Theos-Talk Archives (April 2004 Message tt00539)

Steve S wrote:
<<If you read it and take care to 
distinguishe between fact and opinion
I think you will agree his account is 
quite valuable. He draws an excellent 
porttait of St. G and the only thing he 
says that is not positive is that he 
considered St. G. to be a fellow impostor.>>

If you're saying or speculating that 
Casanove appeared to have made a career 
of impostering and that he might've 
therefore tended to believe (as one 
might expect most career imposters to 
believe ...) that St G's stories must 
reflect on a background of beliefs 
similar to his own ... that's one thing, 
but how can any of us, looking back, 
know what really motivated Casanova's 
accounts of St G? And if C was an 
imposter to begin with ... Not that 
there might not be forms of impostering 
found in all of us, in some sense, but ...

<<<Given the kinds of claims St. G was 
making and given that Casanona was
working the same rackets, it is 
inevitable that he would have reached
that conclusion. That he was a trader 
in dyes and jewels, that he
was a great conversationalist, that he 
ate nothing in the presence of
others, etc., is, I suspect, all true. 
And none of that is negative.>>

Seems to me that people tend to believe 
what they "prefer" to believe---where 
the "prefer" might keep changing in 
keeping with whatever, so ...

<<One thing that distinguishes St. G. 
from Cagliostro is that St. G. never 
seemed to teach anything of a 
metaphysical nature. Unless you
consider making diamonds to be 
metaphysical he also never
demonstrated anything, except for claims 
that he was personally present at the 
Council of Trent, etc., which are 
untestable claims. Given that he was 
interviewed by German Rosicrucians and 
determined not to be a metaphysical 
person, I tend to wonder if some of the
claims made by Cooper-Oakley and other 
have been a bit over enthusiastic. If 
he had really been a predecessor of HPB 
one would expect he would have founded a 
lodge, or joined one of the many
organizations that existed in Europe 
then. So far as I know, no claim has 
ever been made that he did so.>>

Do we know more about those German 
Rosicrucians? I wonder if ST G might've 
decided, (possibly based on his 
assessment of those interviewers ...), 
that he didn't want to come across in a 
way that might tend to lead to more 
requests for interviews among other 
things ... The sense in which one could 
be considered to be "a predecessor of 
HPB" could vary, couldn't it ...

Of course, on the other hand, in as much 
as we're not in possession of facts 
... what can we say ...

Speculatively,
Mauri