Ebook Works of Thomas Vaughan

This is the first volume of a series of Transactions to be issued by the Library Committee of the Theosophical Society of England and Wales. The choice has fallen upon Thomas Vaughan for two reasons: in the first place, because of his unique position in the chain of the Hermetic tradition during the seventeenth century; and, secondly, because it has been possible to secure the services of Mr A. E. Waite, who is recognised by all students of the hidden truth as one who is particularly fitted, not only by temperament and predilection, but also by special training and ripe scholarship, for the task of editing one of the profoundest and most difficult of all visionaries who have seen "the new East beyond the stars."

The mantle of Robert Fludd may be said to have fallen upon the shoulders of Vaughan, who in his time and generation continued the apostolate of the Secret Tradition, as this is represented by the secret and more spiritual side of alchemical philosophy. The two writers drew from the same sources: from the school of the Kabalah in all its extensions and reflections, from the Hermetic Neo-Platonists, and from those Latin-writing scholars of Europe who, subsequent to the Renaissance, represented and not infrequently typified the struggle for liberation from the yoke and aridity of scholastic methods. Fludd was a physician, and when not dealing with cosmical philosophy he paid attention to the Hermetic foundation upon which the true art of medicine is built.