Cagliostro

by French sculptor Houdon.

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Another sharing from the Blue House of Via-HYGEIA, Cagliostro’s spiritual biography, excerpted from Dr. Mark Haven’s ‘Cagliostro, le Maitre Inconnu’, Derain-1964. You may wonder what Cagliostro has to do with the Classics, even in the large sense? But, Cagliostro was in fact a ‘fin connoisseur’ of antique mythology and offered in his ‘Egyptian’ rite of Masonry, keys to decrypt Jewish, Greek and Roman myths. It is quite obvious when you read his rituals: we have to admit of their high moral standards and usefulness in sifting the many mythical stories after they were ‘wrapped in the manure of myth‘ as Michael Psellos writes in his exegesis of Homer’s golden chain, leaving us with the gist of the antique teaching the Neoplatonists strove to salvage from deliberate obliteration. Among their heirs, the School of Naples could be considered a repository of their antic initiations. ‘I am he who is‘ Cagliostro states, also echoing some Sufi luminaries…

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‘I am from no specific period nor time; out of time and space, my spiritual being lives its spiritual life, and if I dive into my though going back the trail of the ages, if I stretch my spirit towards a mode of existence foreign from the one you are now witnessing, I become the one I desire. Consciously participating to the absolute being, I regulate my actions according to the environment surrounding me. My name is the one that defines my function (note: with two Italian roots, his name could be interpreted as ‘south wind, that grounds, makes smooth and is temperate’) and I chose it and my function because I am free; my country is where I rest temporarily my feet. Do you glorify yourself with the past, loading on you the weight of all the years lived by ancestors foreign to you? Or do you glorify yourself with the future, with a delusional pride of a might that may never be yours? As for me, I am he who is.

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I have but one father: About this matter, a few events in my life made me guess some great and moving truths. However, the mysteries of my origins, and the ties that unites me with this unknown father, are and will stay my secrets; may those who will be called to see them through, perceiving them like I did, understand and approve of me. As for the place, time where my material body some forty years ago was formed on this earth, as for the family I have chosen for that, I chose to not mention them. I don’t want to invoke the past, so to not burden more the responsibilities of those who knew me, as it is written: ‘You will not make the blind fall’. I am not born of the flesh, nor of the will of man: I am born of the spirit. My name, which is mine, the one I chose to appear before you, that is the one I claim. The name that I was called in my childhood, the one I was given in my youth, those under them-in other time and places- I was known, I have left them all behind, like I would take away worn and now useless cloths.

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Here I am: I am noble and a traveler; I speak and your soul shivers recognizing ancient words; a voice in you, that was silent for so long, answers to the call of my voice; I act and peace returns in your hearts, health into your bodies, hope and courage into your souls. All men are my brethren; all countries are dear to me; I journey into them so that everywhere the Spirit may descend and find a path towards you. I only ask to the kings that I respect the might, the hospitality of their land and when it is granted, I come through making around me as much good as possible; but I am only passing through. Am I not a noble traveler?

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Like the south wind, like the bright light at noon that characterizes full knowledge of things and the active communion with God, I go towards North, towards mist and cold, leaving behind a few fragments of me. Spending myself, diminishing myself at each port of call so to leave you a bit a light, a bit of warmth, a bit of strength until I am finally being stopped and finally settled at the twilight of my career, at the time the rose will blossom onto the cross. I am Cagliostro.

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Why do you need anything more? If you would be God’s children, if your soul was not so vain and inquisitive, you would already have understood! But you demand details, signs and parables…So, listen! As you insist, we will go far back in the past.

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All light come from the East, all initiation from Egypt. Like you, I was three years old, then seven, then the age of manhood, and after I stopped counting. Three septenaries of years make twenty-one years and manifest the fullness of the human development. In my prime childhood, under the law of rigor and justice (Note: Medina), I suffered exile like Israel among foreign countries. But like Israel have with it God’s presence, like Metraton was guarding its path, a powerful angel was looking after me, directing my acts, lighting up my soul, developing my still dormant strengths in me (Note: his master Althotas). He was my master and guide.

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My reason was forming and becoming more precise; I was questioning, I was studying and becoming conscious of everything surrounding me; I have taken up journeys, several, as much around my room with my thoughts than physically in temples and at the four corners of the world. But when I wanted to penetrate the origin of my being and raise towards God in a movement of my soul, then my powerless reason went silent and I was abandoned to my questions.

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A love that attracted me towards all creatures in an instinctive way, an irresistible ambition, a deep feeling of my rights towards everything upon Earth up to the heaven, were pushing me, throwing me towards life and the progressive experience of my strengths, of their spheres of action, of their play and limits, was the struggle I had to sustain against the powers of this world. (note: Trabzon_Trebizonde) I was abandoned and tempted in the desert; I have struggled with the angel like Jacob, with men and with demons, and they, vanquished, taught me the secrets concerning the empire of darkness, so that I may not found myself strayed in any of those paths one does not come back.

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One day – after countless travels and years! – Heaven welcomed my efforts. It remembered his servant, and clothed in a wedding gown, I had the grace to be admitted, like Moses, before the Almighty. (Note: Mecca) From then on, I was given a new name, a unique mission. Free and master of life, I thought to use it only for God’s work. I knew He would confirm my deeds and my words, like I would affirm his name and his kingdom upon Earth. They are beings that have no more guardian angels (note: death of Althotas), I am one of them.

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Here is, unfolded, my childhood, my youth, as your worried spirit hungry for dead words asked for it. That it may have lasted more or less years that it was spent in the country of your ancestors or in other regions, does it matter? Am I not a free man? Judge my morals that is my actions; say if they are good or not, tell if you have seen some with more might and, from then, don’t bother anymore about my nationality, my rank and my religion.

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If one day, carrying on the happy trail of his journeys, someone among you come to these eastern lands that saw my birth, let him just remember me, may he pronounce my name, and the servants of my father will open in front of him the door of the holy city. May he then go back and tell his brothers whether I was unworthy of the prestige I had and if I took from your houses something that was not mine.’

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French Original

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