In the thirteenth century, a certain Arnold of Villanova, a physician who traveled widely throughout Europe and in Africa, was reputed to be a powerful karcist, believed to have occult contacts and interests. He dabbled, also, in alchemy, and, as legend rumored, was proficient in actual transmutations. In his medical practice he relied largely on herbal concoctions, on magic formulas, on amatory potions prepared according to traditional prescriptions. Potions and love philtres pervaded all life, at all levels, throughout the middle centuries. Peasant and pilgrim resorted to aged creatures who were reputed to possess cryptic formulas, hidden resources transmitted to them orally by their forbears. Even in the Eucharistic rite the _poculum amatorium_ made its contorted intrusion. In the Eucharistic rite, the wafer often became an ingredient in love potions and acquired a particularly efficacious renown. Most dealings in love devices, secret formulas, erotic phials, were nameless, both the client and the practitioners remaining unknown by name to each other. Until the practitioner became so assertive, so prosperous and so much in demand that people flocked from remote regions, from distant cities, from foreign countries, to acquire the ultimate elixir. Count Alessandro Cagliostro was shrewd and unscrupulous enough to profit by such conditions. He was an Italian alchemist, magician, and hermetic, but basically his qualifications and capacities were at least dubious. What was not at all dubious was his facility in outwitting all Europe, in amassing great wealth from gullible clients, in escaping, on all but the ultimate occasion, from merited penalties. His original name was Giuseppe Balsamo, and his restless life extended from 1745 to 1795. In the heyday of his quackery he became both known and notorious throughout Europe. He was _persona gratissima_ among the most distinguished social circles and families. With the aid of his wife Lorenza Feliccani he amassed enormous wealth by the sale of alchemical compounds, magic elixirs, and love potions. Scandals followed his movements and implicated him in fantastic incidents, salacious episodes. Hence, for security or secrecy, he was constantly changing his abode. In his last years, he suffered imprisonment, in the fortress of San Leo. And with his death, the legends proliferated and multiplied. Strange feats were recorded of him. Mystic phenomena appeared at his potent will. According to such traditions, he was a necromancer, having exorcised a dead woman. At a public banquet he invoked the dead spirits of Diderot and Voltaire. And he was the founder of a secret organization known as The Egyptian Lodge, where goetic practices and sorcery were attempted and consummated.