Cagliostro

Disclaimer

This is NOT a page about Wiccans or neo-pagans, and I do not advocate the belief that Wiccans are Satan-worshippers and/or baby-killers. I am well aware that they are not. This is a starting point for historical research into the great witch craze of 1100-1700 AD. And please, don't ask me for spells.

Cagliostro

Count Alessandro Cagliostro, originally, Giuseppe Balsamo. Italian magician and alchemist. After committing numberless crimes in Sicily, he fled from the island. After a sequence of travel and adventure throughout Europe, pervaded by practice in sorcery and alchemy with his wife Lorenza Feliciani, he was persona grata among the distinguished families of the Continent. By the sale of love philtres, magic elixirs, and similar concoctions, he amassed great wealth. Again and again involved in scandals, he was compelled to travel from one country to another, acquiring a legendary reputation. His declining years were spent, in imprisonment, in the fortress of San Leo. Reputedly, he was successful in necromancy and the manufacture of diamonds by alchemy. He was also the founder of an occult society called The Egyptian Lodge (Wedeck 199).

Because of his involvement with Egyption freemasonry, Cagliostro was imprisoned in Italy for the last years of his life--"the sentenced reduced from death, which is what the Holy Inquisition had recommended" (Ashley 183).

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Cagliostro is copyrighted 1996-1998 to Shantell Powell.