The Last Alchemist: Count Cagliostro, Master of Magic in the Age of Reason [Hardcover]

Professor McCalman is a historian who delights in literary form. In his paper "Cultural History and Cultural Studies: the Linguistic Turn Five Years On" Iain McCalman tells us "Ever since a boy I have always believed intensely in the 'storyness' of life. Our world is suffused with stories. Consciously or not we use them continually to make sense of the mass of incoherent facts and sensations that immerse us."
This shows in his book "The Last Alchemist". Indeed by the fourth page of his introduction he has wasted no time to paint for us with a vivid brush of words:

"The Ballaro market that abuts Cagliostro's birthplace looks, feels, and smells like a casbah. It reminded me of parts of Cairo or even of Zanzibar: frying peanut oil, saffron, cloves, garlic, and rotting garbage. The flagstones are streaked with dust blown from North African deserts or smeared with slops tossed from windows and balconies. You have to step carefully because the tenements cast deep shadows. The paint on most of the buildings is covered in fungal-like stains. Bits of iron hold up the door frame; washing flaps on rigging strung between the houses."

The tone set and our attention grabbed, McCalman does not disappoint and continues to draw us into a very different time when a newborn Age of Reason battled with the institutions that had dominated Humanity since its beginning. A world where a common flimflam man can rise up from the gutter, lie and steal his way to prominence, and before his death help change history itself.

Which brings us to the subject of this book, one Guiseppe Balsamo who in the process of altering the history of Europe also contributed heavily to the burden still carried by the Freemasons of our modern time. That he was able to do so, we learn from McCalman, is due to a youthful mastery of chemistry and religious symbology, an intervening period of roguery and flimflam, and the social contacts earned from a job he talked his way into with the Knights Hospitalier of Saint John. McCalman runs us quickly through this period but with the benefit of his scholarship and passionate writing style we are led to understand this formative period of the man the world would later come to know as Count Cagliostro.

How does all this relate to modern Freemasonry? In a direct sense it does not relate at all - today's Masons will not find much modern Freemasonry as they read McCalman's accounts of how different Masonic lodges in different part of Europe embraced Cagliostro while repeatedly suspending their better judgements. As with all con-men Cagliostro simply plays on their greed, lust, and other flaws. Most Masons of this time were learned and successful men, interested mainly in an education and social activity unburdened by the official and social oppression of states and churches. And of course that time was no different than ours where all organizations have fringe groups. The fringe Masons of that time wanted power, were superstitious, and yearned for spiritual satisfaction through the occult. Few of them consciously considered anything they were doing was wrong or evil; most convinced themselves they were serving God.

As we read between the lines of McCalman's wonderful storytelling we begin to get a feel for what worried the governments and churches of the time. And of course what continues to concern anti-Masons to this day. Freemasonry was in fact widely used to mask the actions of men intent on founding democracies and/or societies free of tyranny in any form. The absolute rulers of that time, from Catherine of Russia to the Louis XVI of France to Pope Pious VI, all employed legions of spies and secret police to suppress that activity. Those few Masons who appealed to the occult were committing double crimes and providing an easy noose to the enforcers. Those Masons who worked more nobly for more honorable reasons succeeded in their founding of the Great Experiment that was America and their contributions were indeed observable in the replacement of Europe's aristacracies with modern democracies - those Masons we do not encounter in Cagliostro's story and indeed it is fair to assume the Count would have done his utmost to stay away from such people.

Through all these interwoven stories Iain McCalman does a masterful job gleaning from the newspaper articles, the legal papers, even the diaries and journals of the players of the time to engage us, to show us how otherwise rational men and women were easy fodder for Guiseppe Balsamo and other rogues like him. MaCalman's narration of the Affair of the Necklace, the final straw that brought on the French Revolution, reads like a fine mystery and so is particularly gripping and educational. The professor's declared fascination with Balsamo/Cagliostro is genuine and its influence on his writing clearly obvious. The Antiquarian Mason highly recommends this book to Masons and non-Masons alike.

Giuseppe Balsamo (Cagliostro) was born in Palermo, and quickly learned the ways of the street, travelling later to the exotic lands of Cairo and Alexandria, soaking in their culture, to then become a kind of servant, or donat, with the Knights Hospitallers of Saint John. It is here he was made a member of the order, allegedly learning the many secrets of the ancients. Originally he learned the basics of apothecary in his native land, but furthered his education in the grand alchemical laboratories of the order. Cagliostro was a Freemason, but more particularly a leading proponent of the Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry. As an initiated member of the powerful order of the Knights of Malta, this was his passport into the many powerful realms of Europe.

This short sketch of the man does not take a concrete position as to whether Cagliostro was a scoundrel or a saint, a black or white magician, a man of God or of the devil. McCalman gives us the story as a true journalist might when all the facts are not at their disposal. The text presents the subject in a manner that leaves it to the reader to decide on the true character of the man. To be sure, Cagliostro was the essence of contradiction - healing hundreds of people one day and scheming the next. This, of course, is what makes him fascinating. However, men of genius usually are enigmas, and as historical figures, it is the purpose of historians to discover the facts. And in a lot of cases, finding the true story is close to the impossible.

McCalman has done a fine job of presenting us with a known difficult subject, rife with myth, half-truths and innuendo, in such an entertaining, clear and instructive manner. Good reading.