Lucid Zahor

CAGLIOSTRO
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Different from all the other "Masters of Transmutation" featured in this site about whom we
have given some biographical information, we have decided not to write anything on Cagliostros
life. The simple reason is that the identification of Cagliostro with Giuseppe Balsamo, an adventurer
from Palermo, is still quite questionable especially according to some Italian Freemasonry's
historiographers.
A few of them have even declared that Count Alessandro di Cagliostro has never existed,
quoting similar cases found in different esoteric traditions.
For example, the figure of Manu in Hinduism- characters whose historical existence is in
doubt, but who were created to symbolize and synthesize in their name a particular function from
the tradition of a certain period of time; in Manus case, the primreview legislator (or the transition
from Shamanism to Priesthood, occurring at the dawn of sedentary civilizations);in Cagliostros
case the Masonificator or the transposition of ancient rituals in Masonic terms, happened almost
everywhere in 18th century Europe .
We disagree with this extreme hypothesis but is anyway a matter of fact that the first and
most remarkable Masonification was started in the same school where Cagliostro received his
own science. We owe him the attainment of one of its most important and mysterious rituals.
The hermetic society - which continued in the centuries under different denominations known as Neapolitan School, claims the right to be the oldest Transmutation School in the West
up to today.
In the times of Emperor Augustus a small Egyptian-Jewish colony settled in Naples (in the
area known today as Piazza Nilo) where for over two thousand years the oral transmission of
transmutation techniques imported from their own land got perpetuated.
According to a rather forcedly approximate reconstruction, we know today that there were
three teaching levels. In the first level, theoretically, one could learn the fundamentals of Hermetism:
the analog science, symbolism (which in the Neapolitan School was extremely rich and detailed
with respect to other hermetic schools) and probably also the art of memory.
In the second level one could start the real transmutation work and according to a superb
technique of mitraic ancient origin characterized by a special kind of sexual magic called
osiridean. In the third level, the transmutation student could use two techniques of individual
mastering for the purpose of giving him superior mental powers and starting the regeneration of the
physical body.
For unknown reasons (and still discussed today), around the middle of the eighteen
century the School decided to originate three systems of High Masonic Ranks, each allegorically
describing the symbolism of the three levels of teaching: the Rite of Memphis for the first level, the
Rite of Misraim for the second and the Egyptian Freemasonry. The history of the Memphis and

Misraim Rites was different from the Egyptian Freemasonry from the very beginning and this is the
reason why we will talk about it separately.
The Memphis and Misraim Rites both started in Naples through the work of a number of
remarkable people from the School. Among them we are pleased to remember Prince Raimondo
Sangro di San Severo (1710-1771) who commissioned the building of the extraordinary hermetic
monument, San Severo Chapel in Naples, and Baron Henry Theodore de Tschoudi (1724-1769)
author of the Masonic catechism The Flaming Star .Between the two Rituals, the Memphis Ritual
was entirely speculative from the very beginning. No transmutation operative ritual was to be found
besides its very rich symbolic content.
The Misraim Rite instead was retaining(and practicing at least in the very beginning, in its
higher ranks) the influence of some of the most influential osiridean rituals of the School: the so
called Stair of Naples, or Arcana Arcanorum. But pretty soon both of the Rites started to be part of
the international Freemasonry (where they could spread thanks to Jean Marie Ragon, the famous
historian of the Scottish Ritual) and their success brought the Freemasons of Misraim to quit using
the Arcana, which - representing a foreign practice in contrast to Masonic orthodoxy could have
been an obstacle for accepting and spreading the Rite.
Very similar to each other, Memphis and Misraim Rites melted together and eventually they
separated several times during the course of events. The definitive fusion, in 1908, originated what
regular Freemasonry recognizes today as Ancient and Primitive Memphis and Misraim Rite; which
in reality is not at all very ancient and primitive because the original purpose of showing the first two
levels of the Neapolitan School has been lost.
Outside of the Freemasonry, the Arcana kept on being handed on through different screenorganizations connected to the School in deep secrecy. In 1897, in Paris, the occultist Sedir (Yvon
Le Loup; 1871- 1926) published the paraphrased version in a short essay called The Magic
Venus, but the obscurity of his hermetic terminology prevented full understanding of the details.
The complete ritual was not completely divulged until 1988, when a small publishing house from
Milan published it in an unabridged edition, against the will of the School. The volume in limited
edition, sold out after a few days.
To continue, the Arcana consist of three degrees or ritual cycles bringing to mastery plus a
High Arcane(Secretum Secretorum).Their calendar runs according to the lunar cycle, and the 9
days of ritual fasting, during which one must follow complete chastity). The osiridean transmutation
work is performed in pairs: by a woman and a man. The first degree performed by a man consists in
a selfassimilation of his sperm, obtained by a self-sexual magic; the short cycle which is more
used , covers forty operations, one every 9 days, during one year activity . As for the woman, the
sperm is replaced by a microscopic sample of menstrual blood.
After the end of the year a third ingredient (differently diversified) is added to the sperm and
blood and the compound is drunk over a cyclic period of fasting and light meals still insisting on
these numbers: 9, 6, 3 and 1.
In the second degree these operations are repeated (with light variations), by combining all
the three ingredients together.
The third degree is based on couple sexual practice where the philosophical amalgam (the
three elements together) is cooked through the three passages called Black Mercury, White
Mercury and Red Mercury (three different sexual practices performed in pairs: one of sodomy,
one without sperm emission and one during menstruation). A new philosophical amalgam will be
obtained. Once it is swallowed it should cause the sprouting of the energetic body (called Body of
glory according to the School terminology)

The final level or Major Arcane, is based on five retreats performed in darkness, each
lasting seven days, with a decreasing number of sexual performances (9, 6, 3, 1 and then none,
replaced by breathing exercises) where one comes back to the assimilation of one element only
(sperm or blood) plus a third ingredient; the absence of light encourages the development of the
body of glory and its strengthening.
Only after having finished this work could the transmutation student, from The School of
Naples, face the advanced rituals of the third level, which Cagliostro has handed on through
Egyptian Freemasonry.
The commission to create it was given to him by Cavalier Luigi DAquino (1739-1783) who
according to the tradition was his initiator as well.
Cagliostro met him in Malta in 1766 and stayed with him in Naples in 1773, to receive the
instructions which enabled him to found the Egyptian Freemasonry, in Paris, in the same year his
master passed away.
The system he created is not, in Masonic terms, a Rite, but an Order: it does not deal with
the High Degrees .Rather it deals with the three Blue Degrees of Freemasonry (Apprentice,
Fellow-craft and Master) integrated with the thick hermetic symbolism Cagliostro added to it.
Later on because of this device, it developed as a kind of parallel Freemasonry totally
independent from the body of the regular Freemasonry. This fact allowed Cagliostro to admit
women too, although still excluded from the regular Lodges, and it gave the necessary
independence to prevent the danger of a forced suspension of the transmutation activity. This
inconvenience was threatening the Rite of Misraim exactly in those years.
When the level of Master is achieved, an opportunity is offered to the Egyptian Brother or
the Sister to engage in the famous Quarantine, two operations of transmutation, lasting 40 days
each.
The first Quarantine: "How to achieve the Pentagon and become morally perfect" has to be
practiced by thirteen Masters together. Strongly hybridized with magic-cabalistic elements,
occasionally reminiscent of the Sacred Magic by Abramelin, had the purpose of sharpening the
subtle faculties of the Masters body of glory to give him the capacity to correctly explain the
enigmatic instructions of the second Quarantine: How to rejuvenate and become physically
perfect
The following text is almost the unabridged version, written by Cagliostro himself, as
handed down from the many Egyptian Lodges still existing today (especially in southern France):
The Aspirant has to retreat with a friend in the countryside on a full moon night and locked
inside a room he has to suffer from a very exhausting diet for forty days time. The diet consists of
scarce food based on light soups and tender cooling laxative vegetables, distilled water beverages
or May rain. Each meal must to start with a liquid, a drink and end with a solid snack as a biscuit or
bread crust.
On the seventeenth day of this retreat after a small emission of blood, he will start taking
some white drops of secret composition. He will have to take six of them in the morning and
evening, adding two a day till the thirty-second day. Another blood emission is taken on this day at
sunset, the following day he stays in bed till the end of the Quarantine. Then he starts taking the
first grain of Original Matter, the same that God has created in order to give man immortality.
Because of sin, man has lost the knowledge of it. It cant be conquered other than by a favor from
the Eternal, and Masonic work.

After having taken this grain the one who is going to rejuvenate becomes unconscious for
three hours and in convulsions he sweats and evacuates continuously. After having come to himself
and changed bed he must be fed with a pound of fat free beef and cooling herbs. If this food makes
him feel better on the following day he is given the second grain of Original Matter in a cup of broth
that besides the effect of the first grain will cause him a very strong delirious fever .He will lose the
skin, and the teeth and hair will fall out. On the following thirty-fifth day if the patient recovers his
strength, he will soak in a bath for one hour in neither cold or hot water. On the thirty-sixth day he
will have his third and last grain of Original Matter in a glass of vintage and generous wine that will
make him sleep quietly and peacefully. Then the hair grows back, the teeth too and the skin gets
healed. When he wakes up he soaks in new aromatic bath and on the thirty-eighth day he will have
a bath in plain water mixed with niter .Later on he gets dressed and starts walking in his room, then
on the thirty-ninth day, he takes ten drops of Balsam of the Great Master along with two spoons of
red wine. On the fortieth day he will leave the house, rejuvenated and perfectly recharged.