Thomas Vaughan (Alchemist)

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Thomas Vaughan (born April 17, 1621 or 1622 in Tretower Court, Brecknockshire , Wales , † February 27, 1665 or 1666 in Albury near Oxford ) was a Welsh alchemist , occultist and mystic . He wrote under the pseudonym Eugenius Philalethes .

Life

Thomas Vaughan came from a respected Welsh family in Tretower Court and was the twin brother of the poet Henry Vaughan . From 1638 he attended Jesus College at Oxford University with the baccalaureate in 1641/42. After Anthony Wood he became a Fellow of Jesus College, but there is no other evidence of this. He became rector in Llansantffraed in his native Wales in 1645, fought like his brother on the side of the royalists in the English Civil War , was captured in the battle of Rowton Heath and lost his position as rector in 1650 by a parliamentary commission (partly because of his royalist activities, however also because he was absent for a long time). He then studied alchemy in Oxford and London and undertook alchemical experiments with two founders of the Royal Society , Thomas Henshaw , with whom he lived in Kensington , and Robert Moray . He was a follower of Paracelsus and sold Paracelsian medicines. In the 1650s he published mystical-alchemical works under the pseudonym Philalethes (lover of truth). He died in a laboratory accident involving mercury .

He is not to be confused with Irenäus Philalethes (George Starkey), who belonged to a different alchemical trend and made fun of followers of Sendivogius who wanted to gain their universal substance not from metals but from salts and the like. His brother Henry Vaughan (1621–1695) was an iatrochemist and metaphysical poet ( The Silurist ), who was influenced by his brother in alchemy. Thomas Vaughan was involved in public disputes with Henry More .

He was a follower of the teaching of a Sal Nitrum by Sendivogius and also influenced by Agrippa von Nettesheim . His works were influential and have also been translated into German. As a follower of Paracelsus, he rejected the Aristotelian theory of matter and advocated the experiment to explore alternatives. He also wrote poetry in Latin and Welsh. In 1652 he translated the Fama Fraternitatis of the Rosicrucians into English.

His wife Rebecca Vaughan († 1658) was also an alchemist and participated in his experiments, presented in Aqua vitae: non vitis (the script, a kind of laboratory manual with Latin recipes and English diary entries, was discovered by Arthur Edward Waite in the 19th century) .

Fonts

As Eugenius Philalethes:

  • Anthroposophia Theomagica, or a discourse on the nature of man and his state after death, London 1650
  • Anima Magica Abscondita, or a discourse on the universal spirit of nature, London 1650
  • Magia Adamica, or the antiquity of magic and the descend thereof from Adam proved, London 1650
  • Lumen de lumine, London 1651
  • Auditorium Lucis, London 1652
  • The Fame and Confessions of the Fraternity of RC, commonly of the Rosie Cross, London 1652
  • Euphrates, London 1655
  • A. Rudrum (Editor): The works of Thomas Vaughan, Oxford 1984
  • Donald R. Dickson: Thomas and Rebecca Vaughan's Aqua vitae: non vitis, Tempe, Arizona Studies for Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 217, 2001
  • AE Waite (Ed.): The magical writings of Thomas Vaughan, London 1888 (Anthroposophia Theomagica, Anima Magica Abscondita, Magia Adamica, A true and full discovery of the true coelum terrae, or The Magician's heavenly chaos), Archive

literature

  • William R. Newman: Thomas Vaughan. In: Claus Priesner , Karin Figala : Alchemie. Lexicon of a Hermetic Science. Beck 1998
  • Barbara Donegan: Thomas Vaughan, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , online edition 2004
  • FE Hutchinson: Henry Vaughan. A life and interpretation , Oxford, 1947
  • Donald Dickson: The alchemystical wife: the identity of Thomas Vaughan's Rebecca, The Seventeenth Century, Volume 13, 1998, pp. 34-46
  • William Newman: Thomas Vaughan as an interpreter of Agrippa of Nettesheim, Ambix, Volume 29, 1982, pp. 125-140

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Vaughan family of Tretower Court, Welsh Dictionary of Biography
  2. ↑ Fama Fraternitatis ( Memento of the original from June 12, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in Vaughan's translation, Rosicrucian Library @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.crcsite.org
personal data
SURNAME Vaughan, Thomas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Philalethes, Eugenius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British alchemist
DATE OF BIRTH April 17, 1621 or 1622
PLACE OF BIRTH Brecknockshire
DATE OF DEATH February 27, 1665 or 1666
Place of death Albury