Characters
Dossier
Name(s):
Eyes: Brown, "soft and penetrating" according to Comtesse d'Adhemar.
Hair: Black; wigs
Height: Medium or slightly-less-than medium height
Other Markings: Dimple on chin, small feet, delicate hands, "magnificent teeth", ambidextrous (to the point of being able to write two different things at the same time while singing)
Languages Spoken Fluently: German, English, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French with a Piedmontese accent, Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Arabic, and Chinese.
Arts: Violin, Musical Composing, Piano, Singing, Painting, Author
Professional: Chemistry, Alchemy, Textile/Dye Manufacturing, Velum Paper Manufacturing, Diplomat, Inventor, Medical Advisor (but not a doctor)
Known diet: Oatmeal, groats, and white meat of chicken. On the rare occasion he will drink wine.
Quirks: Possible germaphobe; porphyric
Other: Has a man named Roger who he travels with for "500 years".
Name(s):
- Count Saint Germain (also St.Germain or Saint-Germain)
- Welldone (also Weldoun or Weldon)
- Professor Adamus
- de Saint-Noel
- Saltykoff (also Saltikov)
- Marquis de Montferrat
- Bellamarre
- Bedmar
- Belmar
- Schoening
- Tzarogy
- Prince Francis Leopold Ragoczy
- Belletti
- Fraser
- Marquis d'Aymar
- Giovannini
- Simon Wolff (according to Marquise de Crequy)
- Tomašis Stroganoff
Eyes: Brown, "soft and penetrating" according to Comtesse d'Adhemar.
Hair: Black; wigs
Height: Medium or slightly-less-than medium height
Other Markings: Dimple on chin, small feet, delicate hands, "magnificent teeth", ambidextrous (to the point of being able to write two different things at the same time while singing)
Languages Spoken Fluently: German, English, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French with a Piedmontese accent, Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Arabic, and Chinese.
Arts: Violin, Musical Composing, Piano, Singing, Painting, Author
Professional: Chemistry, Alchemy, Textile/Dye Manufacturing, Velum Paper Manufacturing, Diplomat, Inventor, Medical Advisor (but not a doctor)
Known diet: Oatmeal, groats, and white meat of chicken. On the rare occasion he will drink wine.
Quirks: Possible germaphobe; porphyric
Other: Has a man named Roger who he travels with for "500 years".
WHO WAS ST. GERMAIN?
Iona Miller, (c)2010
NO copying without explicit, written permission
The following is offered as suggestion rather than proof:
Among the legends of his origins is that he was a "wandering Jew" or an exiled Transylvanian Prince. His "dragon book" implies that his lineage is secretly identified with the Dragon. All those threads weave together once we realize that Royal Ashina Khazars, a dynasty of converted Jews ruled Khazaria (ancient Scythia) from about 650 to 1016. Two royal clans merged: in Hebrew Ha-Shechina, and Turkic Ashina.
They were preceded by proto-Scythian kings who initiated a custodial tradition of seership and wisdom that migrated with them from Transylvania and Central Asia throughout Europe. Thus, the Scythian dynasties permeated European royalty as individual Dragon lineages fused.
The (Central Asian) Khazar name is derived from Turkic *qaz-, meaning "to wander." The Ashina was considered a sacred clan of quasi-divine status. The Ashina clan, a noble caste, carry the 16q24.3 "red gene" inherited from the Sumerian Annunaki, the root of the Dragon seed that permeates royal lines: Merovingian, Carolingian, Tudor, Plantagenet, Stuart, Hapsburg, Hanoverian, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Guelph, Bowes-Lyon, Battenberg (Mountbatten), Guise, and Savoy families - and Transylvanian lineages. The Davidic House of Judah married into the descent of the Merovingian Kings of the Franks. They are connected by a shared bloodline. The dragon archetype rests within the Dragon blood, passed on through the genes.
According to Nicholas de Vere, "Briefly, the Dragon lineage starts in the Caucasus with the Annunaki, descending through migrating proto-Scythians to the Sumerians while branching off also into the early Egyptians, Phoenicians and Mittani. A marriage bridge back to Scythia infused the Elvin line of “Tuatha de Danaan” and the Fir Bolg, which branched into the Arch-Druidic, Priest-Princely family to the Royal Picts of Scotland and the ring kings of the Horse Lords of Dal Riada, through the Elven dynasty of Pendragon and Avallon del Acqs, and down to a few pure bred families today."
The Royal Court of the Dragon was founded by the priests of Mendes in about 2200 BC and was subsequently ratified by the 12th dynasty Queen Sobeknefru. This sovereign and priestly Order passed from Egypt to the Kings of Jerusalem; to the Black Sea Princes of Scythia (Princess Milouziana of the Scythians) and into the Balkans - notably to the Royal House of Hungary, whose King Sigismund reconstituted the Court just 600 years ago. Sigismund’s assumed descent from Melusine. Her ancestry actually can be traced back to the Scythian Dragon Princess Scota, Queen Sobekh Nefru and the Egyptian Cult of the Dragon. Vlad Dracul was a minion of Sigismund of Luxembourg, and was educated at the Emperor's court in Nuremberg. Dracul was invested into Societas Draconis.
The Byzantine Emperor Constantine was a Dragon King. The Byzantine emperor Leo III married his son Constantine (V) to the Khazar princess as part of the alliance between the two empires. Princess Tzitzak was baptized as Irene. Their son Leo (Leo IV) was known as "Leo the Khazar", emperor of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire from 775 to 780.
The "secret of immortality" of the "Wandering Jew" is the in-bred dynasty. For the ancient Egyptians, it lay partly in historical remembrance of one's name. Some say the nomadic Khazars derived from both the Edomites and the so-called “Lost Tribes”. Like their Edomite ancestors, the Khazars were also red-headed, and came to be known as “Red Jews”. Transylvania was part of the Khazarian Empire (with roots from Mongolia to Transylvania).The Khazar ruling class was strikingly handsome with reddish hair, white skin and blue eyes.
Perhaps these concealed symbolic hints were a private joke to himself and perhaps the familial European royalty of St. Germain's unrealized ruler identity. Comte de St. Germain has been plausibly identified as the younger son (b. 1690) of the Prince Franz-Leopold Rakoczy and the Princess Charlotte Amalia of Hesse-Wahnfried. He was concealed from the Hapsburgs and lived incognito. The Hesse blood would invest St. Germain with dragon genes, and provide a familial link to the royal patron of his later years, Landgrave Karl von Hessen.
Transylvanian royalty belonged to the Dragon Court. So, St. Germain might represent himself authentically as a "Wandering Jew" with the secret of immortality, while being Transylvanian (the royal House of Rakoczy) and carrying the Dragon legacy with which he emblazoned his singular book.
Whether it was genetically accurate or not, he had plausible reasons to believe so in his day. In fact, this Dragon connection may explain why he was itinerant, not merely a wandering magician, scholar and businessman -- but a man with a mission. Was this dragon emblem the symbol of his natural family? As a Hungarian or Transylvanian prince, was he either part of or in a struggle to restore a bloodline, bred for rulership and magic?
Transylvania is the earliest known homeland of the Dragon Kings. But, according to de Vere, the House of Dracul descended from sons of Attila the Hun with no bloodline connection to Egypt. So it claimed an apostolic succession. There is no definable bloodline link or marriage bridge. If there was indeed dynastic [self-]deception, Saint Germain was unlikely to be any but an unwitting part, and would probably have identified strongly with this legacy. It is a legacy of seership through the genetic root – clear seeing, clairvoyance, transcendent consciousness.
The Dragon Tradition was alive and well during the time of Saint Germain and he was certainly part of it as a Transylvanian prince, whether he could pass a “Dragon DNA test” or not. It is no accident one of his only two original works carried the Dragon emblem. No wonder the book has been held closely ever since.
Presto Chango Manifesto
THE TRIANGULAR BOOK OF SAINT-GERMAIN consists of 24 triangular leaves of parchment, 44 manuscript pages, nine inches on each side in a hog-skin cover. A plush-lined case with the figure of a dragon has kept it in pristine shape. The cypher consists of twenty-six arbitrary characters, translatable by frequency.
The Dragon lineage holds the secret to longevity and transcendence. St. Germain was an alchemist renown for his longevity and youthful appearance. Alchemy begins and ends in the quest for eternal life. It is a spiritual technology of rebirth using natural methods that in their effect transcend nature by amplifying that which is immortal within us. It does not exist in nature but must be prepared by Art. Art is a form of manifesting, making and objectifying the world - spiritual physics.
Artists and mystics are aware of their own internal space and thus able to enter it, playing the mindbody like a musical instrument. Looking inside, they see the true nature of reality and can express that literally and symbolically. We all possess the creative potential. All creative acts are a marriage of spirit and matter, reaching down into the body as the source of our essential being and becoming.
Today, we might describe this resonance as accessing energy that regenerates the mindbody. Healing is an aspect of creativity; nature is within and without us. The Magus does not dominate reality but develops embodied psychophysical equilibrium, clarity, wisdom and compassion.
Creative work originates in the body and is projected out into the world. The projections are then internalized into awareness. The bodymind of the artist is an alchemical vessel containing the creative flux during the process of transformation. Awareness and consciousness form a continuous alchemical movement. The creative gold is generated and embodied in the alembic of the mindbody. The mindbody is the same substance as the Cosmos and contains and reveals its mysteries.
Alchemy reduces all to the first state, the ground state of being - original experience that is timeless, infinite. The classical Void, the quantum vacuum is a carrier of information. The energy body or the field body connects us with the negentropic potential of the zero-point field. Radiant light literally emerges from this mystic void. Primordial structuring processes are common to both psyche and matter, working in the gap or empty interval between intention and action.
So, alchemy refines the way the mindbody generates and processes inherent light as medicine. It refines the aspirant's ability for tapping and amplifying Medicine Light. This primordial state is the luminous ground of our being, hidden deep in the heart of things.
All other goals are subordinate to this prime directive which includes meditative techniques for continuing consciousness after death. This Philosopher's Stone is also the Universal Medicine, the regenerative Elixir of Life. The greatest mystery is the LIFE IN DEATH: we don't die but continue in transcendent form. This is the virtual secret of man and nature.
Philosopher's Stone: Man is a microcosm holding the keys to all three kingdoms within himself as the “Thrice Great Hermes.” The athenor of the human body contains within it all that is needed to produce the great circulation. The fire, the First and Last Matter, and the vessel are “One.” Nothing needs to be added to the Stone, except the removal of the impurities that surround and drown it. Raise the fire, evaporate the superfluidities and burn off the dross which inhibits its energy to liberate the Light in its fullest expression. This is the secret of Eternal Life. Light is the root of life in death. The great initiate who termed himself the Comte de St.-Germain must not be confused with the French general of the same name, for the "Wonderman," as M. de St.-Germain was often called, was not a scion of the French family. The theory long held that he was a Portuguese Jew has now been discarded as untenable. The most reasonable conclusion regarding his birth is that he was the legitimate son of Franz-Leopold, Prince Ragoczy of Transylvania: in fact the Comte de St.-Germain appeared in Leipzig in 1777 as Prince Ragoczy. He also admitted to Prince Karl of Hesse that he was the son of Prince Ragoczy and that he was reared and educated by the last Duc de Medici.
The contradictory nature of the data regarding the Comte de St.-Germain is strikingly evidenced by several chronological inconsistencies. It is generally supposed that this mysterious adept was born in 1710, but the Countess v. Gergy declared that she had seen him during that year in Venice and that he appeared to be between forty-five and fifty years of age at that time. While the church register at Eckernforde contains a record of his death in 1784, he was allegedly seen on several occasions subsequent to that date, having attended a Masonic conference in 1785 and having been recognized in Venice in 1788. The last historical mention of the Comte de St.-Germain was in 1822, at which time he was presumably on the eve of embarking for India.
Soror Mystica: Rose Noble:
(Amelia Lily Monserrat), Shamanka, Semele Bendis, Alchemene, Rosa Y Santacilia, Melissa Anjouleme, Gisele de Soissons, Maraclea (Greater Shining), Rosamund Graythorne, Sara Damaris, Agnes de Ore
Redhead; green eyes - the audience is never sure if she is his projection or real [she might even be a spirit character throughout, or intermitantly manifest] - she comes in dream sequences, and changes forms, anamorphically and otherwise, sometimes with different names. We never quite know for sure at first if the Count is courting yet another mortal woman or his muse in yet another guise. She uses Bloodline genealogy for "time travelling". St. Germain likewise enters his energy body in reverie and dreams for astral adventures.
But this nurse of his deleriums is always recognizable by her gold coins, inscribed with a rose that she uses to hypnotize and misdirect. Mysterious inscriptions cause the coins to acquire a magical aura, as amulets or products of transmutation, and inexhaustible mines of philosophical gold. Believers in the transmutation of metals had or thought they had coins of silver and of gold, duly stamped with the records of the transmutation.
The daily routine of life gives rise to noble issues -- temptations, trials, darkness, the light and weariness -- form the metal that must be transmuted into the coin of Eternity. Women who embody Artemis are goal-oriented. They enjoy "the chase" of elusive quarry. Their perseverance leads to accomplishment and achievement. Artemis rescued anyone (especially women) in physical danger who appealed for her help. Artemis was the goddess of childbirth. Seeking and anticipation in a goal-directed search. The High Priestess has incorporated the Solar aspect within herself. This is not so with Artemis, as the Amazon.
Soror mystica is:a female alchemist ("mystical sister"), usually paired with a male. She is the Sister in Mystery. In alchemical lore these two work together seeking the philosopher's stone, or Holy Grail - brought together by invisible choreography. The alchemical partnership seeks, in essence, to find each person's own divinity through the conscious assistance of another who, in intimate relationship, mirrors back all the aspects of the other's soul which lay hidden; aspects which either taint or cloud the polished vision through which the divine could otherwise see clearly through human eyes. It is a lengthy process, one requiring commitment and humility to allow its rare completion. The working partnership is like two factories facing one another, which demolish and rebuild the other continually. . . a relationship with the Anima Mundi, the muse, genius, genie, daemon, holy guardian angel, etc
For Jung, the higher stages of individuation were unreachable unless a man projected his anima (or a woman her animus) onto a suitable partner. See transference -- a transference attachment to their own unconscious. She remains in a sort of no-man's-land between consciousness and the unconscious, in the half-shadow, in part belonging or akin to the conscious subject, in part an autonomous being meeting consciousness as such. She is not necessarily obedient to the subject's intentions. She may even be of a higher order, more often than not a source of inspiration or warning, or of supernatural information.
ARTIFEX - If the partnership dissolves, the artifex is reduced to being an alchemist by himself. The soror mystica would most likely pursue her transmutational needs through more esoteric means. When they work together, though, it is the two of them who perform the work of the alchemist - and so, through their cooperation, two become one. This is a different union from a sexual (or sexualized) union of opposites. The union of opposites is potent and creative and intense, an interpenetration of two beings.
The artifex and the soror mystica move fluidly with and around each other while focusing their energies and attentions on some shared purpose, that shared purpose being something OTHER than the possession of each other. And so, theirs is a much more subtle interaction, a fire with much lower heat if you will. Which is not to say that the artifex and soror mystica cannot or should not also be lovers. But they do not have to be. And their shared higher goal does not need to be mutual self-improvement - perhaps it is best if they have some other, outside shared purpose, so that mutual self-improvement comes as a fringe benefit of the work they do together.
A mirror of imagination and guide of the Magus - Soror Mystica represents a number of things.
1. Nature herself, including the ground of the action, even the Cosmos
2. The whole Art of Alchemy.
3. An actual physical partner or assistant of the female variety.
4. The feminine counterpart of the alchemist.
5. The Mercurial principle.
Serrano says, In philosophic alchemy, there exists the idea of the Soror Mystica who works with the alchemist while he mixes his substances in his retorts. . . . At the end, there occurs a mystic wedding. . . . In the processes of individuation worked out in the Jungian laboratory between the patient and the analyst, the same fusion takes place. . . . It is a forbidden love which can only be fulfilled outside of matrimony. . . . While it is true that this love does not exclude physical love, the physical becomes transformed into ritual.
Consider the Tantric practices of India, in which the Siddha magicians attempted to achieve psychic union. The ritual of the Tantras is complicated and mysterious. The . . . woman would usually be one of the sacred prostitutes. . . . Just as in alchemy lead is converted into gold . . . the act of coitus was really intended to ignite the mystic fire at the base of the vertebral column. . . . The woman is a priestess of magic love, whose function is to . . . awaken the . . . chakras of the Tantric hero. . . . The man does not ejaculate the semen, but impregnates himself; and thus the process of creation is reversed and time is stopped. . . . The product of this forbidden love is the Androgyne, the Total Man, all of whose . . . centers of consciousness are now awakened. . . .Jung, the magician, had almost alone made it possible for us today to take part in those Mysteries which seem capable of taking us back to that legendary land of the Man-God.
(Amelia Lily Monserrat), Shamanka, Semele Bendis, Alchemene, Rosa Y Santacilia, Melissa Anjouleme, Gisele de Soissons, Maraclea (Greater Shining), Rosamund Graythorne, Sara Damaris, Agnes de Ore
Redhead; green eyes - the audience is never sure if she is his projection or real [she might even be a spirit character throughout, or intermitantly manifest] - she comes in dream sequences, and changes forms, anamorphically and otherwise, sometimes with different names. We never quite know for sure at first if the Count is courting yet another mortal woman or his muse in yet another guise. She uses Bloodline genealogy for "time travelling". St. Germain likewise enters his energy body in reverie and dreams for astral adventures.
But this nurse of his deleriums is always recognizable by her gold coins, inscribed with a rose that she uses to hypnotize and misdirect. Mysterious inscriptions cause the coins to acquire a magical aura, as amulets or products of transmutation, and inexhaustible mines of philosophical gold. Believers in the transmutation of metals had or thought they had coins of silver and of gold, duly stamped with the records of the transmutation.
The daily routine of life gives rise to noble issues -- temptations, trials, darkness, the light and weariness -- form the metal that must be transmuted into the coin of Eternity. Women who embody Artemis are goal-oriented. They enjoy "the chase" of elusive quarry. Their perseverance leads to accomplishment and achievement. Artemis rescued anyone (especially women) in physical danger who appealed for her help. Artemis was the goddess of childbirth. Seeking and anticipation in a goal-directed search. The High Priestess has incorporated the Solar aspect within herself. This is not so with Artemis, as the Amazon.
Soror mystica is:a female alchemist ("mystical sister"), usually paired with a male. She is the Sister in Mystery. In alchemical lore these two work together seeking the philosopher's stone, or Holy Grail - brought together by invisible choreography. The alchemical partnership seeks, in essence, to find each person's own divinity through the conscious assistance of another who, in intimate relationship, mirrors back all the aspects of the other's soul which lay hidden; aspects which either taint or cloud the polished vision through which the divine could otherwise see clearly through human eyes. It is a lengthy process, one requiring commitment and humility to allow its rare completion. The working partnership is like two factories facing one another, which demolish and rebuild the other continually. . . a relationship with the Anima Mundi, the muse, genius, genie, daemon, holy guardian angel, etc
For Jung, the higher stages of individuation were unreachable unless a man projected his anima (or a woman her animus) onto a suitable partner. See transference -- a transference attachment to their own unconscious. She remains in a sort of no-man's-land between consciousness and the unconscious, in the half-shadow, in part belonging or akin to the conscious subject, in part an autonomous being meeting consciousness as such. She is not necessarily obedient to the subject's intentions. She may even be of a higher order, more often than not a source of inspiration or warning, or of supernatural information.
ARTIFEX - If the partnership dissolves, the artifex is reduced to being an alchemist by himself. The soror mystica would most likely pursue her transmutational needs through more esoteric means. When they work together, though, it is the two of them who perform the work of the alchemist - and so, through their cooperation, two become one. This is a different union from a sexual (or sexualized) union of opposites. The union of opposites is potent and creative and intense, an interpenetration of two beings.
The artifex and the soror mystica move fluidly with and around each other while focusing their energies and attentions on some shared purpose, that shared purpose being something OTHER than the possession of each other. And so, theirs is a much more subtle interaction, a fire with much lower heat if you will. Which is not to say that the artifex and soror mystica cannot or should not also be lovers. But they do not have to be. And their shared higher goal does not need to be mutual self-improvement - perhaps it is best if they have some other, outside shared purpose, so that mutual self-improvement comes as a fringe benefit of the work they do together.
A mirror of imagination and guide of the Magus - Soror Mystica represents a number of things.
1. Nature herself, including the ground of the action, even the Cosmos
2. The whole Art of Alchemy.
3. An actual physical partner or assistant of the female variety.
4. The feminine counterpart of the alchemist.
5. The Mercurial principle.
Serrano says, In philosophic alchemy, there exists the idea of the Soror Mystica who works with the alchemist while he mixes his substances in his retorts. . . . At the end, there occurs a mystic wedding. . . . In the processes of individuation worked out in the Jungian laboratory between the patient and the analyst, the same fusion takes place. . . . It is a forbidden love which can only be fulfilled outside of matrimony. . . . While it is true that this love does not exclude physical love, the physical becomes transformed into ritual.
Consider the Tantric practices of India, in which the Siddha magicians attempted to achieve psychic union. The ritual of the Tantras is complicated and mysterious. The . . . woman would usually be one of the sacred prostitutes. . . . Just as in alchemy lead is converted into gold . . . the act of coitus was really intended to ignite the mystic fire at the base of the vertebral column. . . . The woman is a priestess of magic love, whose function is to . . . awaken the . . . chakras of the Tantric hero. . . . The man does not ejaculate the semen, but impregnates himself; and thus the process of creation is reversed and time is stopped. . . . The product of this forbidden love is the Androgyne, the Total Man, all of whose . . . centers of consciousness are now awakened. . . .Jung, the magician, had almost alone made it possible for us today to take part in those Mysteries which seem capable of taking us back to that legendary land of the Man-God.
“I am not of any time or of any place; beyond time and space my spiritual being lives an eternal existence. I turn my thoughts back over the ages and I project my spirit toward an existence far beyond that which you perceive, I become what I choose to be. Participating consciously in the Absolute Being, I arrange my actions according to what is at hand. My name defines my actions because I am free. My country is wherever my feet stand at the moment. Put yesterday behind you if you dare, like the forgotten ancestors who came before you, give no thought to the morrow and the illusionary hope of greatness that will never be yours, I will be what I am.” – Count Alessandro di Cagliostro (Giuseppe Balsamo)
THE COMTE DI CAGLIOSTRO The "divine" Cagliostro, one moment the idol of Paris, the next a lonely prisoner in a dungeon of the Inquisition, passed like a meteor across the face of France. According to his memoirs written by him during his confinement in the Bastille, Alessandro Cagliostro was born in Malta of a noble but unknown family. He was reared and educated in Arabia under the tutelage of Altotas, a man well versed in several branches of philosophy and science and also a master of the transcendental arts. While Cagliostro's biographers generally ridicule this account, they utterly fail to advance in its stead any logical solution for the source of his magnificent store of arcane knowledge.
Branded as an impostor and a charlatan, his miracles declared to be legerdemain, and his very generosity suspected of an ulterior motive, the Comte di Cagliostro is undoubtedly the most calumniated man in modem history. "The mistrust," writes W. H. K. Trowbridge, "that mystery and magic always inspire made Cagliostro with his fantastic personality an easy target for calumny. After having been riddled with abuse till he was unrecognizable, prejudice, the foster child of calumny, proceeded to lynch him, so to speak. For over one hundred years his character has dangled on the gibbet of infamy, upon which the sbirri of tradition have inscribed a curse on any one who shall attempt to cut him down. His fate has been his fame. He is remembered in history, not so much for anything he did, as for what was done to him." (See Cagliostro, the Splendour and Misery of a Master of Magic.)
According to popular belief Cagliostro's real name was Giuseppe Balsamo, and he was a Sicilian by birth. Within recent years, however, doubts have arisen as to whether this belief is in accord with the facts. It may yet be proved that in part, at least, the tirades of abuse heaped upon the unfortunate Comte have been directed against the wrong man. Giuseppe Balsamo was born in 1743 of honest but humble parentage. From boyhood he exhibited selfish, worthless, and even criminal tendencies, and after a series of escapades disappeared. Trowbridge(loc. cit.) presents ample proof that Cagliostro was not Giuseppe Balsamo, thus disposing of the worst accusation against him. After six months' imprisonment in the Bastille, on his trial Cagliostro was exonerated from any implication in the theft of the famous "Queen's Necklace," and later the fact was established that he had actually warned Cardinal de Rohan of the intended crime. Despite the fact, however, that he was discharged as innocent by the French trial court, a deliberate effort to vilify Cagliostro was made by an artist--more talented than intelligent--who painted a picture showing him holding the fatal necklace in his hand. The trial of Cagliostro has been called the prologue of the French Revolution. The smoldering animosity against Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI engendered by this trial later burst forth as the holocaust of the Reign of Terror. In his brochure, Cagliostro and His Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry, Henry R. Evans also ably defends this much persecuted man against the infamies so unjustly linked with his name.
Sincere investigators of the facts surrounding the life and mysterious "death" of Cagliostro are of the opinion that the stories circulated against him may be traced to the machinations of the Inquisition, which in this manner sought to justify his persecution. The basic charge against Cagliostro was that he had attempted to found a Masonic lodge in Rome--nothing more. All other accusations are of subsequent date. For some reason undisclosed, the Pope commuted Cagliostro's sentence of death to perpetual imprisonment. This act in itself showed the regard in which Cagliostro was held even by his enemies. While his death is believed to have occurred several years later in an Inquisitional dungeon in the castle of San Leo, it is highly improbable that such was the case. There are rumors that he escaped, and according to one very significant story Cagliostro fled to India, where his talents received the appreciation denied them in politics-ridden Europe.
After creating his Egyptian Rite, Cagliostro declared that since women had been admitted into the ancient Mysteries there was no reason why they should be excluded from the modem orders. The Princesse de Lamballe graciously accepted the dignity of Mistress of Honor in his secret society, and on the evening of her initiation the most important members of the French court were present. The brilliance of the affair attracted the attention of the Masonic lodges in Paris. Their representatives, in a sincere desire to understand the Masonic Mysteries, chose the learned orientalist Court de Gébelin as their spokesman, and invited Comte di Cagliostro to attend a conference to assist in clearing up a number of important questions concerning Masonic philosophy. The Comte accepted the invitation.
On May 10, 1785, Cagliostro attended the conference called for that purpose, and his power and simplicity immediately won for him the favorable opinion of the entire gathering. It took but a few words for the Court de Gébelin to discover that he was talking nor only to a fellow scholar but to a man infinitely his superior. Cagliostro immediately presented an address, which was so unexpected, so totally different from anything ever heard before by those assembled, that all were speechless with amazement. Cagliostro declared the Rose-Cross to be the ancient and true symbol of the Mysteries and, after a brief description of its original symbolism, branched out into a consideration of the symbolic meaning of letters, predicting to the assembly the future of France in a graphic manner that left no room for doubt that the speaker was a man of insight and supernatural power. With a curious arrangement of the letters of the alphabet, Cagliostro foretold in detail the horrors of the coming revolution and the fall of the monarchy, describing minutely the fate of the various members of the royal family. He also prophesied the advent of Napoleon and the rise of the First Empire. All this he did to demonstrate that which can be accomplished by superior knowledge.
Later when arrested and sent to the Bastille, Cagliostro wrote on the wall of his cell the following cryptic message which, when interpreted, reads: "In 1789 the besieged Bastille will on July 14th be pulled down by you from top to bottom." Cagliostro was the mysterious agent of the Knights Templars, the Rosicrucian initiate whose magnificent store of learning is attested by the profundity of the Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry. Thus Comte di Cagliostro remains one of the strangest characters in history--believed by his friends to have lived forever and to have taken part in the marriage feast of Cana, and accused by his enemies of being the Devil incarnate! His powers of prophecy are ably described by Alexandre Dumas in The Queen's Necklace. The world he sought to serve in his own strange way received him not, but has followed with relentless persecution down through the centuries even the very memory of this illustrious adept who, unable to accomplish the great labor at hand, stepped aside in favor of his more successful compatriot, the Comte de St-Germain. --MPH
Branded as an impostor and a charlatan, his miracles declared to be legerdemain, and his very generosity suspected of an ulterior motive, the Comte di Cagliostro is undoubtedly the most calumniated man in modem history. "The mistrust," writes W. H. K. Trowbridge, "that mystery and magic always inspire made Cagliostro with his fantastic personality an easy target for calumny. After having been riddled with abuse till he was unrecognizable, prejudice, the foster child of calumny, proceeded to lynch him, so to speak. For over one hundred years his character has dangled on the gibbet of infamy, upon which the sbirri of tradition have inscribed a curse on any one who shall attempt to cut him down. His fate has been his fame. He is remembered in history, not so much for anything he did, as for what was done to him." (See Cagliostro, the Splendour and Misery of a Master of Magic.)
According to popular belief Cagliostro's real name was Giuseppe Balsamo, and he was a Sicilian by birth. Within recent years, however, doubts have arisen as to whether this belief is in accord with the facts. It may yet be proved that in part, at least, the tirades of abuse heaped upon the unfortunate Comte have been directed against the wrong man. Giuseppe Balsamo was born in 1743 of honest but humble parentage. From boyhood he exhibited selfish, worthless, and even criminal tendencies, and after a series of escapades disappeared. Trowbridge(loc. cit.) presents ample proof that Cagliostro was not Giuseppe Balsamo, thus disposing of the worst accusation against him. After six months' imprisonment in the Bastille, on his trial Cagliostro was exonerated from any implication in the theft of the famous "Queen's Necklace," and later the fact was established that he had actually warned Cardinal de Rohan of the intended crime. Despite the fact, however, that he was discharged as innocent by the French trial court, a deliberate effort to vilify Cagliostro was made by an artist--more talented than intelligent--who painted a picture showing him holding the fatal necklace in his hand. The trial of Cagliostro has been called the prologue of the French Revolution. The smoldering animosity against Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI engendered by this trial later burst forth as the holocaust of the Reign of Terror. In his brochure, Cagliostro and His Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry, Henry R. Evans also ably defends this much persecuted man against the infamies so unjustly linked with his name.
Sincere investigators of the facts surrounding the life and mysterious "death" of Cagliostro are of the opinion that the stories circulated against him may be traced to the machinations of the Inquisition, which in this manner sought to justify his persecution. The basic charge against Cagliostro was that he had attempted to found a Masonic lodge in Rome--nothing more. All other accusations are of subsequent date. For some reason undisclosed, the Pope commuted Cagliostro's sentence of death to perpetual imprisonment. This act in itself showed the regard in which Cagliostro was held even by his enemies. While his death is believed to have occurred several years later in an Inquisitional dungeon in the castle of San Leo, it is highly improbable that such was the case. There are rumors that he escaped, and according to one very significant story Cagliostro fled to India, where his talents received the appreciation denied them in politics-ridden Europe.
After creating his Egyptian Rite, Cagliostro declared that since women had been admitted into the ancient Mysteries there was no reason why they should be excluded from the modem orders. The Princesse de Lamballe graciously accepted the dignity of Mistress of Honor in his secret society, and on the evening of her initiation the most important members of the French court were present. The brilliance of the affair attracted the attention of the Masonic lodges in Paris. Their representatives, in a sincere desire to understand the Masonic Mysteries, chose the learned orientalist Court de Gébelin as their spokesman, and invited Comte di Cagliostro to attend a conference to assist in clearing up a number of important questions concerning Masonic philosophy. The Comte accepted the invitation.
On May 10, 1785, Cagliostro attended the conference called for that purpose, and his power and simplicity immediately won for him the favorable opinion of the entire gathering. It took but a few words for the Court de Gébelin to discover that he was talking nor only to a fellow scholar but to a man infinitely his superior. Cagliostro immediately presented an address, which was so unexpected, so totally different from anything ever heard before by those assembled, that all were speechless with amazement. Cagliostro declared the Rose-Cross to be the ancient and true symbol of the Mysteries and, after a brief description of its original symbolism, branched out into a consideration of the symbolic meaning of letters, predicting to the assembly the future of France in a graphic manner that left no room for doubt that the speaker was a man of insight and supernatural power. With a curious arrangement of the letters of the alphabet, Cagliostro foretold in detail the horrors of the coming revolution and the fall of the monarchy, describing minutely the fate of the various members of the royal family. He also prophesied the advent of Napoleon and the rise of the First Empire. All this he did to demonstrate that which can be accomplished by superior knowledge.
Later when arrested and sent to the Bastille, Cagliostro wrote on the wall of his cell the following cryptic message which, when interpreted, reads: "In 1789 the besieged Bastille will on July 14th be pulled down by you from top to bottom." Cagliostro was the mysterious agent of the Knights Templars, the Rosicrucian initiate whose magnificent store of learning is attested by the profundity of the Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry. Thus Comte di Cagliostro remains one of the strangest characters in history--believed by his friends to have lived forever and to have taken part in the marriage feast of Cana, and accused by his enemies of being the Devil incarnate! His powers of prophecy are ably described by Alexandre Dumas in The Queen's Necklace. The world he sought to serve in his own strange way received him not, but has followed with relentless persecution down through the centuries even the very memory of this illustrious adept who, unable to accomplish the great labor at hand, stepped aside in favor of his more successful compatriot, the Comte de St-Germain. --MPH
Mesmer
Franz Mesmer Franz Anton Mesmer (1815)
Franz Mesmer (1734–1815) was German physician who developed a theory and clinical practice of 'animal magnetism' or 'mesmerism'. It's from Mesmer that we get the word "mesmerize". He owned a particularly fine glass armonica, played it well, and it was an integral part of his 'mesmerizing' practice. Mesmer, Franklin and Mozart were all Freemasons, a group that enthusiastically welcomed glass music for the promotion of human 'harmony'. Mesmer and Mozart knew each other, and Mesmer and Franklin knew each other (alas Mozart and Franklin never met). Early Years Mesmer was born in the village of Iznang, Swabia. After studying at the Jesuit universities of Dillingen and Ingolstadt, he took up the study of medicine at the University of Vienna in 1759. In 1766 he published a doctoral dissertation with the Latin title De planetarum influxu in corpus humanum ("The Influence of the Planets on the Human Body"), which discussed the influence of the Moon and the planets on the human body and on disease. This wasn't 'medical astrology', however—relying largely on Newton's theory of the tides, Mesmer expounded on certain tides in the human body that might be accounted for by the movements of the sun and moon.1 Mesmer apparently plagiarized2 his dissertation from a work by Richard Mead (1673–1754)—an eminent English physician and Newton's friend.3 In all fairness, however, in Mesmer's day doctoral theses were not expected to be original.4
Soon after receiving his degree, Mesmer married Maria Anna von Posch, a wealthy widow, and established himself as a physician in Vienna. He lived on a splendid estate and patronized the arts.
Mesmer and the Mozarts In 1768, when court intrigue prevented the performance of La Finta Semplice (K51) for which a twelve-year-old Mozart had composed 500 pages of music, Mesmer arranged a performance in his garden of Mozart's Bastien und Bastienne (K50), a one-act opera. It was performed at the Mesmer mansion on an autumn evening (the date remains uncertain) in 1768.5. The performance could not have taken place in his garden theater as it wasn't built yet—it likely took place in his house, perhaps in the garden room. (Deutsch, A Documentary Bio, 84)] While conducting, the composer sat at the keyboard, which he played as a member of the orchestra.6 Mozart later immortalized his former patron by including a joking reference to Mesmer in his opera Cosi fan tutte:
This is that piece
Of magnet
The stone of Msemer
Who originated
In Germany
And then became so famous7 In 1773 father and son Mozart were in Vienna and encountered the armonica at Franz Mesmer's house. Leopold wrote home to his wife:
Herr von Mesmer, at whose house we lunched on Monday, played to us on Miss Davies's [h]armonica or glass instrument and played very well. It cost him about fifty ducats and it is very beautifully made.8 A few weeks later Leopold brought up the armonica again, mentioning that Wolfgang himself tried playing Mesmer's instrument:
Do you know that Herr von Mesmer plays Miss Davies's harmonica unusually well? He is the only person in Vienna who has learnt it and he possesses a much finer glass instrument than Miss Davies does. Wolfgang too has played upon it. How I should like to have one!9 This would suggest that Mesmer purchased his armonica some time between 1768 and 1773—this instrument became his favorite for the rest of his life. He also played the violoncello and the clavichord. Visiting musicians included Gluck10
Mesmer's musicales took place in the drawing room of the mansion or, if the weather was pleasant, in his open-air theater. He often took an instrumental part in an ensemble with the professionals, accompanying them through established classics like Purcell and Palestrina, introducing works by Gluck, Haydn, or lesser composers then exciting the Viennese ear. The audience usually included acquaintances knowledgeable enough about their host's vanity to ask him for a solo on the glass armonica, his own choice for a display of his virtuosity. 11
Animal Magnetism We know almost nothing of the medical procedures of Dr. Mesmer in this early period. Interestingly it's the letters of the Mozart family that give us glimpses of the treatment of a patient who was to become famous in the history of animal magnetism as one of its first successes: Miss Franziska Oesterlin, who was living in Mesmer's home in 1773. On August 12, 1773, Leopold Mozart wrote to his wife,
Miss Franzl has again been dangerously ill, and blisters had to be applied to her arms and feet. She is so much better now [They had expected her to die.] that she has knitted in bed a red silk purse for Wolfgang, which she has given him as a remembrance.12 On August 21 Leopold wrote to his wife that Miss Franzl had a second relapse and recovered from it.
It is amazing how she can stand so much bleeding and so many medicines, blisters, convulsions, fainting fits and so forth, for she is nothing but skin and bone.13 But Mesmer's treatments were ultimately successful—Wolfgang writes to his father on March 17, 1780 from Mesmer's garden on the Landstrasse:
The old lady is not at home, but Franzl is now Frau von Posch and is here... she has grown so plump and fat—she has three children—2 girls and a young gentleman.14 Franzl had married Mesmer's stepson, Franz de Paula von Bosch (Bosch and Posch were interchangeable names).15
Other successes with equally difficult cases—notably Professor Bauer16 and Baron de Horka17—established Mesmer's fame. However, the orthodox medical community considered him to be a charlatan.
Maria Theresa von Paradis In 1777 he treated Maria Theresa von Paradis (also von Paradies) (1759–1824), the famous blind pianist for whom Mozart wrote a piano concerto (probably No.18 in Bb, K456, composed 1778). When Maria awoke one morning at the age of three years and seven months, she was totally blind. The parents called in the best medical talent in Vienna, who pronounced her incurable but treated her for several years anyway. They shaved her head and put plasters on it for two months. They applied leaches. Purgatives and diuretics were prescribed in abundance. In addition, thousands of electric shocks were given to her eyes (with Leyden jars)—the only result being that her eyes protruded from their sockets and were continuously spasming and turning upward. Nor was blindness her only affliction—she also suffered from melancholia and attacks of delirium.18 (Not surprising, considering the 'cure' she was enduring.) In order to give their daughter a diversion, they provided music lessons, and she became a capable singer and keyboard player. The Empress attended her performance of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater in which she played the organ and sang, and was so moved that she granted the child, then 11 years old, a pension of 200 florins a year so she could continue her musical education.19
Mesmer had known Miss Paradis for several years, and told her father he could treat her protruding and spasming eyes with his newly discovered 'animal magnetism'. Privately, Mesmer thought he could cure her blindness. Treatment began January 20, 1777. By the fourth day her eyes resumed their normal positions, their movements subsided, and her previously dilated pupils became normal. Within a month apparently some vision had been restored. At best she was always extraordinarily sensitive to light, and having been blind from such a young age she had serious trouble making any sense of her new visual experience: the nose on the human face was absurd to her to the point of bursting into laughter (she might be right about that); she was surprised that pictures were flat and not three-dimensional; when she turned her eyes toward a window in daytime or a lighted candle at night, she experienced vertigo.20 She also had trouble learning colors and judging the distances of objects.21
Partial restoration of vision did not bring happiness—it made her miserable. She asked her father: "Why am I not as happy now as I used to be? Everything that I see makes an unpleasant impression on me. I was much more calm when I was blind... If I am always going to be as excited when I see new things as I am now, I would rather return to my blindness."22 When friends, relatives, or important people were brought to her, she often had attacks of fainting or uncontrollable weeping. When outdoors, she asked that her eyes be bandaged because the light caused vertigo. Before the partial restoration of her eyesight she had walked around her house unaided with complete confidence; now, she bound up her eyes and had to be led.
Worse, it ruined her playing. When she was blind she had played the most difficult music with the greatest accuracy, even while carrying on a conversation. With vision it was hard for her to play: she watched her fingers on the keyboard and played mostly wrong notes.
More medical experts were called in. At first reports of Mesmer's apparent success were glowing, such as that of Dr. Le Roux,23 but the tide began to turn. Dr. Barth, Professor of Diseases of the Eye, had stated on two occasions that Miss Paradis could see, but then changed his mind and declared that she could not see after all.24 Mesmer's medical enemies began to work on Maria's father: as her vision improved and her playing degraded she might lose her pension. Matters became so bad that swords were literally drawn in Mesmer's home—with poor Maria caught in the middle. Finally the father convinced Mesmer to allow him to take Maria on a vacation "so that she might enjoy the benefit of the country air," promising to return her to his care. They never brought her back. Instead, Mesmer learned that her family was saying that she was still blind and subject to convulsions. "They compelled her to imitate fits and blindness," Mesmer wrote. "It was necessary, in the plans of her greedy parents, that this unfortunate girl should become blind again or appear so." He believed their motive was to retain the pension of 200 florins a year.25
She lived the life of a completely blind person for the rest of her days. For years she conducted a school of music for young ladies and was prominent in Viennese musical and intellectual society. She composed music including several operas that were staged in Vienna and Prague—none of which achieved any success. In 1784 she toured Europe and performed in Paris and London.26
During the rest of her life Maria Theresa had nothing to say about Mesmer apart from a passing reference in a letter in 1780 that her nervous system had been weakened "by the unsuccessful result of an eye treatment". She died in 1824 at the age of 65.27
After Miss Paradis returned to her parents and Mesmer found himself thoroughly discredited, without a single defender in the medical profession, he began to think about leaving Vienna. His departure was not hurried, nevertheless it was strongly encouraged by the medical and ecclesiastical community—Vienna at that time was in the Holy Roman Empire, and the ecclesiastical community had a lot of clout (they didn't call it the Holy Roman Empire for nothing!). Nevertheless, Mesmer was provided with a letter of recommendation from the Minister of Foreign Affairs to the Viennese ambassador in Paris, which shows that his government had not repudiated him.28 He left Vienna about January 1778—he took his armonica with him but left his wife behind! She needed to stay in Vienna to manage her inheritance, and their relationship at this point seems to have been one of mutual indifference. Mesmer was never to see her again—twelve years later she died of breast cancer.29
Paris He arrived in Paris in February of 1778 in the company of his valet and Dr. La Roux. He promptly rented an apartment in the Place Vendôme—a part of the city preferred by the wealthy and powerful. "He brought with him the robust conviction that he deserved the homage of all mankind, homage due to the discoverer of a new force in nature which wcould cure all diseases and would eventually displace conventional medicine. He had an imperturbable sense of his importance to the world without a trace of modesty or humility."30
November 1, 1779: "my armonica has not arrived and it is not possible for it to be here in time."31
There, in May 1779, he met Gluck, and enchanted him by his playing on the armonica. (Did Gluck tell Mesmer of his own concert on the musical glasses given in London forty-three years earlier?) Although Mesmer could play from printed music, Gluck was so impressed with Mesmer's improvisations that he urged him to confine his playing to extemporization. Apparently Mesmer was particularly fond of entertaining his guests with his armonica at twilight after dinner, and he took Gluck's advice to heart and rarely performed from printed music. When deeply moved by his own playing Mesmer used to sing at the same time. 32
Paris at that time was certainly an excellent place for a physician, for Paris was filled with people suffering from many chronic diseases, untreated and untreatable. The population was ravaged by epidemics, of which smallpox was especially feared. It has been estimated that smallpox disfigured the faces of one fourth of the women of France, some 200,000 of whom took refuge in convents from the rejection they experienced because of their appearance. As a result, average life expectancy was about 40 years.33
The people of Paris were not as tightly controlled as the Viennese, who were dominated by the double dictatorship of Maria Theresa and the church. The French had considerably more freedom of speech; censorship of books was easily evaded. Mesmer began to practice medicine without asking the permission of any professional or governmental entity—how he managed to pull this off is not understood; certainly no French citizen could practice with such an exemption. Physicians who were graduates of faculties outside of Paris and wished to practice were required to pass examinations and defend theses in public disputations. Meanwhile, patients and curiosity-seekers flocked to him for treatment. Paris was soon divided into two factions: those who were sure he was a charlatan who had been forced to flee Vienna, and those who accepted his own self-evaluation that he had made a world-shaking discovery. In order to accommodate the throng of people who eagerly sought treatment with animal magnetism, Mesmer developed a method of mass treatment. Since he had discovered in 1775 that he could communicate animal magnetism to glass, water, and other substances and store it in them, he built a reservoir, the baquet, from which several patients could draw the healing agent at the same time. Baquet means tub, a word which lacks dignity; therefore the word is usually left untranslated.
Inside the wooden tub, which had a diameter of four or five feet, were bottles filled with water and laid on their sides and with their necks pointing to the center of the tub; they had been magnetized by Mesmer's stroking. To give more pressure to the magnetic fluid, a second or even a third layer of bottles could be placed over the first. The tub was filled with enough water to cover the bottles. Iron rods issued from the bottles and extended upward through the lid of the tub, bent so that they might be applied directly to the ailing parts by the patients, who stood in a circle around the tub. A cord could be passed around them, and sometimes they joined hands. A pianoforte or Mesmer's favorite instrument, the glass armonica, furnished music. The magnetism was propagated by the music, as Mesmer had discovered.34
Since Mesmer recognized the part suggestion and imagination play in the healing process and since he understood the influence of the surroundings on both, he took great pains to provide his patients with a setting in which they could be persuaded to submit to his technique. His whole purpose was to establish rapport with them, to gain their confidence and trust, and then, their nerves being now receptive, to introduce doses of animal magnetism into their bodies. Mesmer laid out his clinic as meticulously as if he were stage-managing a play. Only when he had the right conditions around him was he ready for the day's session. This was the séance of Mesmerism.
It began in a large room where dozens of patients could be taken care of at the same time in individualized and group therapy. The room at the Hôtel Bullion was an opulent, spacious one in which previous residents had entertained the beau monde of Paris. It had a lofty ceiling, inlaid floors, paneled walls, full-length mirrors, and oriel windows. The furnishings were in the best Louis Quinze style, from the artwork on the walls and tables to the chairs in which the patients sat while they were being magnetized.
Mesmer needed this elegant setting. The aristocrats who came to the clinic would feel at ease in the type of room familiar to them, while the poor would feel that they were being lifted by Dr. Mesmer above the hard and sordid lives they led. In either case, the setting aided the cure. Mesmer accepted all patients—there is no evidence he ever turned a patient away as being beyond help; if he could not cure, he could at least relieve their suffering. "He treated eye troubles, blindness, deafness, apoplexy, asthma, tumors of all kinds, skin and scalp diseases, migraine, and all the rest. Leprosy was to be treated 'like ringworm,' with magnetized water. The idea that he limited his practice to disorders of nervous origin is a common error."35
During the séance Mesmer kept the doors and windows closed. Heavy drapes allowed only a dim light, and no noise to filter in from the outside. The atmosphere was warm and oppressive, causing labored breathing conducive to emotional excitement. Silence reigned except for whispers between patients and doctors (Mesmer or his assistants) in the give-and-take of diagnosis, treatment and prescription. One cardinal exception—the sound of a piano or glass armonica came from a corner of the room. Mesmer had learned from his Viennese teachers about the healing properties of music; he had stated in Proposition 16 of his memoir that animal magnetism "can be communicated, propogated, and reinforced by sound,"36 and he combined the two ideas by placing instruments where his patients could hear and be moved by them.
He was not interested in melody as such when he placed musical instruments in the clinic. They were indispensable to his medical practice, swaying, disturbing, calming the ill. Stormy music helped bring on the Mesmerian crisis, and soft music helped allay it. The musician shifted from one to the other at a signal from Mesmer or an assistant. One of Mesmer's followers, Caullet de Vaumorel, testified to the exquisite sensitivity with which the mood of the patients changed as the mood of the music changed.37
Apparently Mesmer was effective. Sometime between 1778 and 1779 a Dr. Le Roux took an army surgeon (and thus presumably a hard-headed fellow) to Mesmer's clinic for treatment of gout with which he had been afflicted for nine years...
After several turns around the room, Mr. Mesmer unbuttoned the patient's shirt and, moving back somewhat, placed his finger against the part affected. My friend felt a tickling pain. Mr. Mesmer then moved his finger perpendicularly across his abdomen and chest, and the pain followed the finger exactly. He then asked the patient to extend his index finger and pointed his own finger toward it at a distance of three or four steps, whereupon my friend felt an electric tingling at the tip of his finger, which penetrated the whole finger toward the palm. Mr. Mesmer then seated him near the armonica; he had hardly begun to play when my friend was affected emotionally, trembled, lost his breath, changed color, and felt pulled toward the floor. In this state of anxiety, Mr. Mesmer placed him on a couch so that he was in less danger of falling, and he brought in a maid who he said was antimagnetic. When her hand approached my friend's chest, everything stopped with lightning speed, and my colleague touched and examined his stomach with astonishment…. The sharp pain had suddenly ceased. Mr. Mesmer told us that a dog or a cat would have stopped the pain as well as the maid did.38 Mesmer also experimented on d'Eslon—Mesmer's "right-hand man"—by playing on the glass armonica or the piano and conveying animal magnetism to him. D'Eslon was obliged to beg for mercy about the music, presumably because of the discomfort caused by the charge of animal magnetism that it carried.39
Mesmer wanted official recognition for his discoveries—he considered himself more physicist than physician.40 He approached the Royal Academy of Sciences; then the Royal Society of Medicine; then the Faculty of Medicine. He was rebuffed by all. Finally, he informed his patients that he would discontinue their treatments on April 15, 1781 and leave the country. One of these patients, the Duchesse de Chaulnes, complained to her friend Queen Marie Antoinette. The Queen proposed that a commission be established to investigate his claims, and if their report is favorable that he be recompensed (including a life annuity of 20,000 livres) and given official government sanction and support on the condition that he remain in France. Mesmer reluctantly agreed. Two weeks later the Minister of State, Jen-Frédéric Phélipeaux, Count of Maurepas, met with Mesmer, and began by saying that the King, informed of Mesmer's dislike of being investigated by commissioners, wished to excuse him from that formality and would grant him a life annuity of 20,000 livres and pay 10,000 livres a year for a house suitable for the instruction of students. Mesmer repudiated his agreement to the Queen's offer and declined the King's.41
In 1784, the King appointed four members of the Faculty of Medicine as commissioners to investigate animal magnetism as practiced by Dr. Charles d'Eslon—Mesmer's foremost disciple. This commission had not been requested by Mesmer or any of his followers. The members of the commission were:
As to the animal magnetism, so much talk'd of, I am totally unacquainted with it, and must doubt its existence till I can see or feel some effect of it. None of the cures said to be perform'd by it, have fallen under my observation46; and there being so many disorders which cure themselves and such a disposition in mankind to deceive themselves and one another on these occasions; and living long having given me frequent opportunities of seeing certain remedies cry'd up as curing everything, and yet so soon after totally laid aside as useless, I cannot but feat that the expectation of great advantage from the new method of treating diseases will prove a delusion. That delusion may however in some cases be of use while it lasts. There are in every great city a number of persons who are never in health, because they are fond of medicines and always taking them, and hurt their constitutions. If these people can be persuaded to forbear their drugs in expectation of being cured by only the physician's finger or an iron rod pointed at them, they may possibly find good effects tho' they mistake the cause. At the same time, one should consider the following anecdote about Franklin: In the spring of 1772, Franklin called on Prince Adam Czartoryski, heir apparent to the throne of Poland. His wife had been suffering from 'melancholia':
I was ill, in a state of melancholia, and writing my testament and farewell letters. Wishing to distract me, my husband explained to me who Franklin was and to what he owed his fame… Franklin had a noble face with an expression of engaging kindness. Surprised by my immobility, he took my hands and gazed at me saying: pauvre jeune femme ["poor young lady"]. He then opened an armonica, sat down and played long. The music made a strong impression on me and tears began flowing from my eyes. Then Franklin sat by my side and looking with compassion said, "Madam, you are cured." Indeed in that moment I was cured of my melancholia. Franklin offered to teach me how to play the armonica — I accepted without hesitation, hence he gave me twelve lessons.47 Alas, several years later she seems to have relapsed.48 )
As soon as Mesmer learned that a commission had been formed to investigate animal magnetism as practiced by Dr. Charles d'Eslon, Mesmer wrote a letter to Dr. Franklin. He disavowed d'Eslon, stating that he had only an incomplete knowledge of animal magnetism.49
Since the King's first members of the commission belonged to the Faculty of Medicine, the rival organization, the Royal Society of Medicine, asked to be represented, and the King authorized a second commission.50 Both commissions began their work promptly, and their reports were published about 5 months later. The first commission, of which Franklin was a member, carried out their experiments at Franklin's house in deference to his health. But d'Eslon's demonstrations broke down under the committee's examination when, for example, a patient who was supposed to feel the effects of animal magnetism was unable to tell—when blindfolded—whether the mesmerizer was present or not. The committee reported that Mesmer's results were due to his good salesmanship and the patient's imagination, and that his "animal magnetism" was really the faith of the patient. The second commission reported essentially the same findings.
In all fairness, the commission noted that Mr. Deslon used a piano, and not an armonica, to conduct the magnetism.51 Perhaps the experiments would have succeeded had they used an armonica!
Opinions raged, books and letters were volleyed back and forth, and satirical plays abounded. Michel-Augustin Thouret (1748–1810), a docteur-régent (basically a senior physician) of the Faculty of Medicine, was commissioned by the Royal Society of Medicine to collect everything concerning animal magnetism in ancient and modern authors and to make a report on its origins. The result was his Recherches et doutes sur le magnétisme animal (Research and Doubts about Animal Magnetism); one of the precursors Thouret cited was our old friend Athanasius Kircher for his work on magnetism: Magnes, sive de arte magnetica (The Magnet, or the Magnetic Art).52
The committees' reports were the beginning of the end for Mesmer. Franklin wrote on April 29, 1785 that Mesmer was still working in Paris:
It is surprising how much credulity still subsists in the world. I suppose all the physicians in France put together have not made so much money during the time he has been here, as he has done.53 Mesmer still kept in touch with Franklin.54
Twilight Mesmer left Paris later that year, aimlessly wandering around Europe until he was 'rediscovered' by a group of physicians in Berlin.55 By then D'Eslon had died (August 1786), and France had been caught up in the Reign of Terror: the King and Queen, and commission members Lavoisier and Bailly were guillotined. Perhaps the commissions actually did Mesmer a favor—due to their findings Mesmer had left France and missed the French Revolution altogether.
Around 1809 Mesmer ended up retiring in Frauenfeld in (what is now) his native Switzerland.56 "He played his glass [h]armonica in a masterly manner with extensive improvisations, usually after meals and to honor a guest who was agreeable to him."57 Mesmer was in good health until February 1815, when he complained of a general malaise, accompanied by retention of urine (in old men almost always due to hypertrophy of the prostate).58 On March 1 he suffered a stroke, and on the 5th, with the end imminent, he asked if his Catholic priest friend Fessler would come and play the glass armonica for him. The priest hurried to the bedside of the dying man, but Mesmer died quietly before he got there. Kerner (a biographer of Mesmer) says that the pet canary "neither ate nor sang again, and was soon found dead in its cage." 59
Mesmer was not a poor man. At the time of his death he was employing three servants, and had a horse and carriage. Soon after his death and before the estate was settled, Dr. Wolfart asked the heirs for the glass armonica, which he said Mesmer had promised him. It was sent to Dr. Wolfart, and has been lost.60
1 Bloch, G (1980), xiii
2 Pattie (1994), 13ff.
3De Imperio Solis ac Lunae in Corpora Humana et Morbis inde Oriundis (On the Influence of the Sun and Moon upon Human Bodies and the Diseases Arising Therefrom.(1704). See Pattie (1994), 16.
4 Pattie (1994), 13
5So we are told by two editors of Mozart's letters, but neither cites a source for this information ( Deutsch (1966), 84; Anderson (1938), 1:105)
6 Buranelli (1975), 54–55
7 Questo è quell pezzo
Di calamita,
Pietra mesmerica
Ch'ebbe l'origine
Nell' Alemagna
Che poi si celebre
Là in Francia su.
In France
(trans. Pattie (1994), 33)
8Letter from Leopold Mozart to his wife, July 21, 1773; quoted from Anderson (1938), I:341–2
9Letter from Leopold Mozart to his wife, August 12, 1773; quoted from Anderson (1938), I:343
10TODO??? In Vienna?, Haydn, and other members of the Mozart family. Bloch, G (1980), xiii
11 Buranelli (1975), 50
12 Anderson (1938), 1:343
13 Anderson (1938), 1:346
14Mozart 584/19, trans. wz
15 Pattie (1994), 32
16 Pattie (1994) 46–47
17 Pattie (1994), 48ff
18 Pattie (1994), 57–58
19 Pattie (1994), 58
20 Pattie (1994), 59
21 Pattie (1994), 60
22quoted in Pattie (1994), 60
23 Pattie (1994), 59
24 Pattie (1994), 61
25 Pattie (1994), 62–63
26 Pattie (1994), 63
27 Pattie (1994), 63
28 Pattie (1994), 66
29 Pattie (1994), 67
30 Pattie (1994), 68
31 Papers of Benjamin Franklin 31:5
32 King (1946), p.110
33 Pattie (1994), 68–69
34 Pattie (1994), 70–71
35 Pattie (1994), 74–75
36 Mesmer (1998), p. 27
37 Buranelli (1975), 125–126
38Harsu, J. (1782) Recueil des effets salutaires de l'aimant dans les maladies. Quoted in Pattie (1994), 73
39 Pattie (1994), 103
40 Pattie (1994), 81
41 Pattie (1994), 110–111
42 Pattie (1994), 142
43 Papers of Benjamin Franklin, 31:5
44 Papers of Benjamin Franklin, 31:8
45 Papers of Benjamin Franklin, 31:186
46apparently he forgot those of 1779
47tr. quoted from Lipowski (1984), p.362
48 Lipowski (1984), 362ff.
49 Pattie (1994), 144
50 Pattie (1994), 143
51 Franklin (1996), 69
52 Pattie (1994), 161
53 Pattie (1994), 229
54TODO???See his letter of April 14, 1785 to Franklin
55 more Pattie (1994), 231
56 Pattie (1994), 243
57 Pattie (1994), 244
58 Pattie (1994), 265–266
59 Buranelli (1975), 203–204
60 Pattie (1994), 267
Franz Mesmer (1734–1815) was German physician who developed a theory and clinical practice of 'animal magnetism' or 'mesmerism'. It's from Mesmer that we get the word "mesmerize". He owned a particularly fine glass armonica, played it well, and it was an integral part of his 'mesmerizing' practice. Mesmer, Franklin and Mozart were all Freemasons, a group that enthusiastically welcomed glass music for the promotion of human 'harmony'. Mesmer and Mozart knew each other, and Mesmer and Franklin knew each other (alas Mozart and Franklin never met). Early Years Mesmer was born in the village of Iznang, Swabia. After studying at the Jesuit universities of Dillingen and Ingolstadt, he took up the study of medicine at the University of Vienna in 1759. In 1766 he published a doctoral dissertation with the Latin title De planetarum influxu in corpus humanum ("The Influence of the Planets on the Human Body"), which discussed the influence of the Moon and the planets on the human body and on disease. This wasn't 'medical astrology', however—relying largely on Newton's theory of the tides, Mesmer expounded on certain tides in the human body that might be accounted for by the movements of the sun and moon.1 Mesmer apparently plagiarized2 his dissertation from a work by Richard Mead (1673–1754)—an eminent English physician and Newton's friend.3 In all fairness, however, in Mesmer's day doctoral theses were not expected to be original.4
Soon after receiving his degree, Mesmer married Maria Anna von Posch, a wealthy widow, and established himself as a physician in Vienna. He lived on a splendid estate and patronized the arts.
Mesmer and the Mozarts In 1768, when court intrigue prevented the performance of La Finta Semplice (K51) for which a twelve-year-old Mozart had composed 500 pages of music, Mesmer arranged a performance in his garden of Mozart's Bastien und Bastienne (K50), a one-act opera. It was performed at the Mesmer mansion on an autumn evening (the date remains uncertain) in 1768.5. The performance could not have taken place in his garden theater as it wasn't built yet—it likely took place in his house, perhaps in the garden room. (Deutsch, A Documentary Bio, 84)] While conducting, the composer sat at the keyboard, which he played as a member of the orchestra.6 Mozart later immortalized his former patron by including a joking reference to Mesmer in his opera Cosi fan tutte:
This is that piece
Of magnet
The stone of Msemer
Who originated
In Germany
And then became so famous7 In 1773 father and son Mozart were in Vienna and encountered the armonica at Franz Mesmer's house. Leopold wrote home to his wife:
Herr von Mesmer, at whose house we lunched on Monday, played to us on Miss Davies's [h]armonica or glass instrument and played very well. It cost him about fifty ducats and it is very beautifully made.8 A few weeks later Leopold brought up the armonica again, mentioning that Wolfgang himself tried playing Mesmer's instrument:
Do you know that Herr von Mesmer plays Miss Davies's harmonica unusually well? He is the only person in Vienna who has learnt it and he possesses a much finer glass instrument than Miss Davies does. Wolfgang too has played upon it. How I should like to have one!9 This would suggest that Mesmer purchased his armonica some time between 1768 and 1773—this instrument became his favorite for the rest of his life. He also played the violoncello and the clavichord. Visiting musicians included Gluck10
Mesmer's musicales took place in the drawing room of the mansion or, if the weather was pleasant, in his open-air theater. He often took an instrumental part in an ensemble with the professionals, accompanying them through established classics like Purcell and Palestrina, introducing works by Gluck, Haydn, or lesser composers then exciting the Viennese ear. The audience usually included acquaintances knowledgeable enough about their host's vanity to ask him for a solo on the glass armonica, his own choice for a display of his virtuosity. 11
Animal Magnetism We know almost nothing of the medical procedures of Dr. Mesmer in this early period. Interestingly it's the letters of the Mozart family that give us glimpses of the treatment of a patient who was to become famous in the history of animal magnetism as one of its first successes: Miss Franziska Oesterlin, who was living in Mesmer's home in 1773. On August 12, 1773, Leopold Mozart wrote to his wife,
Miss Franzl has again been dangerously ill, and blisters had to be applied to her arms and feet. She is so much better now [They had expected her to die.] that she has knitted in bed a red silk purse for Wolfgang, which she has given him as a remembrance.12 On August 21 Leopold wrote to his wife that Miss Franzl had a second relapse and recovered from it.
It is amazing how she can stand so much bleeding and so many medicines, blisters, convulsions, fainting fits and so forth, for she is nothing but skin and bone.13 But Mesmer's treatments were ultimately successful—Wolfgang writes to his father on March 17, 1780 from Mesmer's garden on the Landstrasse:
The old lady is not at home, but Franzl is now Frau von Posch and is here... she has grown so plump and fat—she has three children—2 girls and a young gentleman.14 Franzl had married Mesmer's stepson, Franz de Paula von Bosch (Bosch and Posch were interchangeable names).15
Other successes with equally difficult cases—notably Professor Bauer16 and Baron de Horka17—established Mesmer's fame. However, the orthodox medical community considered him to be a charlatan.
Maria Theresa von Paradis In 1777 he treated Maria Theresa von Paradis (also von Paradies) (1759–1824), the famous blind pianist for whom Mozart wrote a piano concerto (probably No.18 in Bb, K456, composed 1778). When Maria awoke one morning at the age of three years and seven months, she was totally blind. The parents called in the best medical talent in Vienna, who pronounced her incurable but treated her for several years anyway. They shaved her head and put plasters on it for two months. They applied leaches. Purgatives and diuretics were prescribed in abundance. In addition, thousands of electric shocks were given to her eyes (with Leyden jars)—the only result being that her eyes protruded from their sockets and were continuously spasming and turning upward. Nor was blindness her only affliction—she also suffered from melancholia and attacks of delirium.18 (Not surprising, considering the 'cure' she was enduring.) In order to give their daughter a diversion, they provided music lessons, and she became a capable singer and keyboard player. The Empress attended her performance of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater in which she played the organ and sang, and was so moved that she granted the child, then 11 years old, a pension of 200 florins a year so she could continue her musical education.19
Mesmer had known Miss Paradis for several years, and told her father he could treat her protruding and spasming eyes with his newly discovered 'animal magnetism'. Privately, Mesmer thought he could cure her blindness. Treatment began January 20, 1777. By the fourth day her eyes resumed their normal positions, their movements subsided, and her previously dilated pupils became normal. Within a month apparently some vision had been restored. At best she was always extraordinarily sensitive to light, and having been blind from such a young age she had serious trouble making any sense of her new visual experience: the nose on the human face was absurd to her to the point of bursting into laughter (she might be right about that); she was surprised that pictures were flat and not three-dimensional; when she turned her eyes toward a window in daytime or a lighted candle at night, she experienced vertigo.20 She also had trouble learning colors and judging the distances of objects.21
Partial restoration of vision did not bring happiness—it made her miserable. She asked her father: "Why am I not as happy now as I used to be? Everything that I see makes an unpleasant impression on me. I was much more calm when I was blind... If I am always going to be as excited when I see new things as I am now, I would rather return to my blindness."22 When friends, relatives, or important people were brought to her, she often had attacks of fainting or uncontrollable weeping. When outdoors, she asked that her eyes be bandaged because the light caused vertigo. Before the partial restoration of her eyesight she had walked around her house unaided with complete confidence; now, she bound up her eyes and had to be led.
Worse, it ruined her playing. When she was blind she had played the most difficult music with the greatest accuracy, even while carrying on a conversation. With vision it was hard for her to play: she watched her fingers on the keyboard and played mostly wrong notes.
More medical experts were called in. At first reports of Mesmer's apparent success were glowing, such as that of Dr. Le Roux,23 but the tide began to turn. Dr. Barth, Professor of Diseases of the Eye, had stated on two occasions that Miss Paradis could see, but then changed his mind and declared that she could not see after all.24 Mesmer's medical enemies began to work on Maria's father: as her vision improved and her playing degraded she might lose her pension. Matters became so bad that swords were literally drawn in Mesmer's home—with poor Maria caught in the middle. Finally the father convinced Mesmer to allow him to take Maria on a vacation "so that she might enjoy the benefit of the country air," promising to return her to his care. They never brought her back. Instead, Mesmer learned that her family was saying that she was still blind and subject to convulsions. "They compelled her to imitate fits and blindness," Mesmer wrote. "It was necessary, in the plans of her greedy parents, that this unfortunate girl should become blind again or appear so." He believed their motive was to retain the pension of 200 florins a year.25
She lived the life of a completely blind person for the rest of her days. For years she conducted a school of music for young ladies and was prominent in Viennese musical and intellectual society. She composed music including several operas that were staged in Vienna and Prague—none of which achieved any success. In 1784 she toured Europe and performed in Paris and London.26
During the rest of her life Maria Theresa had nothing to say about Mesmer apart from a passing reference in a letter in 1780 that her nervous system had been weakened "by the unsuccessful result of an eye treatment". She died in 1824 at the age of 65.27
After Miss Paradis returned to her parents and Mesmer found himself thoroughly discredited, without a single defender in the medical profession, he began to think about leaving Vienna. His departure was not hurried, nevertheless it was strongly encouraged by the medical and ecclesiastical community—Vienna at that time was in the Holy Roman Empire, and the ecclesiastical community had a lot of clout (they didn't call it the Holy Roman Empire for nothing!). Nevertheless, Mesmer was provided with a letter of recommendation from the Minister of Foreign Affairs to the Viennese ambassador in Paris, which shows that his government had not repudiated him.28 He left Vienna about January 1778—he took his armonica with him but left his wife behind! She needed to stay in Vienna to manage her inheritance, and their relationship at this point seems to have been one of mutual indifference. Mesmer was never to see her again—twelve years later she died of breast cancer.29
Paris He arrived in Paris in February of 1778 in the company of his valet and Dr. La Roux. He promptly rented an apartment in the Place Vendôme—a part of the city preferred by the wealthy and powerful. "He brought with him the robust conviction that he deserved the homage of all mankind, homage due to the discoverer of a new force in nature which wcould cure all diseases and would eventually displace conventional medicine. He had an imperturbable sense of his importance to the world without a trace of modesty or humility."30
November 1, 1779: "my armonica has not arrived and it is not possible for it to be here in time."31
There, in May 1779, he met Gluck, and enchanted him by his playing on the armonica. (Did Gluck tell Mesmer of his own concert on the musical glasses given in London forty-three years earlier?) Although Mesmer could play from printed music, Gluck was so impressed with Mesmer's improvisations that he urged him to confine his playing to extemporization. Apparently Mesmer was particularly fond of entertaining his guests with his armonica at twilight after dinner, and he took Gluck's advice to heart and rarely performed from printed music. When deeply moved by his own playing Mesmer used to sing at the same time. 32
Paris at that time was certainly an excellent place for a physician, for Paris was filled with people suffering from many chronic diseases, untreated and untreatable. The population was ravaged by epidemics, of which smallpox was especially feared. It has been estimated that smallpox disfigured the faces of one fourth of the women of France, some 200,000 of whom took refuge in convents from the rejection they experienced because of their appearance. As a result, average life expectancy was about 40 years.33
The people of Paris were not as tightly controlled as the Viennese, who were dominated by the double dictatorship of Maria Theresa and the church. The French had considerably more freedom of speech; censorship of books was easily evaded. Mesmer began to practice medicine without asking the permission of any professional or governmental entity—how he managed to pull this off is not understood; certainly no French citizen could practice with such an exemption. Physicians who were graduates of faculties outside of Paris and wished to practice were required to pass examinations and defend theses in public disputations. Meanwhile, patients and curiosity-seekers flocked to him for treatment. Paris was soon divided into two factions: those who were sure he was a charlatan who had been forced to flee Vienna, and those who accepted his own self-evaluation that he had made a world-shaking discovery. In order to accommodate the throng of people who eagerly sought treatment with animal magnetism, Mesmer developed a method of mass treatment. Since he had discovered in 1775 that he could communicate animal magnetism to glass, water, and other substances and store it in them, he built a reservoir, the baquet, from which several patients could draw the healing agent at the same time. Baquet means tub, a word which lacks dignity; therefore the word is usually left untranslated.
Inside the wooden tub, which had a diameter of four or five feet, were bottles filled with water and laid on their sides and with their necks pointing to the center of the tub; they had been magnetized by Mesmer's stroking. To give more pressure to the magnetic fluid, a second or even a third layer of bottles could be placed over the first. The tub was filled with enough water to cover the bottles. Iron rods issued from the bottles and extended upward through the lid of the tub, bent so that they might be applied directly to the ailing parts by the patients, who stood in a circle around the tub. A cord could be passed around them, and sometimes they joined hands. A pianoforte or Mesmer's favorite instrument, the glass armonica, furnished music. The magnetism was propagated by the music, as Mesmer had discovered.34
Since Mesmer recognized the part suggestion and imagination play in the healing process and since he understood the influence of the surroundings on both, he took great pains to provide his patients with a setting in which they could be persuaded to submit to his technique. His whole purpose was to establish rapport with them, to gain their confidence and trust, and then, their nerves being now receptive, to introduce doses of animal magnetism into their bodies. Mesmer laid out his clinic as meticulously as if he were stage-managing a play. Only when he had the right conditions around him was he ready for the day's session. This was the séance of Mesmerism.
It began in a large room where dozens of patients could be taken care of at the same time in individualized and group therapy. The room at the Hôtel Bullion was an opulent, spacious one in which previous residents had entertained the beau monde of Paris. It had a lofty ceiling, inlaid floors, paneled walls, full-length mirrors, and oriel windows. The furnishings were in the best Louis Quinze style, from the artwork on the walls and tables to the chairs in which the patients sat while they were being magnetized.
Mesmer needed this elegant setting. The aristocrats who came to the clinic would feel at ease in the type of room familiar to them, while the poor would feel that they were being lifted by Dr. Mesmer above the hard and sordid lives they led. In either case, the setting aided the cure. Mesmer accepted all patients—there is no evidence he ever turned a patient away as being beyond help; if he could not cure, he could at least relieve their suffering. "He treated eye troubles, blindness, deafness, apoplexy, asthma, tumors of all kinds, skin and scalp diseases, migraine, and all the rest. Leprosy was to be treated 'like ringworm,' with magnetized water. The idea that he limited his practice to disorders of nervous origin is a common error."35
During the séance Mesmer kept the doors and windows closed. Heavy drapes allowed only a dim light, and no noise to filter in from the outside. The atmosphere was warm and oppressive, causing labored breathing conducive to emotional excitement. Silence reigned except for whispers between patients and doctors (Mesmer or his assistants) in the give-and-take of diagnosis, treatment and prescription. One cardinal exception—the sound of a piano or glass armonica came from a corner of the room. Mesmer had learned from his Viennese teachers about the healing properties of music; he had stated in Proposition 16 of his memoir that animal magnetism "can be communicated, propogated, and reinforced by sound,"36 and he combined the two ideas by placing instruments where his patients could hear and be moved by them.
He was not interested in melody as such when he placed musical instruments in the clinic. They were indispensable to his medical practice, swaying, disturbing, calming the ill. Stormy music helped bring on the Mesmerian crisis, and soft music helped allay it. The musician shifted from one to the other at a signal from Mesmer or an assistant. One of Mesmer's followers, Caullet de Vaumorel, testified to the exquisite sensitivity with which the mood of the patients changed as the mood of the music changed.37
Apparently Mesmer was effective. Sometime between 1778 and 1779 a Dr. Le Roux took an army surgeon (and thus presumably a hard-headed fellow) to Mesmer's clinic for treatment of gout with which he had been afflicted for nine years...
After several turns around the room, Mr. Mesmer unbuttoned the patient's shirt and, moving back somewhat, placed his finger against the part affected. My friend felt a tickling pain. Mr. Mesmer then moved his finger perpendicularly across his abdomen and chest, and the pain followed the finger exactly. He then asked the patient to extend his index finger and pointed his own finger toward it at a distance of three or four steps, whereupon my friend felt an electric tingling at the tip of his finger, which penetrated the whole finger toward the palm. Mr. Mesmer then seated him near the armonica; he had hardly begun to play when my friend was affected emotionally, trembled, lost his breath, changed color, and felt pulled toward the floor. In this state of anxiety, Mr. Mesmer placed him on a couch so that he was in less danger of falling, and he brought in a maid who he said was antimagnetic. When her hand approached my friend's chest, everything stopped with lightning speed, and my colleague touched and examined his stomach with astonishment…. The sharp pain had suddenly ceased. Mr. Mesmer told us that a dog or a cat would have stopped the pain as well as the maid did.38 Mesmer also experimented on d'Eslon—Mesmer's "right-hand man"—by playing on the glass armonica or the piano and conveying animal magnetism to him. D'Eslon was obliged to beg for mercy about the music, presumably because of the discomfort caused by the charge of animal magnetism that it carried.39
Mesmer wanted official recognition for his discoveries—he considered himself more physicist than physician.40 He approached the Royal Academy of Sciences; then the Royal Society of Medicine; then the Faculty of Medicine. He was rebuffed by all. Finally, he informed his patients that he would discontinue their treatments on April 15, 1781 and leave the country. One of these patients, the Duchesse de Chaulnes, complained to her friend Queen Marie Antoinette. The Queen proposed that a commission be established to investigate his claims, and if their report is favorable that he be recompensed (including a life annuity of 20,000 livres) and given official government sanction and support on the condition that he remain in France. Mesmer reluctantly agreed. Two weeks later the Minister of State, Jen-Frédéric Phélipeaux, Count of Maurepas, met with Mesmer, and began by saying that the King, informed of Mesmer's dislike of being investigated by commissioners, wished to excuse him from that formality and would grant him a life annuity of 20,000 livres and pay 10,000 livres a year for a house suitable for the instruction of students. Mesmer repudiated his agreement to the Queen's offer and declined the King's.41
In 1784, the King appointed four members of the Faculty of Medicine as commissioners to investigate animal magnetism as practiced by Dr. Charles d'Eslon—Mesmer's foremost disciple. This commission had not been requested by Mesmer or any of his followers. The members of the commission were:
- Michel-Joseph Majault: a physician at Hôtel-Dieu, one of Paris' main hospitals. (Majault replaced Jean-François Borie, who had originally been appointed but died at the beginning of the investigation.)
- Charles-Louis Ballin: a professor of physiology, pathology, and pharmacology.
- Jean d'Arcet: a physician and chemist
- Joseph-Ignace Guillotin: physician, after whom the guillotine is named, although he didn't invent it—he championed it as a more humane method of executing the condemned (which indeed it was).
- BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (!): now 78 and suffering from gout.
- Jean-Baptiste Le Roy: physician
- Jean-Sylvain Bailly: astronomer and he first mayor of Paris.
- Gabriel de Bory: geographer and previously governor of Santo Domingo.
- Antoine-Laurent Lavoiser: chief founder of modern chemistry42
As to the animal magnetism, so much talk'd of, I am totally unacquainted with it, and must doubt its existence till I can see or feel some effect of it. None of the cures said to be perform'd by it, have fallen under my observation46; and there being so many disorders which cure themselves and such a disposition in mankind to deceive themselves and one another on these occasions; and living long having given me frequent opportunities of seeing certain remedies cry'd up as curing everything, and yet so soon after totally laid aside as useless, I cannot but feat that the expectation of great advantage from the new method of treating diseases will prove a delusion. That delusion may however in some cases be of use while it lasts. There are in every great city a number of persons who are never in health, because they are fond of medicines and always taking them, and hurt their constitutions. If these people can be persuaded to forbear their drugs in expectation of being cured by only the physician's finger or an iron rod pointed at them, they may possibly find good effects tho' they mistake the cause. At the same time, one should consider the following anecdote about Franklin: In the spring of 1772, Franklin called on Prince Adam Czartoryski, heir apparent to the throne of Poland. His wife had been suffering from 'melancholia':
I was ill, in a state of melancholia, and writing my testament and farewell letters. Wishing to distract me, my husband explained to me who Franklin was and to what he owed his fame… Franklin had a noble face with an expression of engaging kindness. Surprised by my immobility, he took my hands and gazed at me saying: pauvre jeune femme ["poor young lady"]. He then opened an armonica, sat down and played long. The music made a strong impression on me and tears began flowing from my eyes. Then Franklin sat by my side and looking with compassion said, "Madam, you are cured." Indeed in that moment I was cured of my melancholia. Franklin offered to teach me how to play the armonica — I accepted without hesitation, hence he gave me twelve lessons.47 Alas, several years later she seems to have relapsed.48 )
As soon as Mesmer learned that a commission had been formed to investigate animal magnetism as practiced by Dr. Charles d'Eslon, Mesmer wrote a letter to Dr. Franklin. He disavowed d'Eslon, stating that he had only an incomplete knowledge of animal magnetism.49
Since the King's first members of the commission belonged to the Faculty of Medicine, the rival organization, the Royal Society of Medicine, asked to be represented, and the King authorized a second commission.50 Both commissions began their work promptly, and their reports were published about 5 months later. The first commission, of which Franklin was a member, carried out their experiments at Franklin's house in deference to his health. But d'Eslon's demonstrations broke down under the committee's examination when, for example, a patient who was supposed to feel the effects of animal magnetism was unable to tell—when blindfolded—whether the mesmerizer was present or not. The committee reported that Mesmer's results were due to his good salesmanship and the patient's imagination, and that his "animal magnetism" was really the faith of the patient. The second commission reported essentially the same findings.
In all fairness, the commission noted that Mr. Deslon used a piano, and not an armonica, to conduct the magnetism.51 Perhaps the experiments would have succeeded had they used an armonica!
Opinions raged, books and letters were volleyed back and forth, and satirical plays abounded. Michel-Augustin Thouret (1748–1810), a docteur-régent (basically a senior physician) of the Faculty of Medicine, was commissioned by the Royal Society of Medicine to collect everything concerning animal magnetism in ancient and modern authors and to make a report on its origins. The result was his Recherches et doutes sur le magnétisme animal (Research and Doubts about Animal Magnetism); one of the precursors Thouret cited was our old friend Athanasius Kircher for his work on magnetism: Magnes, sive de arte magnetica (The Magnet, or the Magnetic Art).52
The committees' reports were the beginning of the end for Mesmer. Franklin wrote on April 29, 1785 that Mesmer was still working in Paris:
It is surprising how much credulity still subsists in the world. I suppose all the physicians in France put together have not made so much money during the time he has been here, as he has done.53 Mesmer still kept in touch with Franklin.54
Twilight Mesmer left Paris later that year, aimlessly wandering around Europe until he was 'rediscovered' by a group of physicians in Berlin.55 By then D'Eslon had died (August 1786), and France had been caught up in the Reign of Terror: the King and Queen, and commission members Lavoisier and Bailly were guillotined. Perhaps the commissions actually did Mesmer a favor—due to their findings Mesmer had left France and missed the French Revolution altogether.
Around 1809 Mesmer ended up retiring in Frauenfeld in (what is now) his native Switzerland.56 "He played his glass [h]armonica in a masterly manner with extensive improvisations, usually after meals and to honor a guest who was agreeable to him."57 Mesmer was in good health until February 1815, when he complained of a general malaise, accompanied by retention of urine (in old men almost always due to hypertrophy of the prostate).58 On March 1 he suffered a stroke, and on the 5th, with the end imminent, he asked if his Catholic priest friend Fessler would come and play the glass armonica for him. The priest hurried to the bedside of the dying man, but Mesmer died quietly before he got there. Kerner (a biographer of Mesmer) says that the pet canary "neither ate nor sang again, and was soon found dead in its cage." 59
Mesmer was not a poor man. At the time of his death he was employing three servants, and had a horse and carriage. Soon after his death and before the estate was settled, Dr. Wolfart asked the heirs for the glass armonica, which he said Mesmer had promised him. It was sent to Dr. Wolfart, and has been lost.60
1 Bloch, G (1980), xiii
2 Pattie (1994), 13ff.
3De Imperio Solis ac Lunae in Corpora Humana et Morbis inde Oriundis (On the Influence of the Sun and Moon upon Human Bodies and the Diseases Arising Therefrom.(1704). See Pattie (1994), 16.
4 Pattie (1994), 13
5So we are told by two editors of Mozart's letters, but neither cites a source for this information ( Deutsch (1966), 84; Anderson (1938), 1:105)
6 Buranelli (1975), 54–55
7 Questo è quell pezzo
Di calamita,
Pietra mesmerica
Ch'ebbe l'origine
Nell' Alemagna
Che poi si celebre
Là in Francia su.
In France
(trans. Pattie (1994), 33)
8Letter from Leopold Mozart to his wife, July 21, 1773; quoted from Anderson (1938), I:341–2
9Letter from Leopold Mozart to his wife, August 12, 1773; quoted from Anderson (1938), I:343
10TODO??? In Vienna?, Haydn, and other members of the Mozart family. Bloch, G (1980), xiii
11 Buranelli (1975), 50
12 Anderson (1938), 1:343
13 Anderson (1938), 1:346
14Mozart 584/19, trans. wz
15 Pattie (1994), 32
16 Pattie (1994) 46–47
17 Pattie (1994), 48ff
18 Pattie (1994), 57–58
19 Pattie (1994), 58
20 Pattie (1994), 59
21 Pattie (1994), 60
22quoted in Pattie (1994), 60
23 Pattie (1994), 59
24 Pattie (1994), 61
25 Pattie (1994), 62–63
26 Pattie (1994), 63
27 Pattie (1994), 63
28 Pattie (1994), 66
29 Pattie (1994), 67
30 Pattie (1994), 68
31 Papers of Benjamin Franklin 31:5
32 King (1946), p.110
33 Pattie (1994), 68–69
34 Pattie (1994), 70–71
35 Pattie (1994), 74–75
36 Mesmer (1998), p. 27
37 Buranelli (1975), 125–126
38Harsu, J. (1782) Recueil des effets salutaires de l'aimant dans les maladies. Quoted in Pattie (1994), 73
39 Pattie (1994), 103
40 Pattie (1994), 81
41 Pattie (1994), 110–111
42 Pattie (1994), 142
43 Papers of Benjamin Franklin, 31:5
44 Papers of Benjamin Franklin, 31:8
45 Papers of Benjamin Franklin, 31:186
46apparently he forgot those of 1779
47tr. quoted from Lipowski (1984), p.362
48 Lipowski (1984), 362ff.
49 Pattie (1994), 144
50 Pattie (1994), 143
51 Franklin (1996), 69
52 Pattie (1994), 161
53 Pattie (1994), 229
54TODO???See his letter of April 14, 1785 to Franklin
55 more Pattie (1994), 231
56 Pattie (1994), 243
57 Pattie (1994), 244
58 Pattie (1994), 265–266
59 Buranelli (1975), 203–204
60 Pattie (1994), 267
Timeline
1710 - Baron de Gleichen wrote "I have heard Rameau and an old relative of French ambassador at Venice testify to having known M. de St.Germain in 1710, when he had the appearance of a man of fifty years of age."
1715 - 1723 - Baron von Stosch knew St.Germain during the regency of Philippe d'Orleans.
1723 - The Count visited the 10 year old Comtess de Geniis' family in Venice.
1723 - 1731 - Spent much time in Venice.
November 22, 1735 - The Count sent a letter to Sir Hans Sloane while he was staying at: the house of the widow Vincent, on the Nieue-laan, in de Twyn-laan, The Hague.
1735 - Mr. Monin, a French embassy secretary, reported to Baron de Gleichen that the Count had not aged a single day when he (Monin) saw him on a trip to Holland.
1737-1742 - Count St.Germain was at the Court of the Shah of Persia. This would place St.Germain in Persia at the end of the rule of Shah Abbas III and the beginning of the rule of Shah Sam.
1743 - Count St.Germain was reported to be in Versailles for a short while before continuing on to England. Appearing to be about 45 years old.
1743 - In London, he lodged in a house on St. Martin Street.
1745 - Arrested by Horace Walpole in England. Walpole relates the story in a letter to Sir Horace Mann on December 9, 1745.
1745 - Puts together some steam engine prototypes.
December 21, 1745 - The French Charge d'Affaires in London reported an encounter with Saint-Germain. They noted that he would not reveal anything about his person unless to King Louis XV personally.
1745 - Composed music which is currently at the British Museum.
1745-1746 - The Count spent some time in Vienna after his arrest.
Spring 1746 - Attends rehearsals for L'Incostanza Delusa at a theatre on Haymarket Street.
April 7, 1746 - Attends first night of L'Incostanza Delusa. Works with Guilia Frasi. The Count showed up with friend Prince Lobkowitz. St.Germain showed up to all rehearsals and all the shows.
1747 - Walsh, a famous London music publisher, published Favorite Songs in the Opera called L'Incostanza Delusa.
1747 - Saint-Germain was staying at St.Mary's Axe in London with a Dr. Abraham Gomes Ergas (otherwise known at Dr.Phillip de la Cour), a Jewish physician from Italy.
1749 - Starts work as a diplomat for Louis XV.
1750 - The Count visited Mdm. de Pompadour in France.
1755 - The Count traveled to India (a second time) with General Clive, who was under Vice Admiral Watson. Sent a letter to Count von Lamburg.
December 6, 1755 to July 1756 - The Count was at The Hague working with Minister Plenipotentiary and d'Affry on a method to clean the port. The Count brought in two men to help, Francois X. d'Arles de Ligniere and Virette.
1757 - The Count arrives in Paris and is introduced at court by Belle-Isle, who was a Count, Marechal, and Minister of War.
1758 - The Count has met Voltaire by April 15, 1758. Voltaire mentions him in a letter on that date sent to Frederick of Prussia.
1759 - Baron de Gleichen visited the widow of Chevalier Lambert in Paris and met the Count. "...and there saw me enter after a man of medium size, very sturdy, dressed with beautiful simplicity and refined. He threw his hat and sword on the bed of the mistress of the house, placed himself in a chair near the fire and interrupted the conversation and said to the man who spoke: "Ye know not what you say, there is only me who can speak on this matter, I have exhausted all like the music that I abandoned, unable to go beyond."" Mentioned in Baron de Gleichen's memoirs.
April 24, 1760 - Warrant (from France) and extradition of Count St.Germain from Holland. Comte de Bentinck gave Count St.Germain fair warning and urged him to travel to England. The day before St.Germain left, he had spent four hours with the English Minister and nearly had a peace treaty authorized with the British that would have ended the Seven Years War three years early.
May 17, 1760 - Read's Weekly Journal or British Gazetteer reported the arrival of Count St.Germain from Holland. It also claims that he was born in Italy in 1712.
1760 - Composed music which is currently at the British Museum.
1760 - The Mitchell Papers, a collection of letters about Count St.Germain and the relations with France, are written. George III requests that the letters not be disclosed until after his death.
1762 - Buys Ubbergen and visits St.Petersburg, Russia.
January 1763 - The Count traveled through Brussels and met with Graf Karl Cobenzl. Graf Cobenzl relates this in a letter to Prince Kaunitz, Prime Minister on April 8, 1763.
1763 - Casanova met the Count in Tournay.
Between 1763 and 1769 - One year was spent in Berlin. It is mentioned in the memoirs of M. Dieudonne Thiebault.
1765 - The Count was in Russia.
1766 or 1767 - Heads to Italy.
1768 - The Count was in Versailles and was present for the catastrophe of Madame de Chateauroux. Louis XVI asked for an antidote for Chateauroux, but the Count replied that it was too late for her. later, in Paris, Madame d'Adhemar wrote that she ran into the Count who was traveling under the guise of M. de Saint-Noel while trying to avoid the Duc du Choiseul and his men.
1769 - The Count set up shop in Venice where he mass-produced synthetic silk from flax.
1770 - The Count was at Leghorn when the Russian fleet was there. He wore a Russian uniform and was called Graf Saltikoff by Graf Alexis Orloff. This is when he created Russian Tea, a mixture of orange, cinnamon, and cloves in black tea. The tea was noted for its ability to keep the health of the Russian fleet.
1770 - The Count stays in Venice and meets up with Graf Maximilian Joseph Von Lamberg, German physicist and philosopher.
July 1770 - Traveling with Graf Max von Lamberg, the Count travels to the Island of Corsica.
1772 - Graf Orloff saw the Count in Nuremburg with the Margrave of Anspach.
1773 - He travels to Mantua and Italy.
1774-1776 - Visit to Triesdorf.
Between 1775-1780 - True date unknown. The Count met up with Franz and Rudolph Graffer, two brothers in Vienna. The Count relates a new prophecy to the brothers: "You have a letter of introduction from Herr von Seingalt; but it is not needed. This gentleman is Baron Linden. I knew that you would both be here at this moment. You have another letter for me from Bruhl. But the painter is not to be saved; his lung is gone, he will die July 8, 1805. A man who is still a child called Buonaparte will be indirectly to blame. And now, gentlemen I know of your doings; can I be of any service to you? Speak."
1776 - Visit to Leipzig under the name Chevalier Weldon. Graf Marcolini recorded the Count traveling under the name Welldoun in October 1776.
1777 - Visit to Dresden where he met with Prussian Ambassador, von Alvensleben. (Achaz Henry of Alvensleben?) Moves to Dresden in the autumn.
1778 - Travels to Altona.
1779 - Visit to Hamburg before traveling to visit Prince Karl of Hesse.
1782 - The Count was a delegate to the Freemason’s Wilhelmsbad Conference.
February 27, 1784 - Supposed death of Count St.Germain. Its said that before he died "he was waited on by women who nursed him like a second Solomon."
1785 - Count St.Germain appears at the Masonic convention in Paris. He is listed on the registrar by Dr. E. E. Eckert. N. Deschamps also recorded St.Germain's appearance at the convention and firmly states that he is one of the Templars. Cagliostro also claimed to have seen him at the convention and went through an initiation and ritual used only by Templars.
1786 - Had a meeting with the Empress of Russia.
1788 - Prophetic verse reaches the French royalty: "The time is fast approaching when imprudent France, Surrounded by misfortune she might have spared herself, Will call to mind such hell as Dante painted. This day, O Queen! is near, no more can doubt remain, A hydra vile and cowardly, with his enormous horns Will carry off the altar, throne, and Themis; In place of common sense, madness incredible Will reign, and all be lawful to the wicked. Yea! Falling shall we see scepter, censer, scares, Towers and escutcheons, even the white flag; Henceforth will all be fraud, murders and violence, Which we shall find instead of sweet repose. Great streams of blood are flowing in each town; Sobs only do I hear, and exiles see! On all sides civil discord loudly roars, And uttering cries o all sides virtue flees, As from the assembly votes of death arise. Great God! who can reply to murderous judges? And on what brows august I see the sword descend! What monsters treated as the peers of heroes! Oppressors, oppressed, victors, vanquished...The storm reaches you all in turn, in this common wreck, What crimes what evils, what appalling guilt, Menace the subjects, as the potentates! And more than one usurper triumphs in command, More than one heart misled is humbled and repents. At last, closing the abyss and born from a black tomb There rises a young lily, more happy, and more fair."
1788 - Count de Chalons returned from the Venetian embassy claimed to have spoken to the Comte de Saint-Germain in the Place Sain Marc the day before he left to go on to an embassy to Portugal.
1788 - Met with Baron Linden, telling him that he was on his way out of Europe - headed for the Himalayas. "I will rest; I must rest. Exactly in eighty-five years will people again set eyes on me. Farewell, I love you."
1789 - The Inquisition seized the book The Most Holy Trinosophia in Rome, which was in Cagliostro's possession. No idea when it was written by the Count.
October 5, 1789 - Countess d’Adhémar got a letter saying that the sun had set on the French monarchy, and it was too late; his hands were tied “by one stronger than myself”. He prophesied the death of Marie Antoinette, the ruin of the royal family, and the rise of Napoleon. He himself would be going to Sweden to investigate King Gustavius III and to try to head off “a great crime.”
1793 - Prophetic verse about Queen Marie-Antoinette. According to the Count, in 1793 the fate of the Queen would be death. Countess d'Adhemar asked if she would see the Count again after he gave her the prophecy and he replied "Five times more; do not wish for a sixth." The first of six was in 1793 at the assassination of the Queen.
1798 - Englishman Grosley saw the Count in a revolutionary prison in France.
November 9, 1799 - The Count was seen by Countess d'Adhemar at the 18th Brumaire of Louis XVI, also known as the coup d'etat in which Napoleon Bonaparte overtook the French consulate.
March 22, 1804 - The day after the death of Louis Antoine du Bourbon, Duc d'Enghien. The Count was seen by Countess d'Adhemar.
January 1813 - The Count visited the Countess d'Adhemar.
February 13, 1820 - The eve of the murder of Charles Ferdinand, Duke de Berri, the Countess d'Adhemar meets up with the Count.
1820 - Albert Vandam, an Englishman, wrote in his memoirs of "An Englishman in Paris", speaks of a certain person whom he knew towards the end of Louis Philippe's reign and whose way of life bore a curious resemblance to that of the Comte de Saint-Germain. "He called himself Major Fraser", wrote Vandam, "lived alone and never alluded to his family. Moreover he was lavish with money, though the source of his fortune remained a mystery to everyone. He possessed a marvelous knowledge of all the countries in Europe at all periods. His memory was absolutely incredible and, curiously enough, he often gave his hearers to understand that he had acquired his learning elsewhere than from books. Many is the time he has told me, with a strange smile, that he was certain he had known Nero, had spoken with Dante, and so on." Like Saint-Germain, Major Fraser had the appearance of a man of between forty and fifty, of middle height and strongly built. The rumor was current that he was the illegitimate son of a Spanish prince. After having been, also like Saint-Germain, a cause of astonishment to Parisian society for a considerable time, he disappeared without leaving a trace. Was it the same Major Fraser who, in 1820, published an account of his journey in the Himalayas, in which he said he had reached Gangotri, the source of the most sacred branch of the Ganges River, and bathed in the source of the Jumna River?
James Baillie Fraser "Journal of a Tour" from 1820 is the book in question.
May 12, 1821 - The Countess d'Adhemar puts a handwritten note in her journal about the 1793 prophecy the Count had made. She died in 1822.
1860 - Met with Lord Lytton. Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, was was an English politician, poet, playwright, and novelist. He was immensely popular with the reading public and wrote a stream of bestselling dime-novels which earned him a considerable fortune. He coined several phrases that would become clichés, especially "the great unwashed", "pursuit of the almighty dollar", "the pen is mightier than the sword", as well as the famous opening line "It was a dark and stormy night".
1867 - The Count was seen at a meeting for the Grand Lodge of Freemasons in Milan.
1870 - Napoleon III was so interested in the "Undying Count" that he had a special commission put together to collect information on the Count. The commission was stationed at the Hotel de Ville.
1871 - A mysterious fire breaks out at the Hotel de Ville, consuming the files Napoleon's commission had collected.
1873 - Theorized date of Madame Blavatsky meeting the Count. This is 85 years after meeting Baron Lindon.
1877 - Seen in Milan at a Freemason meeting.
1896 - Annie Besant made a claim to have met the Count.
1896 - Madame Blavatsky made a claim to have met the Count and that she was in frequent contact with him. She also claimed that he was one of a group of immortals who came from a subterranean country called Shambhala in the Himalayas.
1897 - French singer Emma Calve said that the Count paid her a visit. She called him the "Great Chiromancer".
1710 - Baron de Gleichen wrote "I have heard Rameau and an old relative of French ambassador at Venice testify to having known M. de St.Germain in 1710, when he had the appearance of a man of fifty years of age."
1715 - 1723 - Baron von Stosch knew St.Germain during the regency of Philippe d'Orleans.
1723 - The Count visited the 10 year old Comtess de Geniis' family in Venice.
1723 - 1731 - Spent much time in Venice.
November 22, 1735 - The Count sent a letter to Sir Hans Sloane while he was staying at: the house of the widow Vincent, on the Nieue-laan, in de Twyn-laan, The Hague.
1735 - Mr. Monin, a French embassy secretary, reported to Baron de Gleichen that the Count had not aged a single day when he (Monin) saw him on a trip to Holland.
1737-1742 - Count St.Germain was at the Court of the Shah of Persia. This would place St.Germain in Persia at the end of the rule of Shah Abbas III and the beginning of the rule of Shah Sam.
1743 - Count St.Germain was reported to be in Versailles for a short while before continuing on to England. Appearing to be about 45 years old.
1743 - In London, he lodged in a house on St. Martin Street.
1745 - Arrested by Horace Walpole in England. Walpole relates the story in a letter to Sir Horace Mann on December 9, 1745.
1745 - Puts together some steam engine prototypes.
December 21, 1745 - The French Charge d'Affaires in London reported an encounter with Saint-Germain. They noted that he would not reveal anything about his person unless to King Louis XV personally.
1745 - Composed music which is currently at the British Museum.
1745-1746 - The Count spent some time in Vienna after his arrest.
Spring 1746 - Attends rehearsals for L'Incostanza Delusa at a theatre on Haymarket Street.
April 7, 1746 - Attends first night of L'Incostanza Delusa. Works with Guilia Frasi. The Count showed up with friend Prince Lobkowitz. St.Germain showed up to all rehearsals and all the shows.
1747 - Walsh, a famous London music publisher, published Favorite Songs in the Opera called L'Incostanza Delusa.
1747 - Saint-Germain was staying at St.Mary's Axe in London with a Dr. Abraham Gomes Ergas (otherwise known at Dr.Phillip de la Cour), a Jewish physician from Italy.
1749 - Starts work as a diplomat for Louis XV.
1750 - The Count visited Mdm. de Pompadour in France.
1755 - The Count traveled to India (a second time) with General Clive, who was under Vice Admiral Watson. Sent a letter to Count von Lamburg.
December 6, 1755 to July 1756 - The Count was at The Hague working with Minister Plenipotentiary and d'Affry on a method to clean the port. The Count brought in two men to help, Francois X. d'Arles de Ligniere and Virette.
1757 - The Count arrives in Paris and is introduced at court by Belle-Isle, who was a Count, Marechal, and Minister of War.
1758 - The Count has met Voltaire by April 15, 1758. Voltaire mentions him in a letter on that date sent to Frederick of Prussia.
1759 - Baron de Gleichen visited the widow of Chevalier Lambert in Paris and met the Count. "...and there saw me enter after a man of medium size, very sturdy, dressed with beautiful simplicity and refined. He threw his hat and sword on the bed of the mistress of the house, placed himself in a chair near the fire and interrupted the conversation and said to the man who spoke: "Ye know not what you say, there is only me who can speak on this matter, I have exhausted all like the music that I abandoned, unable to go beyond."" Mentioned in Baron de Gleichen's memoirs.
April 24, 1760 - Warrant (from France) and extradition of Count St.Germain from Holland. Comte de Bentinck gave Count St.Germain fair warning and urged him to travel to England. The day before St.Germain left, he had spent four hours with the English Minister and nearly had a peace treaty authorized with the British that would have ended the Seven Years War three years early.
May 17, 1760 - Read's Weekly Journal or British Gazetteer reported the arrival of Count St.Germain from Holland. It also claims that he was born in Italy in 1712.
1760 - Composed music which is currently at the British Museum.
1760 - The Mitchell Papers, a collection of letters about Count St.Germain and the relations with France, are written. George III requests that the letters not be disclosed until after his death.
1762 - Buys Ubbergen and visits St.Petersburg, Russia.
January 1763 - The Count traveled through Brussels and met with Graf Karl Cobenzl. Graf Cobenzl relates this in a letter to Prince Kaunitz, Prime Minister on April 8, 1763.
1763 - Casanova met the Count in Tournay.
Between 1763 and 1769 - One year was spent in Berlin. It is mentioned in the memoirs of M. Dieudonne Thiebault.
1765 - The Count was in Russia.
1766 or 1767 - Heads to Italy.
1768 - The Count was in Versailles and was present for the catastrophe of Madame de Chateauroux. Louis XVI asked for an antidote for Chateauroux, but the Count replied that it was too late for her. later, in Paris, Madame d'Adhemar wrote that she ran into the Count who was traveling under the guise of M. de Saint-Noel while trying to avoid the Duc du Choiseul and his men.
1769 - The Count set up shop in Venice where he mass-produced synthetic silk from flax.
1770 - The Count was at Leghorn when the Russian fleet was there. He wore a Russian uniform and was called Graf Saltikoff by Graf Alexis Orloff. This is when he created Russian Tea, a mixture of orange, cinnamon, and cloves in black tea. The tea was noted for its ability to keep the health of the Russian fleet.
1770 - The Count stays in Venice and meets up with Graf Maximilian Joseph Von Lamberg, German physicist and philosopher.
July 1770 - Traveling with Graf Max von Lamberg, the Count travels to the Island of Corsica.
1772 - Graf Orloff saw the Count in Nuremburg with the Margrave of Anspach.
1773 - He travels to Mantua and Italy.
1774-1776 - Visit to Triesdorf.
Between 1775-1780 - True date unknown. The Count met up with Franz and Rudolph Graffer, two brothers in Vienna. The Count relates a new prophecy to the brothers: "You have a letter of introduction from Herr von Seingalt; but it is not needed. This gentleman is Baron Linden. I knew that you would both be here at this moment. You have another letter for me from Bruhl. But the painter is not to be saved; his lung is gone, he will die July 8, 1805. A man who is still a child called Buonaparte will be indirectly to blame. And now, gentlemen I know of your doings; can I be of any service to you? Speak."
1776 - Visit to Leipzig under the name Chevalier Weldon. Graf Marcolini recorded the Count traveling under the name Welldoun in October 1776.
1777 - Visit to Dresden where he met with Prussian Ambassador, von Alvensleben. (Achaz Henry of Alvensleben?) Moves to Dresden in the autumn.
1778 - Travels to Altona.
1779 - Visit to Hamburg before traveling to visit Prince Karl of Hesse.
1782 - The Count was a delegate to the Freemason’s Wilhelmsbad Conference.
February 27, 1784 - Supposed death of Count St.Germain. Its said that before he died "he was waited on by women who nursed him like a second Solomon."
1785 - Count St.Germain appears at the Masonic convention in Paris. He is listed on the registrar by Dr. E. E. Eckert. N. Deschamps also recorded St.Germain's appearance at the convention and firmly states that he is one of the Templars. Cagliostro also claimed to have seen him at the convention and went through an initiation and ritual used only by Templars.
1786 - Had a meeting with the Empress of Russia.
1788 - Prophetic verse reaches the French royalty: "The time is fast approaching when imprudent France, Surrounded by misfortune she might have spared herself, Will call to mind such hell as Dante painted. This day, O Queen! is near, no more can doubt remain, A hydra vile and cowardly, with his enormous horns Will carry off the altar, throne, and Themis; In place of common sense, madness incredible Will reign, and all be lawful to the wicked. Yea! Falling shall we see scepter, censer, scares, Towers and escutcheons, even the white flag; Henceforth will all be fraud, murders and violence, Which we shall find instead of sweet repose. Great streams of blood are flowing in each town; Sobs only do I hear, and exiles see! On all sides civil discord loudly roars, And uttering cries o all sides virtue flees, As from the assembly votes of death arise. Great God! who can reply to murderous judges? And on what brows august I see the sword descend! What monsters treated as the peers of heroes! Oppressors, oppressed, victors, vanquished...The storm reaches you all in turn, in this common wreck, What crimes what evils, what appalling guilt, Menace the subjects, as the potentates! And more than one usurper triumphs in command, More than one heart misled is humbled and repents. At last, closing the abyss and born from a black tomb There rises a young lily, more happy, and more fair."
1788 - Count de Chalons returned from the Venetian embassy claimed to have spoken to the Comte de Saint-Germain in the Place Sain Marc the day before he left to go on to an embassy to Portugal.
1788 - Met with Baron Linden, telling him that he was on his way out of Europe - headed for the Himalayas. "I will rest; I must rest. Exactly in eighty-five years will people again set eyes on me. Farewell, I love you."
1789 - The Inquisition seized the book The Most Holy Trinosophia in Rome, which was in Cagliostro's possession. No idea when it was written by the Count.
October 5, 1789 - Countess d’Adhémar got a letter saying that the sun had set on the French monarchy, and it was too late; his hands were tied “by one stronger than myself”. He prophesied the death of Marie Antoinette, the ruin of the royal family, and the rise of Napoleon. He himself would be going to Sweden to investigate King Gustavius III and to try to head off “a great crime.”
1793 - Prophetic verse about Queen Marie-Antoinette. According to the Count, in 1793 the fate of the Queen would be death. Countess d'Adhemar asked if she would see the Count again after he gave her the prophecy and he replied "Five times more; do not wish for a sixth." The first of six was in 1793 at the assassination of the Queen.
1798 - Englishman Grosley saw the Count in a revolutionary prison in France.
November 9, 1799 - The Count was seen by Countess d'Adhemar at the 18th Brumaire of Louis XVI, also known as the coup d'etat in which Napoleon Bonaparte overtook the French consulate.
March 22, 1804 - The day after the death of Louis Antoine du Bourbon, Duc d'Enghien. The Count was seen by Countess d'Adhemar.
January 1813 - The Count visited the Countess d'Adhemar.
February 13, 1820 - The eve of the murder of Charles Ferdinand, Duke de Berri, the Countess d'Adhemar meets up with the Count.
1820 - Albert Vandam, an Englishman, wrote in his memoirs of "An Englishman in Paris", speaks of a certain person whom he knew towards the end of Louis Philippe's reign and whose way of life bore a curious resemblance to that of the Comte de Saint-Germain. "He called himself Major Fraser", wrote Vandam, "lived alone and never alluded to his family. Moreover he was lavish with money, though the source of his fortune remained a mystery to everyone. He possessed a marvelous knowledge of all the countries in Europe at all periods. His memory was absolutely incredible and, curiously enough, he often gave his hearers to understand that he had acquired his learning elsewhere than from books. Many is the time he has told me, with a strange smile, that he was certain he had known Nero, had spoken with Dante, and so on." Like Saint-Germain, Major Fraser had the appearance of a man of between forty and fifty, of middle height and strongly built. The rumor was current that he was the illegitimate son of a Spanish prince. After having been, also like Saint-Germain, a cause of astonishment to Parisian society for a considerable time, he disappeared without leaving a trace. Was it the same Major Fraser who, in 1820, published an account of his journey in the Himalayas, in which he said he had reached Gangotri, the source of the most sacred branch of the Ganges River, and bathed in the source of the Jumna River?
James Baillie Fraser "Journal of a Tour" from 1820 is the book in question.
May 12, 1821 - The Countess d'Adhemar puts a handwritten note in her journal about the 1793 prophecy the Count had made. She died in 1822.
1860 - Met with Lord Lytton. Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, was was an English politician, poet, playwright, and novelist. He was immensely popular with the reading public and wrote a stream of bestselling dime-novels which earned him a considerable fortune. He coined several phrases that would become clichés, especially "the great unwashed", "pursuit of the almighty dollar", "the pen is mightier than the sword", as well as the famous opening line "It was a dark and stormy night".
1867 - The Count was seen at a meeting for the Grand Lodge of Freemasons in Milan.
1870 - Napoleon III was so interested in the "Undying Count" that he had a special commission put together to collect information on the Count. The commission was stationed at the Hotel de Ville.
1871 - A mysterious fire breaks out at the Hotel de Ville, consuming the files Napoleon's commission had collected.
1873 - Theorized date of Madame Blavatsky meeting the Count. This is 85 years after meeting Baron Lindon.
1877 - Seen in Milan at a Freemason meeting.
1896 - Annie Besant made a claim to have met the Count.
1896 - Madame Blavatsky made a claim to have met the Count and that she was in frequent contact with him. She also claimed that he was one of a group of immortals who came from a subterranean country called Shambhala in the Himalayas.
1897 - French singer Emma Calve said that the Count paid her a visit. She called him the "Great Chiromancer".
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ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
on all written, graphic, musical, & video content.
No portion of this site can be reproduced by any means,
except with express written permission
[email protected]
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