The Count of Saint-Germain

In February 1784, a man died in the small duchy of Holstein in northern Germany. He had been living quietly under the protection of Landgrave Charles of Hesse-Kassel, one of the great occult patrons of the eighteenth century. The man had several names. He had been calling himself the Count of Saint-Germain. He was probably in his seventies. He had spent the previous forty years appearing at the courts of Europe, charming kings and queens, performing tricks with diamonds and precious stones, claiming to have mastered the secret of the philosopher’s stone. He had not, in any documented instance, produced the stone. He had also not, in the opinion of most historians, ever been a count. After his death, the legend of Saint-Germain began to grow in ways that the historical figure would not have recognized, and the legend has been growing ever since (McIntosh, The Rosy Cross Unveiled, 1980; Goodrick-Clarke, The Western Esoteric Traditions, 2008; Nandris, Count of Saint-Germain, 1972).

The historical figure

The historical Saint-Germain is, in my view, more interesting than the legend, and the historical record is fragmentary enough to be tantalizing. The most plausible hypothesis is that he was born in the early eighteenth century, possibly in Transylvania, Germany, or France, and that he was educated in the alchemical and esoteric traditions of the early modern European courts. He may have been a physician, a musician, a diplomat, and an alchemist. He may have had access to the secrets of the European alchemical tradition through the networks that connected the courts of Vienna, Paris, London, and St. Petersburg.

The first securely documented appearance of Saint-Germain is at the court of Louis XV of France, around 1740. He was introduced to the French court as a man of learning and accomplishment, and he was known for his musical talents, his linguistic abilities, and his skill in the visual arts. He claimed to have traveled widely in the Orient, and he displayed a knowledge of Eastern languages and customs that impressed his contemporaries. The court, by all accounts, found him charming. The court also, by all accounts, found him useful, and the usefulness is part of why he kept being received.

The legendary claims that accumulated after his death — that he had been present at the court of Augustus, that he had known Jesus personally, that he had been a student of Francis Bacon and a friend of the Rosicrucians — are not part of the historical record and should be set aside. The Theosophical Society’s promotion of Saint-Germain as an “ascended master” begins with Blavatsky and is part of the late nineteenth-century occult revival, not the eighteenth-century court record (Goodrick-Clarke, 2008). The historical figure is more interesting than the legend precisely because the historical figure is plausible.

The European courts

After his initial appearance at the French court, Saint-Germain traveled widely, and his movements are documented in fragments — letters, court memoirs, diplomatic correspondence. He appeared at the court of Frederick the Great of Prussia, with whom he had a long and sometimes tense relationship. He was a guest at various German princely courts. He spent time in England, in the Netherlands, and possibly in Russia.

A widely repeated claim is that Saint-Germain “negotiated a peace treaty between Russia and the Ottoman Empire” at the court of Catherine the Great. The claim is mistaken. Saint-Germain was involved in peace negotiations in The Hague in 1760, attempting to broker an end to the Seven Years’ War (Nandris, 1972). The claim that he met Catherine the Great has no contemporary basis; the Russian court never received him. The legend has, in other words, attributed to Saint-Germain a diplomatic achievement that belongs to a different episode of his career, and the attribution is the kind of error that grows in the telling.

Saint-Germain’s diplomatic activities were not always successful. He was imprisoned in London for a period, and he was later expelled from the Prussian court under suspicion of espionage. But he continued to travel, to appear at the European courts, and to maintain his reputation as a man of learning and accomplishment. The diplomatic career is, in my opinion, the most interesting part of the historical record, and the part least attended to by the modern esoteric tradition.

The alchemical claims

Saint-Germain claimed to possess the secret of the philosopher’s stone, and he offered to demonstrate his powers to several of his hosts. The most famous of the demonstrations was offered to the Marquise de Pompadour, who declined the offer. Saint-Germain also claimed to have discovered a method of prolonging life indefinitely, and he was rumored to have used the elixir of life to maintain his youth over several centuries.

The alchemical claims of Saint-Germain are not supported by any documented demonstration of his powers. The claims were treated with skepticism by many of his contemporaries, and they have been treated with skepticism by subsequent historians (McIntosh, 1980). But the claims were also treated seriously by some, and the seriousness is itself significant. The European courts of the eighteenth century were not credulous places, and the people who took Saint-Germain seriously were not naive. They were men and women operating within a tradition in which the alchemical claims were taken seriously, and the seriousness of the tradition is part of why the claims were not dismissed outright.

The death and the afterlives

Saint-Germain died in Eckernförde in 1784. The cause of his death is not known, and the official record is that he died of natural causes. Other accounts suggest that he was poisoned, that he faked his death, or that he achieved the immortality he had claimed. The immortality claims are at the heart of the Saint-Germain legend, and the legend has it that Saint-Germain did not die in 1784 but continued to appear in various guises in the years that followed. The most famous of the posthumous appearances is the claim that he appeared to Cagliostro, the Italian adventurer and alchemist, in the late eighteenth century. Other claims include appearances to various witnesses in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The Theosophical tradition treats Saint-Germain as one of the great masters of the Western esoteric tradition, and the “Saint-Germain Foundation” and the “I AM” Activity, two of the Theosophical spin-off organizations, are devoted to the teachings attributed to him. The Theosophical Saint-Germain is a very different figure from the historical one. The Theosophical Saint-Germain is an ascended master, a being who has achieved the integration of the human and the divine, and who works from the spiritual planes to guide the evolution of humanity. The historical Saint-Germain was a court diplomat, a musician, and a self-proclaimed alchemist. The transformation is typical of the Theosophical tradition, and the transformation tells you something about the Theosophical tradition as much as it tells you about Saint-Germain.

The modern Saint-Germain

Saint-Germain is a major figure in the modern Western esoteric tradition, and he remains a major figure in modern popular culture. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the Anthroposophical Society, the various modern Rosicrucian orders, and the many spin-off organizations from the Theosophical tradition all treat Saint-Germain as a major figure. The Saint-Germain image — the mysterious count, the secret alchemist, the immortal sage — has been the subject of numerous novels, films, television programs, and video games. Anne Rice’s The Vampire Lestat (1985) and the subsequent Vampire Chronicles are the most influential modern fictionalizations, and the Rice Saint-Germain is a vampire whose longevity is a vampiric immortality rather than an alchemical one. The transposition is interesting, and it tells you something about the cultural migration of the alchemical themes.

What the legend is for

The historical evaluation of Saint-Germain is difficult, given the fragmentary nature of the historical record, and the difficulty is itself a feature of the legend. The historical Saint-Germain was probably a real person, probably a man of considerable learning and accomplishment, probably an alchemist of some kind, and probably a man of great personal charm and social skill (Nandris, 1972). The immortality claims are mythical, the divine status attributed to him in the Theosophical tradition is a later development, and the legendary tradition has added many elements that are not supported by the historical record.

The historical Saint-Germain is a transitional figure between the early modern alchemical tradition and the modern esoteric revival, and the transition is more interesting than the legend. He was one of the last of the court alchemists, the kind of figure that the early modern courts had supported for centuries. He was also one of the first of the modern esoteric masters, the kind of figure that the Theosophical tradition would develop in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Saint-Germain legend is the legend of the transition. The legend embodies the dream of the philosopher’s stone and the immortality the stone was thought to confer, and the dream is ancient, and it has been a major feature of the alchemical tradition since the Hellenistic period. The Saint-Germain legend also embodies the danger of the alchemical tradition. The dream of the stone has led many alchemists to fraud, delusion, and disaster, and Saint-Germain is a useful reminder that the historical alchemist who was probably a man of good faith has become a model for the many charlatans and impostors who have exploited the alchemical tradition for their own purposes. The Saint-Germain legend is a complex blend of history and legend, of fact and fiction, of the genuine and the fraudulent. It is, in my view, one of the more useful entry points to the broader questions about the reality and the meaning of the alchemical project.