• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Comte De Saint Germain

A

Anonymous

Guest
The Count de St. Germain, chap who is said to have lived for many MANY years, has there ever been tales or reports of a woman who is said to have lived for many years in an equally mysterious manner?
 
Wasn't there someone who claimed to be his daughter or something fairly recently?

Might have been in FT, sorry i can't remember any more information...
 
Here's one of those weird coincidences that seem to occur rather too regularly: today I found myself, for no particular reason, reading up on the internet about the curious personnage who was (is?) the Comte de Saint Germain. Two hours later I logged on to the online music service Spotify to continue listening to the work of Luke Haines (The Auteurs, Black Box Recorder etc). I've just finished reading his excellent rock memoir "Bad Vibes" and that has prompted me to revisit his music. Whilst playing back his 2001 album "The Oliver Twist Manifesto" for the first time, I nearly fell off my swivel chair when, during the song "The Spook Manifesto", I heard these lines:

Now if anybody needs to find me
I'm in the pre-chemical age
I can be anywhere at anytime now
I'm the Count de Saint Germain

In fact, the Comte is major figure in the text of the song. How many other songs out there mention him, I wonder? Strange, innit?
 
That rings a bell with me too - Count St Germain is also mentioned in 'I'm so free' on the Lou Reed album 'Transformer'.
 
St Germain also shows up in Pushkin's odd little tale The Queen of Spades.

The story seems to have generated an avalanche of literary analysis, but it doesn't appear most commentators are aware of the truly fantastical nature of the Count.

In Pushkin's tale, St Germain apparently divulges the secret of three cards which, played in the correct order, will win any game of cards.

A young engineer's attempt to gain the secret leads him to encounter death, supernatural happenings, and ultimately madness.

Given St Germain's association with alchemy, I wonder if one could interpret the story as a parody of the alchemist's quest?

 
Whilst playing back his 2001 album "The Oliver Twist Manifesto" for the first time, I nearly fell off my swivel chair . . .

I'm just hoping to clarify this -- you had never head the song before?
(Sorry if this is just another case of being American and not quite following British wording -- I interpret "play back" as a repeat, not a first time.)

Perhaps this next item should be a different thread -- Places of Heightened Coincidences --, but I encountered a significant increase in coincidences while in New Orleans for 5 days. One of my favorites involved salt. I went to Marie Laveau's tomb, where people draw three x's and leave an offering to ask for a wish. I went, and was self conscious, and didn't want to mar the tomb. I figured if I "was worth my salt", it would work anyway to just visualize the x's in light. I left a penny as recommended for the offering. About an hour later, I was waiting to cross a street in the French Quarter, and was narrowly missed by a salt shaker falling from above. I looked up and saw a tourist having breakfast on a balcony. She apologized and said, "I don't know how that happened, I'm never that clumsy!"

Even if she was really hungover, or did stuff like that all the time, it seemed like a dandy "coincidence" to me!

(I don't really know much about Marie Laveau, but what information I found in New Orleans indicates she helped empower people of color more than would seem likely from the Wikipedia account. I left New Orleans with a strong feeling of respect and admiration for her. Or them -- there were a mother and a daughter, and records apparently aren't clear as to who did what.)
 
Sorry if this is just another case of being American and not quite following British wording -- I interpret "play back" as a repeat, not a first time
"Playing back" in this present-tense context means hearing for the first (or, equally, a subsequent) time, a recording of a previous live event or production. There is no underlying implication that this is a episodic repeat experience for the person hearing it.

Note, though, that @MrSqwubbsy wrote this St Germain piece back in 2006 (do you agree with my interpretation @Mythopoeika ? Not the 9 years bit, the meaning of 'playing back')
 
I like Saint Germain, but he has a habit of repeating on me.
 
"Playing back" in this present-tense context means hearing for the first (or, equally, a subsequent) time, a recording of a previous live event or production. There is no underlying implication that this is a episodic repeat experience for the person hearing it.
Thank you for clarifying this, Ermintrude!
 
About time he came back.
To me, breach of expection is nearly always worse than breach of contract.

Hopefully right now, he'll be somewhere extratemporal, such as a special private school, teaching fencing (bladed, not wooden) and just moving-on slowly, once colleages start to age and die. But although generations of parents will have subconscious suspicions, the sequential generations of sibling students and long school terms/days, all act as smokescreens for his eternal permanency.

Also teaching the classics, he wil have a wistful all-knowing smile, and a steady pace that has no match.

Perhaps....

(Oh, and he'll be a subscriber to FT, and a member on FTMB...Carpe perenniter )
 
Last edited:
My mate's Dad bought a house a few years back. In one room there was a bricked-up fireplace. They decided they'd like to use it though and went about opening it back up. When they removed the bricks, whaddaya think they found?... An old black and white print of the Comte de Saint Germain!

Apparently, he's revered by Theosophists (Saint Germain; not my mate's Dad!) So we thought maybe a Theosophist may have lived there. Wouldn't explain why they felt the need to brick him up though.
 
My mate's Dad bought a house a few years back. In one room there was a bricked-up fireplace. They decided they'd like to use it though and went about opening it back up. When they removed the bricks, whaddaya think they found?... An old black and white print of the Comte de Saint Germain!

Apparently, he's revered by Theosophists (Saint Germain; not my mate's Dad!) So we thought maybe a Theosophist may have lived there. Wouldn't explain why they felt the need to brick him up though.
Just out of interest how old was the fireplace?
 
Oops sorry I haven't been getting notifications, did you find out how old it was
 
Coincidentally, Luke Haines has a song called 'Lou Reed'!

 
Coincidentally, Luke Haines has a song called 'Lou Reed'!

How does that follow on from anything on this thread? :huh:

Edit: D'oh! I had to scroll all the way back to see my own comment. Sorry.
 
Oops sorry I haven't been getting notifications, did you find out how old it was

Well, I did ask him. As it turns out, it wasn't his dad. It was his former step-father (long-since deceased). They found it when he moved out of the house and went to live in a neighbouring village. It was years ago and he never kept in touch with the guy. Unfortunately, he can't really remember much about the place, so no date, I'm afraid.

Incidentally though, on the theory of a theosophical connection; I did some searching on the internet, and sure enough, there was a theosophical lodge in the town at one point. There was even mention of a group still meeting there a few years ago. That's just a shot in the dark though.
 
The item of the Theosophical Lodge being located in the same town as the house with the Comte de St. Germain painted in the fireplace reminds me of an essay by Umberto Eco, "How to Become a Knight of Malta" (published in "How to Travel with a Salmon"). I found it quite humorous. As I recall, he goes on about how it's impossible to escape promotional letters for esoteric societies, which pressure you to be initiated and learn the secrets of the ages available only through their ancient and exclusive group.
 
:bump:

Was thinking about the Count recently, in connection with the late David Niven.

I posted about Niven's acquaintance Mike Romanoff, the affable Hollywood restaurateur and 'professional imposter'.
Romanoff claimed to have been to every posh school one could name and had apparently met everyone famous.

He backed up these yarns with snippets of valid information, as when someone challenged him about who his Eton form master was. Romanoff replied 'You mean me tutor, old boy!' with a wink. (I may have misremembered the details but you get the drift.)

Anyway... perhaps I read this at the same time as first learning about the Count and mixed them up, but I could swear Niven's book mentions meeting him. Or at least having him pointed out across a room.

The Count appears in various works of lit and I was a prodigious reader as a teenager so maybe I'm conflating half a dozen books, I dunno. :crazy:
 
:bump:

Was thinking about the Count recently, in connection with the late David Niven.

I posted about Niven's acquaintance Mike Romanoff, the affable Hollywood restaurateur and 'professional imposter'.
Romanoff claimed to have been to every posh school one could name and had apparently met everyone famous.

He backed up these yarns with snippets of valid information, as when someone challenged him about who his Eton form master was. Romanoff replied 'You mean me tutor, old boy!' with a wink. (I may have misremembered the details but you get the drift.)

Anyway... perhaps I read this at the same time as first learning about the Count and mixed them up, but I could swear Niven's book mentions meeting him. Or at least having him pointed out across a room.

The Count appears in various works of lit and I was a prodigious reader as a teenager so maybe I'm conflating half a dozen books, I dunno. :crazy:
Think he was the Count?
 
Think he was the Count?
Nope because Niven knew Romanoff reasonably well whereas the character I think of as the Count was only spotted at a distance.
There is no mention I can find online of Niven mentioning the Count.

Wonder if I still have the book lying around? I could check.

I've most likely mixed up some of the half-a-dozen-at-a-time books I used to read as a weird teenager. :wink2:
 
Nope because Niven knew Romanoff reasonably well whereas the character I think of as the Count was only spotted at a distance.
There is no mention I can find online of Niven mentioning the Count.

Wonder if I still have the book lying around? I could check.

I've most likely mixed up some of the half-a-dozen-at-a-time books I used to read as a weird teenager. :wink2:
In Robert Rankin's 'Brentford trilogy' Professor Slocombe is said to be 'The Compte St. Germain', who is also reputed to be 'The Wandering Jew'.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wandering_Jew
 
Back
Top