Alessandro Cagliostro, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetAlessandro Cagliostro
Italian occultist
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Palermo, Sicily, Italy
About Alessandro Cagliostro
- Count Alessandro di Cagliostro (US: , Italian: [ales'sandro ka?'??stro]; 2 June 1743 – 26 August 1795) was the alias of the occultist Giuseppe Balsamo (pronounced [d?u'z?ppe 'balsamo]; in French usually referred to as Joseph Balsamo). Cagliostro was an Italian adventurer and self-styled magician.
- He became a glamorous figure associated with the royal courts of Europe where he pursued various occult arts, including psychic healing, alchemy and scrying.
- His reputation lingered for many decades after his death, but continued to deteriorate, as he came to be regarded as a charlatan and impostor, this view fortified by the savage attack of Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) in 1833, who pronounced him the "Quack of Quacks".
- Later works—such as that of W.R.H.
- Trowbridge (1866-1938) in his Cagliostro: the Splendour and Misery of a Master of Magic (1910)—attempted a rehabilitation.
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