Copyrighted by Manly P. Hall.

The great initiate who called himself the Count de St.-Germain must not be confused with the French general of the same name. The "Man of Wonders," as M. de St.-Germain was often called, was not a descendant of that French family. The long-held theory that he was a Portuguese Jew has now been dismissed as unsustainable. The most reasonable conclusion regarding his birth is that he was the legitimate son of Franz-Leopold, Prince Ragoczy of Transylvania; in fact, the Count de St.-Germain appeared in Leipzig in 1777 using the name Prince Ragoczy. He also admitted to Prince Karl of Hesse that he was the son of Prince Ragoczy and that he was raised and educated by the last Duke de Medici.

The contradictory nature of the information regarding the Count de St.-Germain is clearly shown by several timeline inconsistencies. It is generally supposed that this mysterious expert was born in 1710, but the Countess von Gergy declared that she had seen him during that year in Venice and that he appeared to be between forty-five and fifty years old at the time. While the church register at Eckernförde contains a record of his death in 1784, it is known that he was seen on several occasions after that date, having attended a Masonic conference in 1785 and having been recognized in Venice in 1788. The last historical mention of the Count de St.-Germain was in 1822, at which time he was presumably about to depart for India.

AN ENCYCLOPEDIC OUTLINE OF

Masonic, Hermetic, Cabbalistic, and Rosicrucian Symbolic Philosophy

MANLY P. HALL

King Solomon Edition