The Old and the New Magic. Henry Ridgely Evans
which consolidates in man the forces of the most vigorous youth and renders him immortal; and by the latter (or moral) to procure them a Pantagon, which should restore man to his primitive state of innocence, lost by original sin.”
Cagliostro declared Moses, Elias and Christ to be the Secret Superiors of the Order, because having “attained to such perfection in masonry that, exalted into higher spheres, they are able to create fresh worlds for the glory of the Lord. Each is still the head of a secret community.”
No wonder the Egyptian Rite became popular among lovers of the marvelous, because it promised its votaries, who should attain to perfection, or adeptship, the power of transmuting baser metals into gold; prolonging life indefinitely by means of {51} an elixir; communing with the spirits of the dead; and many other necromantic feats and experiments.
The meetings of the Egyptian Lodges were in reality spiritualistic séances. The medium was 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.” The Colombe would kneel in front of a globe of clarified water which was placed upon a table covered with a black cloth, and Cagliostro would summon the angels of the spheres to enter the globe, whereupon the youthful clairvoyant would behold the visions presented to view, and describe events transpiring in distant places. “It would be hard,” says Count Beugnot, “to believe that such scenes could have taken place in France at the end of the eighteenth century; yet they aroused great interest among people of importance in the Court and the town.”
In the mysticism of the twentieth century the above-mentioned form of divination is known as “crystal gazing,” though the medium employed is usually a ball of rock crystal, and not a globe of water such as Cagliostro generally used. Occultism classes all such experiments under the head of magic mirrors. The practice is very ancient. The Regent d’Orléans of France experimented with the magic mirror, as Saint Simon records. The great traveler, Lane, speaks of such divination among the modern Egyptians by means of ink held in the palm of the hand. Mirrors of ivory, metal, and wood coated with gypsum have been used. As Andrew Lang puts it: “There is, in short, a chain of examples, from the Greece of the fourth century BC, to the cases observed by Dr. Mayo and Dr. Gregory in the middle of the nineteenth century, and to those which Mrs. De Morgan wished to explain by ‘spiritualism.’ ” In the opera “Parsifal” by Richard Wagner, the necromancer, Klingsor, sees the approach of the young knight in a magic mirror. In the Middle Ages the use of these mirrors was well known. Deeply imbued with the spirit of mediævalism, Wagner properly equipped the magician of his sublime opera with the mirror.
Max Dessoir, the German psychologist, writes as follows concerning the magic mirror (Monist, Vol. I, No. 1): {52}
“The phenomena produced by the agency of the magic mirror with regard to their contents proceed from the realm of the subconsciousness; and that with regard to their form they belong to the category of hallucinations. … Hallucinations, the production of which are facilitated by the fixation of shining surfaces, do not occur with all persons; and there may be a kernel of truth in the tradition which designates women and children as endowed with especial capacities in this respect. The investigations of Fechner upon the varying vividness of after-images; the statistics of Galton upon hallucinatory phantasms in artists; and the extensive statistical work of the Society for Psychical Research, appear to point to a connection of this character. … Along with the inner process the outward form of the hallucination requires a brief explanation. The circumstance, namely, which lends magic-mirror phenomena their salient feature, is the sensory reproduction of the images that have sprung up from the subconsciousness. The subterranean ideas produced do not reach the surface as thoughts, but as pseudo-perceptions.”
Cagliostro sometimes made use of a metallic mirror. This fact we have on the authority of the Countess du Barry, the frail favorite of Louis XV. When the “Well Beloved” went the way of dusty death, the charming Countess divided her years of banishment from the glories of the Court at her Chateau of Luciennes and her houses in Paris and Versailles. She relates that on one occasion the Cardinal de Rohan paid her a visit. During the conversation the subject of Mesmer and magnetism was discussed.
“My dear Countess,” said the Cardinal, “the magnetic séances of Mesmer are not to be compared with the magic of my friend the Count de Cagliostro. He is a genuine Rosicrucian, who holds communion with the elemental spirits. He is able to pierce the veil of the future by his necromantic power. Permit me to introduce him to you.”
The curiosity of the Countess was excited, and she consented to receive the illustrious sorcerer at her home. The next day the Cardinal came, accompanied by Cagliostro. The magician was magnificently dressed, but not altogether in good taste. Diamonds sparkled on his breast and upon his fingers. The {53} knob of his walking-stick was incrusted with precious stones. Madame du Barry, however, was much struck with the power of his bold, gleaming eyes. She realized that he was no ordinary charlatan. After discussing the question of sorcery, Cagliostro took from the breast pocket of his coat a leather case which he handed to the Countess, saying that it contained a magic mirror wherein she might read the events of the past and future. “If the vision be not to your liking,” he remarked, impressively, “do not blame me. You use the mirror at your own risk.”
She opened the case and saw a “metallic glass in an ebony frame, ornamented with a variety of magical characters in gold and silver.” Cagliostro recited some cabalistic words, and bade her gaze intently into the glass. She did so, and in a few minutes was overcome with fright and fainted away.
Such is the story as related by Du Barry in her memoirs, which have been recently edited by Prof. Leon Vallée, librarian of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.
She gives us no clew as to the vision witnessed by her in the magic glass. She says she afterwards refused to receive Cagliostro under any circumstances.
What are we to believe concerning this remarkable story? We might possibly conjecture that she saw in the mirror a phantasmagoria of the guillotine, and beheld her blonde head “sneeze into the basket,” and held up to public execration. Coming events cast their shadows before.
But all this is mere fancy, “midsummer madness,” as the Bard of Avon has it.
God alone knows the future. Wisely has it been veiled to us.
Possibly Madame la Comtesse from her subliminal consciousness conjured up an hallucination of the loathsome death by smallpox of her royal lover, at whose corpse even the “night men” of Versailles recoiled with horror. Telepathy from Cagliostro may have played a part in inducing the vision. Ah, who knows! We leave the problem to the psychologists for solution. {54}
III.
From England Cagliostro went to the Hague, where he inaugurated a lodge of female masons, over which his wife presided as Grand Mistress. Throughout Holland he was received by the lodges with masonic honors—beneath “arches of steel.” He discoursed volubly upon magic and masonry to enraptured thousands. In March, 1779, he made his appearance at Mitau,10 in the Baltic Provinces, which he regarded as the stepping-stone to St. Petersburg. He placed great hope in Catherine II of Russia—“the avowed champion of advanced thought.” He hoped to promulgate widely his new and mysterious religious cult in the land of the Czars, with all the pomp and glamour of the East. The nobility of Kurland received him with open arms. Some of them offered to place him on the ducal throne, so he claimed. He wisely refused the offer. Cagliostro eventually made a fiasco at Mitau and left in hot haste. In St. Petersburg his stay was as short. Catherine II was too clever a woman to be his dupe. She ordered the charlatan to leave Russia, which he forthwith did. Prospects of Siberia doubtless hastened his departure. In May, 1780, he turned up at Warsaw. A leading prince lodged him in his palace. Here Cagliostro “paraded himself in the white shoes