The magical writings of Thomas Vaughan (Eugenius Philatethes) : A verbatim reprint of his first four treatises: Anthroposophia theomagica, Anima magica abscondita, Magia adamica, and the true Cœlum terræ / with the Latin passages translated into English, and with a biographical preface and essay on the esoteric literature of western Christendom, by Arthur Edward Waite.

  • Vaughan, Thomas, 1621-1666.
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The magical writings of Thomas Vaughan (Eugenius Philatethes) : A verbatim reprint of his first four treatises: Anthroposophia theomagica, Anima magica abscondita, Magia adamica, and the true Cœlum terræ / with the Latin passages translated into English, and with a biographical preface and essay on the esoteric literature of western Christendom, by Arthur Edward Waite. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Crucian fraternity,* an understander of some of the Oriental lan- guages, and a tolerable good English and Latin poet. He was neither papist nor sectary, but a true, resolute protestant in the best sense of the Church of England. . . . He did accompany Sir Rob. Murrey before-mentioned to Oxon, at what time the great plague at London drove their majesties and their respecti ve courts to that place, where he continued for a time. Soon after taking up his quarters in the house of Sam Kem, rector of Albury, near to Thame and Ricot in Oxfordshire, [he] died there as it were suddenly, when he was operating strong mercury, some of which by chance getting up into his nose, killed him,+ on the 2 7th of Feb. in sixteen hundred sixty and five, and was buried on the first of March following in the church belonging to the said village of Albury alias Oldbury (about 8 miles distant from Oxon), by the care and charge of the said Sir Robert Murrey.”]; The history of Brecknockshire, written by Theophilus Jones in the year 1809, speaks of a farm-house at Newton which was once of some celebrity, being “occupied by two brothers of the name of Vaughan, of very eccentric characters,” but for the facts in the life of Eugenius, this work is mainly indebted to Wood. It enumerates, however, the alleged reasons for the expulsion of Thomas Vaughan from his ecclesiastical position. “ He was ousted by the propa- gators of the gospel in Wales, for drunkenness, swearing, incontin- ency, and carrying arms for the king.” § This information, together with a few scraps which may be gleaned from Elias Ashmole, has been the sum total of our knowledge con- cerning the Welsh Royalist, who is now counted among the first of British mystics and Hermetic adepts. After much research, I am fortunately able to supplement it from an unexpected quarter. I have discovered a genuine autograph manuscript, which bears on its fly leaf the inscription, “ Ex Libris Thomas et Rebecca Vaughan, 1651, Sept. 28. Quos Deus conjunxit quis separabit ?” It is entitled “Aqua Vitte non Vitis, or the Radical Humiditie of Nature Mechanically and Magically Dissected by the conduct of Fire * This statement is twice expressly contradicted by Vaughan himself, who says in his Preface to the “Fame and Confession of the Fraternity of R. C.” : “As for that Fratemity, whose History and Confession I have here adventured to publish, I have, for my own part, no relation to them, neither do I much desire their acquaintance. ” And again, “ I have no acquaintance with this Fraternity as to their persons.” + So Mr Harris of Jesus Coli. Wood, MS. note in Ashmole. % Athence Oxoniens., Ed. Philip Bliss, 4to, 1817, iii. 722. § “History of the County of Brecknock,” ii. pt. ii. p. 540.