrity as a worker of the magical arts. During his long career, "Count Cagliostro" was able to woo thousands into believing he had magical healing abilities--in an age when Europe embraced reason. Of special note, Balsamo was garnering his audiences at a time when other contemporary con men--such as hypnotist Franz Anton Mesmer, the allegedly immortal Count of St. Germain, and Gian Casanova--were at their career peak.

McCalman notes that the charismatic Balsamo was able to achieve notable prominence in Europe's royal courts by forging his way to stardom as a military man and royal prince, the "Count Cagliostro." Even the great Casanova was impressed by Balsamo's talents in forgery. Seeking ever greater fame, Count Cagliostro astounded the continent's Masons (men who viewed themselves as promoters of reason and revolutionary ideals) with his purported knowledge of alchemy and Eastern mysticism.

Cagliostro was able to live comfortably for many years with his young wife Seraphina off of the generosity of "purse-heavy" believers in his brand of mystical alchemy--an impressive feat given that the alchemists' theory of transmutation had already been destroyed by Robert Boyle with his use of the scientific method in chemical investigations.

Alchemy wasn't the Count's only game. Balsamo often awed believers in spiritism with seances, in which he employed specially coached young children. He invoked "archangels" and "jinn" at these staged events. Not surprisingly, Cagliostro's archangels were enlisted to locate treasures for very affluent clients.

As recounted by McCalman, Count Cagliostro traveled to Eastern Europe and attempted to import a brand of mystical Freemasonry into the court of Catherine the Great. Initiated as a Freemason in London, England, under the lodge rules of the Strict Observance Rite in 1777, he placed himself at odds with more conservative Grand Orient Masons who hoped for his demise. Answering his enemies' prayers, Count Cagliostro failed to work his magic upon the Freemasons of St. Petersburg or their rationalist queen, Catherine the Great. McCalman remarks that Cagliostro placed his life in great danger by introducing free healing clinics to aid St. Petersburg's poor. Facing the very real threat of execution by Catherine the Great, the Count and Seraphina fled to Warsaw, Poland. Besieged by Poland's Masons to transmute base metals into gold, he was soon exposed as a fraud there--and then it was off again to safer lands like Germany and France for the Count's troupe.

Reaching Paris, the Count resumed his healing practices and engaged in further alchemical experiments. He became embroiled in the Diamond Necklace Affair, an intrigue that transpired at the court of King Louis XVI of France before the French Revolution. It involved one Countess de La Motte, who attempted to procure, allegedly for Marie Antoinette, but truthfully for herself and allied confederates, a diamond necklace worth over one million livres--at the time, basically the cost of a new warship. This affair earned the scorn of Marie Antoinette, the enmity of King Louis XVI, and earned the Count a stay in the Bastille. Miraculously exonerated in the courtroom, Count Cagliostro fled to London in 1786, where he became a target of an English satirist employed by the Bourbons, and public opinion soon turned against him. Leaving England, "The Copt," as followers now called him, journeyed to Rome, where he was betrayed to the Inquisition by his wife of many years. He was tried and sentenced as a heretic in 1791. Godfather to today's mediums, faith healers, and fortunetellers, he died four years later within the fortress walls of San Leo.