By Gerald B. Bryan
We come now to a consideration of odd fact and fancy, which
will show to what extent the human mind loves the mysteriousness that
oftentimes enshrouds itself over the lives of notable characters. Human traits
are forgotten in all this mysteriousness, and such individuals are made the
synthesis of all that is strange, odd, fantastic, incredible, and miraculous.
Far removed from the standpoint of time and perhaps of place, mankind looks
back upon them and makes of them, gods, heroes, and saints.
It is with such a thought as this that we can, perhaps,
best introduce that enigmatical character of the 18th century known as the
Comte de St. Germain.
Encylopaedic writers are decidedly less approving of the
Count than are novelists and occultists. We have therefore two versions or
interpretations of this remarkable man. One of the encyclopaedists refers to
him as “the most celebrated mystic adventurer of modern times.” Another calls
him a “charlatan,” a “deceiver,” an “extraordinary impostor.”
But occultists and romancers almost without exception
call him an “adept,” a “transcendental magician,” a “Messenger of the Great
White Lodge,” and so on — depending upon the shade and character of belief
residing in the writer.
One of the occult writers on the subject points out that
“we must cast aside the theories that M. de St. Germain was a homeless and
penniless adventurer, seeking to make money out of any kindly disposed person.”
(The Comte de St. Germain, p. 15, by I. Cooper-Oakley.)
“No obscure adventurer is this,” says this writer, “but a
man of princely blood and almost royal descent.”
The Count St. Germain is reputed by some authorities to
have been one of the sons of Prince Franz-Leopold Rakoczy of Transylvania, who
had received land grants from Louis XV. If this be so, then the Count had
wealth and title in his own right. Opinions, however, differ as to the
parentage. And as to his name, there were many that he went by, the “Comte de
St. Germain” being but one of a dozen or more.
This fact has been used, says Mrs. Cooper-Oakley, to
militate against his honesty and integrity. She points out that this was the
practice among persons of rank and title in that day to escape vulgar
curiosity. It was no doubt done also for political reasons, his own inherited
name from the Rakoczy line being politically dangerous.
The present-day exhibitors of the Count, the two
Ballards, have for their own purposes brought him out of rusty encyclopaedias
and occult tomes, and have popularized his name among millions. They ignore,
however, his other cognomens, titles, and prefixes and give him a name of their
own — “The Ascended Master Saint Germain.” They emphasize the “Saint” part of
the name by spelling it always out in full, instead of its accustomed
abbreviated form.
This has served to make some think he was canonized by
the Roman Church, when of course he wasn’t at all, the name “St. Germain” being
but a family name. We have used generally the Ballard way of spelling out the
name, especially when we refer to Ballards’ man Friday instead of to the real
and historic Comte de St. Germain.
Whatever we may think of this man as an “adventurer,” a
“charlatan,” a “deceiver,” we shall nevertheless have to concede that here was
a man of some real genius. Even the encyclopaedias who refer to him as a
charlatan, at the same time speak of him as learned in many of the arts and
sciences of that day. They say he knew many languages; that he spoke, fluently,
German, English, Italian, French, Portuguese, and Spanish; that his diction and
grammar were flawless. (Let the Ballard Saint Germain take notice!)
He was an accomplished musician, and could play the piano
divinely, as well as being more than a dabbler in oils. He was an unusual
chemist for those times, and sought to transmute the baser metals into gold,
which was the end of the chemist’s art of that period. It was even claimed that
he had some success in that direction, as well as producing the greatest
alchemical feat of all, the “Philosopher’s Stone.”
He seems always to have been well supplied with money,
and displayed to his friends and intimates many diamonds and precious stones.
Removing flaws from diamonds appears to have been his special hobby, along with
his predilection for wearing diamonds in his shoe buckles. Perhaps, though,
that was the thing to do in those days, just as only a few years ago it was the
fashion for the well-dressed man to wear a pin in his necktie.
The Count was a story-teller of note, but that he at
times went over to the imaginative and fanciful is doubtlessly true, He claimed
to have been on intimate terms with the Queen of Sheba, Solomon, Paracelsus,
and a few other notables, even going back as far as the traditional
Melchizedek, King of Salem and Priest of the Most High God who met Abraham in
the valley of Shaveh.
His memory seems a little long for this present age, but
who can say how far we shall be able to go back into the past some day by
strictly scientific means?
The belief in these things, and the possibility of them,
is taken advantage of by the charlatan and the story-teller. We hope the
entertaining Count was able to go back that far, but it is well to be just a
little skeptical about such things when we still have a few modern Munchausens
and Sindbads in the world.
Louis XV of France had an especial fondness for the Comte
St. Germain. He fitted up an apartment for him at his royal Chateau of
Chambord, and assigned him a wing in his palace for a chemical laboratory. The
Count was a friend and adviser to many notables of that day, including Prince
Karl of Hesse, the ill-fated Marie Antoinette, and it seems, also to Catherine
the Great of Russia.
It appears that he had many missions into foreign lands,
and some believe he was an international spy. If he was an adventurer and
nothing more, it is seldom that such a character continues to have the patronage
of kings and princes for so long a time as did the Count. His name was a
byword, well spoken, on the continent and in England.
But he had his enemies, too. Carlisle wasn’t fond of his
popularity; Casanova said he was a simple impostor; and Voltaire spoke rather
contemptuously of him, remarking: “He is a man who never dies, and who knows
everything.”
By his political enemies he was considered a dangerous
character, and orders one time were issued for him to be bound hand and foot
and taken to the Bastille. He, however, escaped to England. So it was — and is
today — not altogether an easy task to live the life of a “Mystery Man.”
The Comte de St. Germain is said to have dressed with
becoming taste — snuff-box, watch, jewels, buckles, and all. The finest diamonds
flashed from his person. The ladies of that day were particularly fond of him,
as can be imagined, but no scandal attached to his name. He gave them cosmetics
and an elixir to keep age away, and that seemed to suffice.
His manners were elegant, his hair black, and his eyes
soft and penetrating. He always dressed in black satin, which fact goes a
little contrary to the Ballard picture of “Saint Germain” dressed in white, or
sometimes wearing a purple cape. The Ballard “Saint Germain” hates black, but
the 18th-century one wore it constantly. An original portrait of the Count, by
Thomas, is in the Louvre, dated 1783, and inscribed: “Marquis Saint Germain Der
Wundermann.” This shows him to be a clean-shaven man with a white wig, dressed
in black velvet with white vest and ruffles.
It looks no more like the portrait of the Ballard Saint
Germain, as painted by Charles Sindelar, than a smooth-shaven man would look
beside the bearded George Bernard Shaw.
And neither of these two pictures look anything like the
first portrait of Saint Germain which appeared originally in the Ballard books.
So we have the spectacle of three totally different-appearing St. Germains. The
reader can take his choice from the lot. The writer chooses the Louver exhibit
as being slightly more authentic, and the wig a trifle more judicial, than the
two others.
The Count traveled much — but did not, it seems, use the
astral streamlined method such as he is supposed to use today. The boat and
coach were good enough.
In various countries he assumed different names, usually
names of rank and nobility, but always appeared to be a man of about fifty
years. Quite appropriately, it seems, this “Mystery Man” claimed descent from
the Rakoczy line in Transylvania, for Transylvania is said by some occultists
to be one of the most mysterious countries in the world — but certainly, today,
has its troubles with the land-grabbing rulers of Europe and Asia. The mighty
(?) Ballard Saint Germain should prevent this parceling out of his ancestral
home.
As to the Count’s death there are, as usual, conflicting
stories. The Ballards say he never died, which belief has no doubt been based
on statements made by some occult writers who make extraordinary claims as to
his longevity.
If a manuscript attributed to him, The Most Holy
Trinosophia, can be literally believed, his life ended by confinement in one of
the dungeons of the Inquisition at Rome. And if he was a member of the secret
fraternity known as the Illuminati, as some believe, this kind of death seems
plausible, for many of that Society were killed by the Inquisition. Occultists,
however, are inclined to interpret this MS. symbolically.
A church register at Eckernforde indicated that he died
in 1784. This is doubted by many, but the encyclopaedias give credence to it
and record that year as the time of his death. The register reads as follows:
“Deceased on February 27th, buried on March 2nd, 1784,
the so-called Comte de St. Germain and Weldon —further information not known— privately
deposited in this church.”
But like the “Wandering Jew” the Comte de St. Germain is
still traditionally thought to be in existence. By some he is supposed to be
existing and working as the invisible power behind the throne in some of the
nations of the world. Even after his recorded death in 1784, he is thought to
have done certain work among secret societies and Masonic orders. He is
supposed to have been one of the representatives of the French Masons at their
convention at Paris in 1785, and to have done certain work preceding the French
Revolution of 1789. Thus in death as well as in life and birth, the same
mystery about this man still eludes and baffles investigators.
There is a tendency for persons to let their imagination
and fancy run riot in their efforts to make a greater mystery out of this man
than the facts justify. Some say he was Rasputin, the “Mad Monk of Russia,” who
is supposed to have brought about the downfall of the reign of the Czars, just
as he is said to have had something to do with seeking to prevent or to
encourage the French Revolution. By still others he is thought to have had a
previous existence as Christian Rosenkreuz, who founded certain of the
Rosicrucian societies and secret orders during the Middle Ages. And so on — with
consistent mysteriousness.
That equally mysterious personage, the Russian
noble-woman, Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, who founded the Theosophical
Society, calls him “the greatest Oriental Adept Europe has seen during the last
centuries.” (Theosophical Glossary)
Her occult brother and co-worker, Col. Henry S. Olcott,
considered him “a messenger and agent of the White Lodge,” using this term to
mean “that Brotherhood of Adepts who stay back of the scenes and manipulate
world affairs through agents for the good of humanity.”
Lord Bulwer-Lytton, it is stated, wrote his famous occult
novel, “Zanoni,” around the character of Comte de St. Germain, and connected
him with the French Revolution. Other writers have done likewise.
Manly P. Hall, of Los Angeles, and Mrs. Cooper-Oakley, of
London, have both done considerable research in connection with Comte de St.
Germain, to whose works the interested reader is referred for additional
information. Hall states that over this character “hangs the veil of impenetrable
mystery.”
Mrs. Cooper-Oakley shows that he was an associate and
friend of Franz Anton Mesmer, and that they studied animal magnetism together.
She quoted an Austrian writer as saying:
“In the Masonic and Rosicrucian literature one often
finds hints as to the relations of St. Germain to the secret societies of
Austria...He was addicted to alchemy, believed in universal medicine and made
studies as to animal magnetism . . . He belongs to the picture of ‘Old Vienna’
with its social mysteriousness; where it was swarming with Rosicrucians,
Asiatics, Illuminates, Alchemists, Magnetopaths, Thaumaturgs, Templars, who all
of them had many and willing adherents.
“Dr. Mesmer who knew the Comte St. Germain well from his
stay in Paris, requested him to come to Vienna in order that he might pursue
his study of animal magnetism with him. St. Germain stayed secretly here . . .
Dr. Mesmer was much helped by the Count . . . In Vienna, St. Germain came in
touch with many mystagogues. He visited the famous laboratory of the
Rosicrucians in the Landstrasse . . . where he instructed for some time his
brethren in the sciences of Solomon. The Landstrasse, situated on the outskirts
of Vienna, was for many centuries a region of spooks . . . The arrival of the
Count (in 1735) created a great sensation in the initiated circles.” (The Comte
de St. Germain, by Mrs. Cooper-Oakley — pp. 157-9)
Perhaps the real truth about this man lies between two
extremes. Considering the superstition of the day, the wise and cautious
student will be inclined to discount the so-called magic of Comte de St.
Germain’s work. He was undoubtedly learned and clever far beyond even the
enlightened of that period. Perhaps even, he took advantage of the credulity
and ignorance of the age. It is conceivable that he even got a certain
enjoyment out of telling mysterious tales, such as living at the time of
Christ, possessing the wand of Moses, and having been on speaking terms with
Melchizedek and other traditional characters — if we can believe the stories
told of him. The Baron Munchausen type of mind is not confined to any age.
It is, however, most likely the Count was playing a
certain part, for what exact purpose we know not. The people of that age wanted
mystery and marvels, as they do today. Perhaps he fed them what they wanted in
the way of wonders in order to achieve certain political ends. It is on this
basis, no doubt, that we can most intelligently judge the work of the Comte de
St. Germain, “Mystery Man” of the 18th century.
(Psychic Dictatorship in America, chapter 12)
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