The Count of Saint Germain, whom Voltaire called a man who knows everything and never dies, left no reliable record of his name or birth; he claimed in 1779 to be 88, while others put his birth near 1712. He later hinted he was the secret son of Francis II Rákóczi, prince of Transylvania, while other rumors made him an Alsatian, a Spanish Jesuit or a tax collector’s son. Arrested in London in 1745 during the Jacobite scare, he offered so many conflicting stories that Horace Walpole recorded the authorities simply let him go. Lady Jemima Yorke noted how he shifted his manner for scholars and for young women, and he wrote music for an opera at the Haymarket Theatre along with sonatas and songs.
In France he became a favorite of Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour, who set him up with a laboratory at the Château de Chambord, where he developed dyes for French textiles. Casanova described a 1757 Paris dinner where Saint Germain talked through the meal without eating, claimed to be 300 years old and said he could melt small flawed diamonds into one large flawless stone. In 1760, during the Seven Years’ War, he tried amateur peace talks with Britain at The Hague without credentials; the Duc de Choiseul ordered his arrest and he fled to England on a blank passport. His last patron was Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel, and he died in February 1784 while the prince was away.
- Casanova called him the king of impostors and quacks yet admitted he was captivated.
- Cryptographers decoded The Triangular Book of Saint Germain, a cipher manuscript of rituals for long life and wealth.
- His estate inventory listed 82 reichstalers, paid bills, 14 linen shirts, a toothbrush and sunglasses.
- Theosophy founder Helena Blavatsky cast him as a master of the ancient wisdom.
- Guy Ballard claimed to meet him on Mount Shasta in 1930 and founded the I AM Activity.
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