The Seven Ordeals of Count Cagliostro
Author: Iain McCalman
Publisher: Arrow
Published: 2017-01-12
Total Pages: 288
ISBN-13: 9781784756406
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The Seven Ordeals of Count Cagliostro
Author: Iain McCalman
Publisher:
Published: 2003
Total Pages: 294
ISBN-13: 9780712623483
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBiography of the eighteenth century quack, charlatan and murderer who was to the French Revolution what Rasputin was to the Russian. Guiseppe Blasamo was born in the mid-eighteenth century in the slums of Palerno, Sicily, he would rise from obscurity to become the legendary Count Alessandro di Cagliostoro, whose dangerous charm and reputed healing would make him the darling - and bane - of upper-crust Europe. Moving through the period between the Age of Enlightenment and the French Revolution - a time when reason and superstition co-mingled in the minds of even the best educated - Cagliostro earned a reputation for dazzling kings, feeding the poor, healing the ill and, most conspicuously, relieving the careless rich of their money, He tangled with most of the major figures in Europe at that time, including Cassanova, Mozart, Goethe and Catherine the Great. Eventually a lifetime of political intrigue led him to become the key figure in The Diamond Necklace Affair, which many believe precipitated the French Revolution itself, and which would eventually lead to his own downfall and death while imprisoned half insane by the Inquisition.
The Seven Ordeals of Count Cagliostro
Author: Iain McCalman
Publisher: Fourth Estate
Published: 2003
Total Pages: 352
ISBN-13: 9780732273972
DOWNLOAD EBOOKGuiseppe Balsamo, the Count of Cagliostro, was an 18th-century Sicilian who became a magician, mystic, healer, Freemason, swindler, and last, but not least, a pornographer. He was so controversial, he became a central figure in Faust and the Magic Flute. This work features his story that is told through the eyes of seven of his contemporaries.
The Masonic Magician
Author: Phillipa Faulks
Publisher: Watkins Media Limited
Published: 2016-02-09
Total Pages: 452
ISBN-13: 1780282435
DOWNLOAD EBOOKMiracle-worker or man of straw? Count Alessandro Cagliostro was a cult figure of European society in the tumultuous years leading to the French Revolution. An alchemist, healer and Freemason, he inspired both wild devotion and savage ridicule – as well as novels by Alexandre Dumas, a drama by Goethe and Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute. Count Alessandro Cagliostro’s sincere belief in the magical powers, including immortality, conferred by his Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry won him fame, but made him dangerous enemies, too. His celebrated travels through the Middle East and the capitals of Europe ended abruptly in Rome in 1789, where he was arrested by the Inquisition and condemned to death for heresy.The Masonic Magician tells Cagliostro’s extraordinary story, complete with the first English translation of his Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry ever published. The authors examine the case made against him, that he was an impostor as well as a heretic, and find that the Roman Church, and history itself, have done him a terrible injustice. This engaging account, drawing on remarkable new documentary evidence, shows that the man condemned was a genuine visionary and true champion of Freemasonry. His teachings have much to reveal to us today, not just of the secrets of the movement, but of the mysterious hostility it continues to attract.
The Historian's Conscience
Author: Stuart Macintyre
Publisher: Melbourne Univ. Publishing
Published: 2004
Total Pages: 184
ISBN-13: 9780522851397
DOWNLOAD EBOOKExploring pivotal questions of their profession, this collection of essays by 13 well-known Australian scholars presents the ethical challenges of researching and writing history. Including contributions from Alan Atkinson, Graeme Davison, Greg Dening, John Hirst, Beverley Kingston, Marilyn Lake, and Iain McCalman, this personally revealing and intellectually provocative introspection discusses such dilemmas as how to handle emotional investments in the subject, control sympathies and biases, and address the responsibilities historians have to both their subject and their audience.
QI: The Book of the Dead
Author: John Lloyd
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2009-11-19
Total Pages: 448
ISBN-13: 0571255558
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWelcome to QI: The Book of the Dead, a biographical dictionary with a twist - one where only the most interesting people made it in!QI have got together six dozen of the happiest, saddest, maddest and most successful men and women from history. Celebrate their wisdom, learn from their mistakes and marvel at their bad taste in clothes. Hans Christian Anderson was terrified of naked women, Florence Nightingale spent her last fifty years in bed, Sigmund Freud smoked twenty cigars a day, Catherine de Medici applied a daily face mask made of pigeon dung, Rembrandt van Rijn died penniless and Madame Mao banned cicadas, rustling noises and pianos. Carefully collected and ordered by the QI team into themed chapters with thought-provoking titles such as 'There's Nothing Like a Bad Start in Life', 'Man Cannot Live by Bread Alone'. Each chapter reveals hilarious insights into the true nature of the most interesting people who ever lived, including Isaac Newton, Genghis Khan, Sigmund Freud, Florence Nightingale and Karl Marx. From the bestselling authors of The Book of General Ignorance and 1,277 Facts to Knock Your Socks Off, comes a fun and inspirational biographical dictionary, with motivational stories about the famous and the obscure.
William Blake and the Cultures of Radical Christianity
Author: Robert Rix
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-12-05
Total Pages: 288
ISBN-13: 1351872958
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis study traces the links between William Blake's ideas and radical Christian cultures in late eighteenth-century England. Drawing on a significant number of historical sources, Robert W. Rix examines how Blake and his contemporaries re-appropriated the sources they read within new cultural and political frameworks. By unravelling their strategies, the book opens up a new perspective on what has often been seen as Blake's individual and idiosyncratic ideas. We are also presented with the first comprehensive study of Blake's reception of Swedenborgianism. At the time Blake took an interest in Emanuel Swedenborg, the mystical and spiritual writings of the theosophist had become a platform for radical and revolutionary politics, as well as numerous heterodox practices, among his followers in England. Rix focuses on Swedenborgianism as a concrete and identifiable sub-culture from which a number of essential themes in Blake's works are reassessed. This book will appeal not only to Blake scholars, but to anyone studying the radical and sub- culture, religious, intellectual and cultural history of this period.
Humanities Research Centre
Author: Glen St. John Barclay
Publisher: ANU E Press
Published: 2004-05-01
Total Pages: 421
ISBN-13: 0975122983
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA history of the HRC at the ANU, but also an examination of the role and predicament of the humanities within universities and the wider community, and contributes substantially to the ongoing debate on an Australian identity.
The Fantastic and European Gothic
Author: Matthew Gibson
Publisher: University of Wales Press
Published: 2013-02-15
Total Pages: 256
ISBN-13: 0708325734
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis iconoclastic book challenges and changes accepted opinions about the Gothic novel, and will introduce the British and American Reader to works hitherto unknown to them, but rivals in quality to the works of writers like Radcliffe, Lewis and Stoker.
Antiquity Imagined
Author: Robin Derricourt
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2015-06-26
Total Pages: 304
ISBN-13: 0857737597
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOutsiders have long attributed to the Middle East, and especially to ancient Egypt, meanings that go way beyond the rational and observable. The region has been seen as the source of civilization, religion, the sciences and the arts; but also of mystical knowledge and outlandish theories, whether about the Lost City of Atlantis or visits by alien beings. In his exploration of how its past has been creatively interpreted by later ages, Robin Derricourt surveys the various claims that have been made for Egypt - particularly the idea that it harbours an esoteric wisdom vital to the world's survival. He looks at 'alternative' interpretations of the pyramids, from maps of space and time to landing markers for UFOs; at images of the Egyptian mummy and at the popular mythology of the 'pharaoh's curse'; and at imperialist ideas of racial superiority that credited Egypt with spreading innovations and inventions as far as the Americas, Australia and China. Including arcane ideas about the Lost Ten Tribes of biblical Israel, the author enlarges his focus to include the Levant.His book is the first to show in depth how ancient Egypt and the surrounding lands have so continuously and seductively tantalised the Western imagination.
