Since his death it has emerged that he sometimes used his undoubted powers of mind control to prey on vulnerable young women.
A friend of mine journeyed to India, to visit the renowned teacher, adept and miracle-worker Sai Baba. My friend was travelling with his beautiful young girlfriend. After an exquisite dinner the servants withdrew and Sai Baba took his guests into the library. My friend was perusing a book while his girlfriend talked to Sai Baba. He noticed that he was standing unusually close to her and became anxious when Sai Baba turned the conversation to the subject of the sexual dimension in Hindu myths. Suddenly Sai Baba reached to ring a copper bell engraved with sigils and simultaneously seemed to grab something out of mid-air. He turned his hand palm up to reveal a golden chain with a crucifix on it. He told the girl that this was real magic and held his palm out to her, offering her the object, which seemed to my friend to glow with a dark aura.
He also noticed that the sigils on the bell were Tantric, and realized that the intention was probably to bewitch his girlfriend with a view to seducing her. He asked where the chain came from.
‘It appeared before your very eyes,’ said Sai Baba.
My friend took the chain from him, to prevent his girlfriend from touching it. Holding it over his palm, he used the art of psychometry to determine its origins. He had a disturbing vision of grave robbers, and realized that this crucifix and chain had been dug up from the grave of a Jesuit missionary.
He confronted Sai Baba with this and so, by demonstrating his own magical powers, he was able to make him back down.
Telling me about this many years later, my friend said that since Prospero had broken his wand at the end of The Tempest, initiates had been forbidden to exercise their magical powers, unless in exceptional circumstances like these. There is a law that if a white magician uses his occult power, an equal amount of power is made available to a black magician.
Is there any other evidence to suggest that magic is still practised today? In a secondhand bookshop in Tunbridge Wells I recently came across a small cache of letters in which an occultist gave out advice on how to use magic spells to achieve their goals. One included introducing menstrual blood secretly into food as a way of awakening a man’s sexual desires. This might seem outlandish, but in 2006 the British government announced its plans to give large grants for the development of ‘biodynamic’ farming. This method, devised by Rudolf Steiner, depends on the correspondences between plants and the spirits of the stars described by Paracelsus and Boehme. Steiner recommends that an infestation of field mice should be dealt with by burying in the field the ashes of a field mouse prepared when Venus is in the sign of Scorpio.
IF CAGLIOSTRO REMAINS AN ENIGMA, the man he looked up to is an even greater mystery.
Cagliostro’s own account of meeting the Comte de St Germain at a castle in Germany in 1785 records that he and his wife arrived at 2 a.m, the appointed time. The drawbridge lowered and they crossed to find themselves in a small, darkened room. Suddenly, as if by magic, great doors opened to reveal a vast temple made dazzling by the lights of thousands of candles. In the middle of the temple sat the Comte de St Germain. He was wearing many fabulous diamond rings and on his chest there rested a bejewelled device that seemed to reflect the light of all the candles and beam it on Cagliostro and Seraphita. Sitting either side of St Germain two acolytes held up bowls from which incense arose, and, as Cagliostro entered, a disembodied voice he took to be count’s — though his lips did not seem to move — resonated around the temple.
‘Who are you? Where did you come from? What do you want?’
Of course in at least one sense St Germain knew exactly who Cagliostro was — the visit had been pre-arranged, after all — but here he was asking about his previous incarnations, his daemon, his deeper motives.
Cagliostro threw himself on the ground in front of St Germain, and after a while said, ‘I come to invoke the God of the Faithful, the Son of Nature, the Father of Truth. I come to ask one of the fourteen thousand and seven secrets he bears in his bosom. I come to give myself up as his slave, his apostle, his martyr.’
Clearly Cagliostro thought he recognized St Germain, but who was he?
There was a clue in the fact that St Germain then initiated Cagliostro into Templar mysteries, taking him on an out of body journey, flying him above a molten sea of bronze to explore the heavenly hierarchies.
St Germain had appeared in European society quite suddenly in 1710, apparently from Hungary and seemingly about fifty years old. Small and dark skinned, he always wore black clothes and extraordinary diamonds. His most arresting features were his hypnotic eyes. By all accounts he quickly commanded attention in society because of his accomplishments, speaking many languages, playing the violin and painting. And he also seemed to have an extraordinary ability to read minds.
He was believed to practise secret breathing techniques taught by the Hindu fakirs and, in order to meditate better, he adopted yoga positions unknown in the West at that time. Though he attended banquets, he was never seen eating in front of others and drank only a strange herbal tea he concocted himself.
But the greatest mystery surrounding the Comte de St Germain was his longevity. Having appeared in public life in 1710, apparently in late middle age, when he met the composer Rameau in Venice, he remained in public life at least as late as 1782 without appearing to age at all. Sightings of him by the great and the good continued as late as 1822.
It would be tempting to dismiss all this as a romance in the style of Alexander Dumas were it not for the fact that witnesses who left accounts of meeting him over such a long period were of such high standing. As well as Rameau, they included Voltaire, Horace Walpole, Clive of India and Casanova. He was a prominent figure at the court of Louis XV, an intimate of both Madame de Pompadour and the king himself, for whom he took diplomatic missions in Moscow, Constantinople and London. There in 1761 he negotiated an agreement called the Family Compact, which paved the way for the Treaty of Paris, putting an end to the colonial wars between France and Britain. St Germain’s efforts always seemed to be in the cause of peace, and, though he is often lumped in with Cagliostro, he was never caught out in any act of dishonesty. Although nobody knew where his money came from — some said alchemy — he was evidently independently wealthy and by no means a desperate adventurer.
So who was the Comte de St Germain? A key to his secret identity lies in Freemasonic history. It is said that it was he who coined the Freemasonic mantra Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and whether or not this is accurate, he may be seen as the living spirit of esoteric Freemasonry.
More particularly, St Germain should be identified with another personality beset by rumour, counter-rumour and uncertainty about whether he really lived at all. In the secret history St Germain is Christian Rosenkreuz reincarnated in the age of enlightenment, of imperial expansion and international diplomacy.
To borrow a phrase from the eminent science fiction writer and esotericist Philip K. Dick, he had learned how to reconstitute his body after death.
This should alert us to an even deeper mystery. In an earlier incarnation Rosenkreuz/Germain had been Hiram Abiff, the Master Builder of Solomon’s Temple. The murder of Hiram Abiff had led to the Word’s being lost. On one level the lost Word was a power of supernatural procreation which humankind had wielded before the Fall into matter. Part of the mission of St Germain, through esoteric Freemasonry, was the reintroduction of knowledge of the Word into the stream of history.