The Masonic Magician: The Life and Death of Count Cagliostro and His Egyptian Rite

Miracle-worker or man of straw? Count Alessandro Cagliostro was a cult figure of European society in the tumultuous years leading to the French Revolution. An alchemist, healer and Freemason, he inspired both wild devotion and savage ridicule – as well as novels by Alexandre Dumas, a drama by Goethe and Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute.

Count Alessandro Cagliostro’s sincere belief in the magical powers, including immortality, conferred by his Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry won him fame, but made...