Would Cagliostro have received you?

In the 1780s Count Cagliostro founded an “Egyptian” Freemasonry with himself as Grand Copht. Its ritual survives. Seven questions, beside the reception of the Apprentice.

The rite took only those who were already Master Masons, and it took women as well as men. This is what the candidate went through before the oath. Answer for yourself; nothing is sent anywhere.

1. Do you believe in God, whatever your religion?

All religions were tolerated under this system: a belief in God was the sole qualification, with the additional necessity of having been regularly initiated into the three degrees of Symbolic Masonry.

Yes Sometimes No

2. Have you already gone as far as the ordinary path goes?

“It is a Mason, who, having passed through all the degrees of the ordinary Masonry, presents himself for initiation into the true Egyptian Masonry.”

Yes Sometimes No

3. Would you stay shut in a room alone for an hour, waiting?

The candidate shall be shut up in this chamber during an hour or thereabouts.

Yes Sometimes No

4. Would you take off your shoes and lay aside every piece of metal you carry?

He shall order him to take off his shoes and to divest himself of all metals.

Yes Sometimes No

5. Do you prefer hard study to ease and money?

He shall be asked if he is well decided to be initiated into these mysteries, and to prefer the labor, the perils of the study of nature to the romance, the ease and the wealth of the world.

Yes Sometimes No

6. Would you let everyone present say what they hold against you?

If any of the brethren have anything to allege against the candidate, they must, upon honor and conscience, state it at this time.

Yes Sometimes No

7. Would you swear to obey blindly?

“I promise, I engage, and I swear, that I will never reveal the secrets which shall be communicated to me in this temple, and that I will blindly obey my superiors.”

Yes Sometimes No

Ritual of Cagliostro’s Egyptian Rite, as translated in Henry R. Evans, Cagliostro and His Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry, Washington, 1919.

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Where this comes from

The ceremony, step by step

The candidate is shut for an hour in a chamber shaped like a grotto, before a tracing board on which Time, “having an hour-glass on his head”, gazes in terror at the entrance of a cavern. The Inspector comes “to unbind the hair of the candidate”, has him take off his shoes and “divest himself of all metals”, then gives seven knocks at the door of the lodge.

In the lodge, under a canopy of blue and white, the silence is such that “it is forbidden even to blow one’s nose”. The Master, sword in hand, opens “in the name of the Great God” and has the brethren prostrate themselves for a silent prayer. The candidate kneels before the throne; the alcohol on the altar is lighted and, his right hand above the flame, he swears “that I will never reveal the secrets which shall be communicated to me in this temple, and that I will blindly obey my superiors”. He receives the robe, the white cord and two pairs of gloves, “one of them for a man, the other for a woman”, then three strokes of the sword on the shoulder.

Then comes the catechism. The translation of 1919 stops before its end. We found the rest in the French review L’Initiation of November 1906: it speaks of “the invocations to God”, of instruments to be prepared “according to the planetary influences”, and of hours counted from sunrise — the same reckoning as that of the Olympic spirits.

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The reception of an Apprentice and the whole catechism: the lodge, the chamber of reflection, the oath over the flame, then the questions and answers on the primal matter, the seven angels of the planets, the instruments, the hours and the invocation — including the end, missing from the English translation of 1919 and translated here from the French of 1906. A reading dossier in PDF, emailed within 24 hours; you pay after you have received it. It confers no degree.

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The text

Giuseppe Balsamo, known as Count Cagliostro (Palermo 1743 – San Leo 1795), opened his mother lodge at Lyon in 1784. The Roman Inquisition arrested him in 1789 and seized his papers; the ritual is known from manuscripts and from the printed account of his trial. Henry R. Evans translated the Apprentice’s reception in 1919: archive.org.

This page belongs to no order and opens no door. Cagliostro’s rite ended with his arrest in Rome in 1789; rites calling themselves Egyptian exist today. None of them uses this page, and we are affiliated with none.