The Count of Saint-Germain

The teaching

Taught from the memoirs of those who met him, Casanova's among them, and what was claimed in his name after his death.

The chemist of colours and stones

The Count presented himself as a chemist, and the arts he claimed are arts of colour and of stones: to fix colours in cloth, silk and leather so that they would not fade, to improve gems, to take the flaw out of a diamond and to make small pearls grow large. A memoir of the court of Louis XV tells that the king gave him a diamond spoiled by a flaw and had it back clear and worth far more. In his last years he and his host, Prince Charles of Hesse, worked together at dyes, and this was the art he shared with the prince.

The manner of an adept

His way of living was itself a performance of the adept. He sat at table in company and ate nothing; he spoke of kings and courts dead for centuries as if he had known them, and let his hearers draw the conclusion; he played the violin and sang, spoke many languages, and would not say where he was born. He claimed an elixir that kept him in health and youth, and hinted at more. The legend of his great age was built from what he let others believe.

The coin at Tournai

Casanova, who knew the trade from within, tells what he saw at Tournai. The Count asked for a coin, laid the twelve-sou piece on a burning coal, worked the fire with a blowpipe, and after a little while gave it back as gold. Casanova did not doubt the gold; he doubted the coin, and judged that a gold piece had been put in its place by sleight of hand while he watched the fire. Casanova's lesson is the one his own life had taught him: a wonder done before a believer proves only the skill of the one who does it.

The Most Holy Trinosophia

The illustrated manuscript that tradition gives him tells of an initiation. Its writer sends it to a friend from the prisons of the Inquisition, and recounts a journey through underground halls, through trials of fire, water and air, past altars, figures and strange writings, to the knowledge of a threefold wisdom, the trinosophia of its title. Each stage has its picture, and its admirers read the book as a map of the soul's passage from darkness to light, and as alchemy told as a journey.

The Master of the later books

After his death the Count became a teacher in other people's books. For the Theosophists he is one of the Masters, the adepts held to guide the growth of humanity from behind the scenes: called the Master Rakoczi, of a Hungarian princely house, he is said to watch over the affairs of Europe and to rule the seventh ray, the ray of ceremonial order. In the I AM movement of the 1930s Guy Ballard told of meeting him on Mount Shasta, and taught in his name the violet flame, a fire of the spirit called on in prayer to consume the faults and burdens of the past. These are claims of a later age, and nothing in the record of the man bears them out.