Thomas Vaughan (philosopher)
{{Short description|Welsh philosopher (1621–1666)}}
{{Use British English|date=February 2021}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=February 2021}}
{{Infobox scientist
|name = Thomas Vaughan
|image =
|image_size =
|caption =
|birth_date =
|birth_place =
|death_date =
|death_place =
|residence =
|citizenship =
|nationality =
|ethnicity =
|field =
|work_institutions =
|alma_mater =
|doctoral_advisor =
|doctoral_students =
|known_for =
|author_abbrev_bot =
|author_abbrev_zoo =
|influences =
|influenced =
|prizes =
|religion =
|footnotes =
|signature =
}}
Thomas Vaughan (17 April 1621 − 27 February 1666) was a Welsh clergyman, philosopher, and alchemist, who wrote in English. He is now remembered for his work in the field of natural magic. He also published under the pseudonym Eugenius Philalethes.
His influences included Johannes Trithemius (1462–1516), Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486–1535), Michael Sendivogius (1566–1636), and Rosicrucianism (early 17th century).
Life
A Royalist clergyman from Brecon, Wales, Thomas was the twin brother of the poet Henry Vaughan,"[Henry's] twin brother was Thomas Vaughan (1621–1666). . ." [https://biography.wales/article/s-VAUG-HEN-1621 Vaughan, Henry] in Welsh Biography Online, at National Library of Wales{{Cite ODNB |last=Speake |first=Jennifer |author-link=Jennifer Speake |date=2004 |title=Vaughan, Thomas (1621–1666), hermetic philosopher and alchemist |url=https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-28148 |access-date=2022-10-21 |language=en |doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/28148|isbn=978-0-19-861412-8 }} both being born at Newton, in the parish of St. Bridget's, in 1621.The twins were the sons of Thomas Vaughan of Trenewydd, Newton . . . "who m. the heiress of Newton in Llansantffraed." [https://biography.wales/article/s-VAUG-TRE-1450 VAUGHAN family, of Tretower Court] in Welsh Biography Online, at National Library of Wales. He entered Jesus College, Oxford, in 1638, and remained there for a decade during the English Civil War.
Vaughan took part in the Battle of Rowton Heath in 1645.{{Cite book |author1=Garrett A. Sullivan |author2=Alan Stewart |title=The Encyclopedia of English Renaissance Literature |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=R7UeL_0Pu3oC&pg=PA1001 |accessdate=7 June 2012 |date=1 February 2012 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |isbn=978-1-4051-9449-5 |pages=1001–2}} Although still based in Oxford, he became Rector of Llansantffraed (St Bridget), Wales, in 1640 and took up medical studies, motivated by the lack of doctors there. In 1650, however, Vaughan was evicted from the parish for his Royalist sympathies and alleged drunkenness.{{sfn |Chambers |1911}}
Vaughan later became involved in a plan with Thomas Henshaw and Robert Child to form a chemical club, with a laboratory and library, the main aim being to translate and collect chemical works.{{Cite book |last=Dickson |first=Donald R. |title=The Tessera of Antilia: Utopian Brotherhoods & Secret Societies in the Early Seventeenth Century |date=1998 |publisher=Brill |location=Leiden, New York, and Köln |pages=186-207}} He married his wife Rebecca Archer in 1651{{Cite journal |last=Dickson |first=Donald R. |date=1998 |title=“The Alchemistical Wife: The Identity of Thomas Vaughan’s ‘Rebecca’” |journal=The Seventeenth Century |volume=15 |pages=34-46}} and spent the next period of his life in London. After her death in 1658, he re-dedicated their research notebook, now in the British Library (MS, Sloane 1741).{{Cite book |last1=Vaughan |first1=Thomas |last2=Vaughn |first2=Rebecca |title=Aqua Vitæ: Non Vitis: Or, The radical Humiditie of Nature: Mechanically, and Magically dissected By the Conduct of Fire, and Ferment (British Library MS, Sloane 1741) |publisher=Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, vol. 217. |year=2001 |editor1-first=Donald R. |editor1-last=Dickson |location=Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies}}
In 1661, Vaughan fell out with an alchemical collaborator, Edward Bolnest, over money matters and alleged broken promises, and the matter came to litigation after Bolnest had threatened violence. Vaughan was accused as part of this affair of spending "most of his time in the study of Naturall Philosophy and Chimicall Phisick". He is reported as having confessed that he had "long sought and long missed... the philosopher's stone."
After the Restoration, he found a patron in Sir Robert Moray, with whom he fled from London to Oxford during the plague of 1665.{{EB1911 |inline=y |wstitle=Vaughan, Thomas |volume=27 |page=956 |first=Edmund Kerchever |last=Chambers |authorlink=E. K. Chambers}}
Vaughan died at the house of Samuel Kem, at Albury, Oxfordshire.{{ODNBweb |id=28148 |title=Vaughan, Thomas |first=Barbara |last=Donagan}}
Works
Although he did not practice medicine, Vaughan sought to apply his chemical skills to preparing medicines in the manner recommended by Paracelsus. He corresponded with Samuel Hartlib, who by 1650 was paying attention to Vaughan as author,{{Cite book |author=Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs |author-link=Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs |title=The Foundations of Newton's Alchemy, Or, "The Hunting of the Greene Lyon"|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wwc4AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA66 |accessdate=7 June 2012 |date=29 April 1983 |publisher=CUP Archive |isbn=978-0-521-27381-7 |page=66}} and established a reputation with his book Anthroposophia Theomagica, a magico-mystical work. Vaughan was the author of tracts published under the pseudonym Eugenius Philalethes, as is now generally agreed.
Vaughan was unusual amongst alchemists of the timePeter Levenda [https://books.google.com/books?id=aFJOBwAAQBAJ The Tantric Alchemist: Thomas Vaughan and the Indian Tantric Tradition](2015) in that he worked closely with his wife Rebecca Vaughan. He was a self-described member of the "Society of Unknown Philosophers", and was responsible for translating into English in 1652 the Fama Fraternitatis Rosae Crucis, an anonymous Rosicrucian manifesto first published in 1614 in Kassel, Germany.
Vaughan quarrelled in print with Henry More.{{Cite book |author=Juliet Cummins |title=Milton and the Ends of Time |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=R1FITAztgmwC&pg=PA34 |accessdate=7 June 2012 |date=1 May 2003 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-81665-6 |page=34}} Their pamphlet war petered out, but More returned to the subject of alchemists in Enthusiasmus Triumphatus (1656).{{Cite book |author=Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs |title=The Foundations of Newton's Alchemy, Or, "The Hunting of the Greene Lyon" |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wwc4AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA116|accessdate=7 June 2012 |date=29 April 1983 |publisher=CUP Archive |isbn=978-0-521-27381-7 |page=116}} Another critic of Vaughan was John Gaule.
Allen G. Debus has written that a simple explanation of Vaughan's natural philosophy, in its mature form, is as the De occulta of Cornelius Agrippa, in an exposition coming via the views of Michael Sendivogius.{{Cite book |author=Allen G. Debus |author-link=Allen G. Debus |title=Alchemy and Early Modern Chemistry: Papers from Ambix |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wsm8r2oXYp4C&pg=PA417 |accessdate=7 June 2012 |year=2004 |publisher=Jeremy Mills Publishing |isbn=978-0-9546484-1-1 |page=417}} As a writer in the school of Sendivogius, Vaughan follows Jacques de Nuisement and Andreas Orthelius.{{Cite book |author=William R. Newman |title=Gehennical Fire: The Lives of George Starkey, an American Alchemist in the Scientific Revolution |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fXFs8ergtYUC&pg=PA213 |accessdate=7 June 2012 |date=15 February 2003 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-57714-2 |page=213}} He placed himself in the tradition of the Rosicrucian reformers of education, and of Johannes Trithemius, his teacher Libanius Gallus, and Pelagius of Majorca, teacher of Libanius (of whom the last two are not known to have been real people apart from what Trithemius relates of them).{{Cite book |author=Noel L. Brann |title=Trithemius and Magical Theology: A Chapter in the Controversy Over Occult Studies in Early Modern Europe |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jU81YW06ZH0C&pg=PA109 |accessdate=7 June 2012 |year=1999 |publisher=SUNY Press |isbn=978-0-7914-3961-6 |page=109}}{{Cite book |author=Paola Zambelli |title=White Magic, Black Magic in the European Renaissance |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Tp6PhNsz43EC&pg=PA77 |accessdate=7 June 2012 |year=2007 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=978-90-04-16098-9 |page=77}}
According to some writers of catalogues of hermetic and alchemical treatises (such as John Ferguson, Denis Ian Duveen, Vinci Verginelli et al.), Thomas Vaughan could be the anonymous author of the treatise Reconditorium ac Reclusorium Opulentiae Sapientiaeque Numinis Mundi Magni, cui deditur in titulum CHYMICA VANNUS... Amstelodami... Anno 1666, i. e. a mysterious masterpiece of the hermetic tradition.Italian translation by Gerolamo Moggia and Vinci Verginelli, manuscript, 1921–1925, reviewed by Mario Marta and Giovanni Sergio, self-publishing www.youcanprint.it, 2018.
Posthumous attack
In 1896 Vaughan was the subject of a hoax making alleged revelations as to the practice of devil-worship by the initiates of freemasonry, and that Thomas had helped to found freemasonry as a Satanic society. Leo Taxil, a Parisian journalist, was eventually revealed as the perpetrator of what is now called the Taxil hoax.
References
{{Reflist|30em}}
{{Alchemy|state=expanded}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Vaughan, Thomas}}
Category:17th-century alchemists
Category:17th-century Christian mystics
Category:17th-century philosophers
Category:17th-century Welsh scientists
Category:17th-century Welsh writers