Theos-Talk Archives (November 2002 Message tt00297)

--- In theos-talk@y..., Bart Lidofsky <bartl@s...> wrote:
> The last of the great charlatans was, of
> course, Count Cagliostro. 

Actually, Caglostro was not a charlatan. There is not a single 
recorded instance of him getting a single sous from anyone by means 
of imposture, and his experiments, such as having child clairvoyants 
see visions in a bowl of water, have been successfully repeated since 
his time. He was extremely careless to go to Rome and loudly 
proclaim himself to be a Free Mason knowing that the catholic church 
routinely murdered Free Masons, but his confession is not entirely 
trustworthy. If the not-so-holy Inquisition were to streap you to a 
rack and start pulling your fingernails out, you would probably agree 
to being Joseph Balsamo, too. Or anything else they wanted to hear. 
It is notable that the church hierarchy was terrified of him and had 
him removed from The Castle of the Holy Angel and incarcerated in a 
hole in a mountain away from Rome, lest he bring down the wrath of 
the seven archangels on his majesty the pope and all the pedophiles 
and scoundrels who manned the vatican. All of this has been well 
documented.

The last great Egyptian magician was Zergvan Bey (I believe that is 
the right name), who was actually Egyptian, which Cagliostro was 
not. There is no reason to believe he was a charlatan, though some 
critics have suggested he possessed extraordinary courage in allowing 
himself to be buried alive, but probably not occult powers.