Of his real name or parentage and place of birth, nothing is definitely known; the common version is that he was a Portuguese Jew. He knew nearly all the European languages. He was a musical composer and a capable violinist. His knowledge of history was comprehensive, and his accomplishments as a chemist, on which he based his reputation, were in many ways considerable. He pretended to have a secret for removing flaws from diamonds and for transmuting metals.
Saint-Germain is mentioned in a letter of Horace Walpole’s as being in London about 1743 and as being arrested as a Jacobite spy and released. At the French court, where he appeared about 1748, he exercised for a time extraordinary influence and was employed on secret missions by Louis XV; but, having interfered in the dispute between Austria and France, he was compelled in June 1760, owing to the hostility of the Duke de Choiseul, to remove to England. He appears to have resided in London for one or two years, but he was at St. Petersburg in Russia in 1762 and is asserted to have played an important part in the conspiracy against Tsar Peter III in July of that year, a plot that placed Catherine II the Great on the Russian throne. He then went to Germany, where, according to the Mémoires authentiques of the adventurer the Count di Cagliostro, he was the founder of freemasonry and initiated Cagliostro into that rite. He was again in Paris from 1770 to 1774, and, after frequenting several of the German courts, he took up his residence in Schleswig-Holstein, where he and the landgrave Charles of Hesse pursued together the study of the “secret” sciences. He died, probably in Schleswig, in 1784, although he is said to have been seen in Paris in 1789.
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http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/517187/comte-de-Saint-Germain
Freemasonry
Article Free Pass
Freemasonry evolved from the guilds of stonemasons and cathedral builders of the Middle Ages. With the decline of cathedral building, some lodges of operative (working) masons began to accept honorary members to bolster their declining membership. From a few of these lodges developed modern symbolic or speculative Freemasonry, which particularly in the 17th and 18th centuries, adopted the rites and trappings of ancient religious orders and of chivalric brotherhoods. In 1717 the first Grand Lodge, an association of lodges, was founded in England.
Freemasonry has, almost from its inception, encountered considerable opposition from organized religion, especially from the Roman Catholic Church, and from various states.
Though often mistaken for such, Freemasonry is not a Christian institution. Freemasonry contains many of the elements of a religion; its teachings enjoin morality, charity, and obedience to the law of the land. For admission the applicant is required to be an adult male believing in the existence of a Supreme Being and in the immortality of the soul. In practice, some lodges have been charged with prejudice against Jews, Catholics, and nonwhites. Generally, Freemasonry in Latin countries has attracted freethinkers and anticlericals, whereas in the Anglo-Saxon countries, the membership is drawn largely from among white Protestants.
In most lodges in most countries, Freemasons are divided into three major degrees—entered apprentice, fellow of the craft, and master mason. In many lodges there are numerous degrees—sometimes as many as a thousand—superimposed on the three major divisions; these organizational features are not uniform from country to country.
In addition to the main body of Freemasonry derived from the British tradition, there are now a number of appendant groups that are primarily social or fun organizations, which have no official standing in Freemasonry but which draw their membership from the higher degrees of Freemasonry. They are especially prevalent in the United States. Among those known for their charitable work are the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine (the “Shriners”). Female relatives of Master Masons may join the Order of the Eastern Star; boys, the Order of DeMolay and the Order of Builders; and girls, the Order of Job’s Daughters and the Order of Rainbow. English Masons are forbidden to affiliate with any of the fun organizations or quasi-Masonic societies, on pain of suspension.
end quote from:
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/218618/Freemasonry
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