Count Cagliostro – An Authentic Story of a Mysterious Life

By Stefan Isaksson

Count Cagliostro – An Authentic Story of a Mysterious Life
Constantin Photiadès
Kegan Paul Limited
288 pages
ISBN: 0710309821

There’s really only one single reason as to why anyone would ever want to read Count Cagliostro, and that’s if you’re very, VERY, interested in the individual with the same name; this bizarre man who lived in the 1700s, travelled all over Europe and managed to create all sorts of attention wherever he went.

But don’t get me wrong, this is not a bad biography. Quite the contrary, actually. If you want to gain an insight into who he was, who he met and spent time with, where he came from, where he went, what he did, and especially how his surroundings reacted to his presence, then by all means read this book. There are tons of different names and places mentioned, which sometimes makes it a little difficult to remember it all (well, very often, to be perfectly honest), but it rarely gets boring.

So who is this Cagliostro character, then? Well, different people will give you different answers, but there’s no doubt that he actually did exist. Some of his personas include magician, alchemist, healer, and founder of Egyptian Masonry, and even if he indeed was a fake – which his critics are convinced he was – numerous people claimed he had healed them, and at the peak of his popularity he had several dedicated followers who say his as a prophet and more or less were willing to do anything for him.

However, powerful men have powerful enemies, and Count Cagliostro was no exception. He was especially good at pissing off men of the established medical science, but the priest and clergy didn’t look too kindly to him, either. Thus he ended his life locked in a cell, alone and deserted, gloomy and miserable.

But perhaps I should clarify what I hinted at at the beginning of this review. This book is only for the ones dedicated to really get to know Cagliostro, because even though much of the book deals with the occult, magic, and spiritism; it’s always HIS versions of the occult, magic, and spiritism that is being dealt with. The phenomena themselves are never really analyzed, their history, development, influence on contemporary society, and so on, and at the end of the book you’re never really told what the fate of Cagliostro really meant, how he affected the world around him (besides his obvious antagonists, obviously) and how history has come to look at him.

Suddenly the books comes to and end, and you’re left with all these questions you wished you had the answer too.

On the other hand, Photiadès wrote this book because he wanted to tell the story about Cagliostro, and with that he succeeded, there’s no doubt about that. And good, too.

So perhaps I was just the wrong reader for this particular book?