Masonic lodges

There is a detailed account of how, on June 7th, 1780, Cagliostro made silver in a Masonic Lodge in Warsaw, as one of the members recorded a description of the experiment... 

The spirit has come to me... to address a manifesto to my people in order to put them on guard against the seductions of a foreign invention, the Masonic lodges— They tend to destroy Christian orthodoxy and all government, and from the place at which they were born... 

Count Cagliostro cut a figure somewhat similar to St Germain (whom he met), although, as it was rumoured that he had sold his soul to the Devil in return for the secrets of alchemy, he anticipates Lord Byron. He was born into a humble family in Palermo, and reinvented himself as a count before embarking on a colourful career. He founded a number of Masonic Lodges, and performed a successful transmutation in a Lodge in Warsaw on 7 June 1780. 

British Masonic dreamers had also looked forward to the arrival of the Great Copt. General Charles Rainsford, an initiate of no fewer than eleven mystical lodges, had long wanted to make contact with the famous seer. The duke of Northumberland, a fellow visionary, had written the previous year to tell Rainsford that ... the famous Count Cagliostro is in Paris, and... the manner in which he lives, and the stories told of him are so wonderful... 

Shrewd tactician that he was, de Morande realized that a special campaign was needed to undermine Cagliostro s standing in the Masons. In particular, the Copt s declared intention of founding a lodge of Egyptian Freemasonry in London had to be stopped. 

Freemasons use the tools of stonemasons, not for physical work but to contemplate as symbols in their philosophical mystical practice, in the same way that Rosicrucians practice alchemy without the chemical experiments. In the Masonic ritual of initiation, a Mason acts out the death of Hiram and is reborn to the lodge. The twentieth century... 

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