Cagliostro

Alessandro, Conte di Cagliostro (d. August 26, 1795), known more popularly simply as Cagliostro, was an Italian adventurer and occultist associated with Egyptian Rite Freemasonry. Many authorities identified Cagliostro as having been Giuseppe Balsamo (b. June 2, 1743), a Palermo-born Jew, contrary to more far-fetched claims of his mysterious origins as the son of a Maltese grand-master or a prince in the Ottoman-controlled Trebizond Eyalet, but any such identifications have been treated with some suspicion in certain esoteric quarters.

Reading

Contemporary

• Barberi, Giovanni (1791), The Life of Joseph Balsamo, Commonly Called Count Cagliostro: Containing the Singular and Uncommon Adventures of that Extraordinary Personage from His Birth till His Imprisonment in the Castle of St. Angelo. To Which Are Added, the Particulars of His Trials Before the Inquisition, the History of His Confessions Concerning Common and Egyptian Masonry, and a Variety of Other Interesting Particulars. Translated from the Original Proceedings Published at Rome by Order of the Apolistic Chamber., London: Printed for C. and G. Kearsley, No. 46, Fleet-Street., https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008637972  — an English translation from the Italian of Giovanni Barberi (1748-1821), a magistrate at Cagliostro's trial in Rome, as published by the Stamperia Camera Apostolica.

Later

• Trowbridge, W. R. H. (1910), Cagliostro: The Splendour and Misery of a Master of Magic, London: Chapman & Hall, https://archive.org/details/cagliostrosplend00trowuoft 
• Shirley, Ralph (1920), "Count Cagliostro", Occultists & Mystics of All Ages, London: W. Rider & Son, p. 120-144, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc2.ark:/13960/t9v124j6v&view=1up&seq=136