Before proceeding further with the history of Freemasonry, I shall
stay a moment to consider a very remarkable feature in its strange
composition, without which it scarcely ever appears. The world was never
without wizards, witches, necromancers, jugglers, and those who really
had, or through imposture, pretended to have, intercourse with demons.
Masonry in its various ramifications is the great continuator of this
feature of a past which we had thought departed for ever. Spirit-rapping,
table-turning, medium-imposture, etc., distinguish its adepts in
Protestant countries and in Catholic ones. We have almost incredible
stories of the intercourse with the devil and his angels, which men
like the Carbonari of Italy maintain. However, from the very beginning,
Freemasonry has had a kind of peculiar dark mysticism connected with it.
It loves to revel in such mysteries as the secret conclaves of the Jews
used to practise in the countries in which they were persecuted, and
which were common amongst those unclean heretics, the Bulgarians, the
Gnostics, the Albigenses, and the Waldenses. The excesses alleged against
the Templars, were also accompanied by secret signs and symbols which
Masonry adopted. But whatever may have been the extent of this mysticism
in Masonry before, a spurious kind of spiritism became part of its very
essence since the advent of the celebrated Cagliostro, who travelled all
over Europe under the instructions of Weishaupt, and founded more lodges
than did any individual Freemason then or since.
The real name of this arch-impostor was Balsamo. He was an inveterate
sorcerer, and in his peregrinations in the East, picked up from every
source, the secrets of alchemy, astrology, jugglery, legerdemain, and
occult science of every kind, about which he could get any information.
Like the Masonry to which he became affiliated at an early period, he
was an adept at acting and speaking a lie. He suited Weishaupt, who,
though knowing him to be an impostor, nevertheless employed him for
the diffusion of Illuminism. Accompanied by his no less celebrated
wife, Lorenza, he appeared in Venice as the Marquis Pelligrini, and
subsequently traversed Italy, Germany, Spain, England, the Netherlands,
and Russia. In the latter country he amassed, at the Court of Catherine
II., an immense fortune. In France, assisted by the efforts of the
Illuminati, he was received as a kind of demigod, and called the divine
Cagliostro. He established new lodges in all parts of the country.
At Bordeaux he remained eleven months for this purpose. In Paris he
established lodges for women of a peculiarly cabalistic and impure kind,
with inner departments horribly mysterious. At the reception of members
he used rites and ceremonies exactly resembling the absurd practices
of spirit mediums, who see and speak to spirits, etc., and introduced
all that nonsense with which we are made now familiar by his modern
followers. He claimed the power of conferring immortal youth, health, and
beauty, and what he called moral and physical regeneration, by the aid
of drugs and Illuminated Masonry. He was the father and the founder of
the existing rite of Misraim—the Egyptian rite in Masonry. The scoundrel
became involved in the celebrated case of the “Diamond Necklace,” and was
sent to the Bastile, from which he managed to pass to England, where, in
1787, he undertook to foretell the destruction of the Bastile, and of the
Monarchy of France, the Revolution, and—but here he miscalculated—the
advent of a Prince who would abolish _Lettres de Cachet_, convoke the
States General, and establish the worship of Reason. All these measures
were resolved on at Wilhelmsbad, and Cagliostro of course knew that
well. His only miscalculation was regarding the Prince Grand Master.
The Revolution went on a little too far for the wretched Egalité, who
ended his treason to his house by losing his head at the guillotine. As
to Cagliostro, he made his way to Rome, where the Inquisition put an
end to his exploits on detecting his attempts at Illuminism. His secret
powers could not deliver him from prison. He died there miserably, in
1795, after attempting to strangle a poor Capuchin whom he asked for as
confessor, and in whose habit he had hoped to escape. This impostor is
of course made a martyr to the Inquisition accordingly. Masonry does
much to disown Cagliostro; but with a strange inconsistency it keeps the
Egyptian rite founded by him, and clings to mysticism of the debased kind
he introduced. It is wonderful how extremes thus meet,—how men who make
it a sign of intellectual strength to deny the existence of the God that
made them bow down stupidly and superstitiously before devils, real or
imaginary. Necromancy is a characteristic of Antichrist, of whom we read,
“that he will show great signs and wonders so as to deceive, if that were
possible, even the elect.” He will be when he comes both a Cromwell and a
Cagliostro.