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§ 59. Thomas Vaughan (Eugenius Philalethes).

Thomas Vaughan, who wrote under the name of "Eugenius Philalethes," was born at Newton in Brecknockshire in 1622. He was educated at Jesus College, Oxford, graduating as a Bachelor of Arts, and being made a fellow of his college. He appears also to have taken holy orders and to have had the living of St. Bridget's (Brecknockshire) conferred on him.19

During the civil wars he bore arms for the king, but his allegiance to the Royalist cause led to his being accused of "drunkenness, swearing, incontinency and bearing arms for the King"; and he appears to have been deprived of his living. He retired to Oxford and gave himself up to study and chemical research. He is to be regarded as an alchemist of the transcendental order. His views as to the nature of the true Philosopher's Stone may be gathered from the following quotation: "This, reader," he says, speaking of the mystical illumination, "is the Christian Philosopher's Stone, a Stone so often inculcated in Scripture. This is the Rock in the wildernesse, because in great obscurity, and few there are that know the right way unto it. This is the Stone of Fire in Ezekiel; this is the Stone with Seven Eyes upon it in Zacharie, and this is the White Stone with the New Name in the Revelation. But in the Gospel, where Christ himself speakes, who was born to discover mysteries and communicate Heaven to Earth, it is more clearly described." 20 At the same time he appears to have carried out experiments in physical Alchemy, and is said to have met with his death in 1666 through accidentally inhaling the fumes of some mercury with which he was experimenting.

Thomas Vaughan was an ardent disciple of Cornelius Agrippa, the sixteenth-century theosophist. He held the peripatetic philosophy in very slight esteem. He was a man devoted to God, though probably guilty of some youthful follies, full of love

towards his wife, and with an intense desire for the solution of the great problems of Nature. Amongst his chief works, which are by no means wanting in flashes of mystic wisdom, may be mentioned Anthroposophia Theomagica, Anima Magica Abscondita (which were published together), and Magia Adamica; or, the Antiquitie of Magic. With regard to his views as expressed in the first two of these books, a controversy ensued between Vaughan and Henry Moore, which was marked by considerable acrimony. § 60. The use of the pseudonym "Philalethes" has not been confined to one alchemist. The cosmopolitan adept who wrote under the name of "Eirenæus Philalethes," has been confused, on the one hand, with Thomas Vaughan, on the other hand with George Starkey (?-1665). He has also been identified with Dr. Robert Child (1613-1654); but his real identity remains shrouded in mystery. 21 George Starkey (or Stirk), the son of George Stirk, minister of the Church of England in Bermuda, graduated at Harvard in 1646 and practised medicine in the United States of America from 1647 to 1650. In 1651 he came to England and practised medicine in London. He died of the plague in 1665. In 1654-5 he published The Marrow of Alchemy, by "Eirenæus Philoponos Philalethes," which some think he had stolen from his Hermetic Master. Other works by "Eirenæus Philalethes" appeared after Starkey's death and became immensely popular. The Open Entrance to the Closed Palace of the King (the most famous of these) and the Three Treatises of the same author will be found in The Hermetic Museum. Some of his views have already been noted (see §§ 1 and 22). On certain points he differed from the majority of the alchemists. He denied that fire was an element, and, also, that bodies are formed by mixture of the elements. According to him there is one principle in the metals, namely, mercury, which arises from the aqueous element, and is termed "metalically differentiated water, i.e., it is water passed into that stage of development, in which it can no longer produce anything but mineral substances."22 Philalethes's views as to "metallic seed" are also of considerable interest. Of the seed of gold, which he regarded as the seed, also, of all other metals, he says: "The seed of animals and vegetables is something separate, and may be cut out, or otherwise separately exhibited; but metallic seed is diffused throughout the metal, and contained in all its smallest parts; neither can it be discerned from its body: its extraction is therefore a task which may well tax the ingenuity of the most experienced philosopher...." 23 Well might this have been said of the electron of modern scientific theory.