Cagliostro carries, for some people, the image of a swindler, scheming, keen on society life. But is that "image" a superficial veneer, characteristic of the way of disapproval ? A way many initiate took... As you know: Denis Labouré suggests to explore the works of Joseph Balsamo called "Cagliostro", founder of the Egyptian Rite, in Lyon, the 24th of December 1784.
To Denis Labouré, it is not about talking about the story of the character, which is well known and which fascinated many prestigious authors, but it is about its meaning, timeless, in a psychic and corporal way that took and that are still taking many Freemasons, working on the Egyptian Rite of Cagliostro.
Denis Labouré talks particularly about the entry of Cagliostro in the Oder of Malta, in Malta, from 1766 to 1767 and the meeting with Luigi d'Aquino (descendant of Thomas Aquinas) : what did these two men discovered in ointment and in paracelsian medicine ? A discovery which bound them with an endless friendship till the death of Luigi d'Aquino in 1783.
A year after the death of his friend, Cagliostro began to build "his" Egyptian masonry...
The intervention of Denis Labouré is about many themes, among them:
- What did we mean at that time by the word Egypt ? Nowadays, retrospectively, it is easy to use asynchronism (or even syncretisms), but before Napoleon and Champollion, Egypt was an unknown land (see the great conference of René Lachaud)…
- What links does the Memphis-Misraim (Garibaldi, Amblain) ritual have with the Cagliostro one ?
- In the direct filiation of Paracelsus (1494 - 1541) and Michael Maier (1569 - 1622) and his book Arcana Arcanissima: by which ritual practice Cagliostro suggests to magnify that "little divine spark" which is inside each one of us, stick to our body ? Like Enoch, Elie, or writings of Saint-Paul: how to go from biological to spiritual without physical death ?
- For a "modern" man which ignorance and arrogance are often common, myths represent "cock and bull stories". Were our elders simpletons who filled with wonder for thousands of years in front of these "chimeras" (chimeras, if we keep their literal meaning...) ? Is truth based on the acceptation that the literal meaning of these stories constitute a veil on hidden teachings ? .... A kind of "comic book with an ontological character" as said Antoine Faivre in one of our recent lecture…. ?
Elements of answer by Denis Labouré in this 35-minutes, filmed in his astrology practice in Saint-Etienne.
