Reviews for The Works Of Thomas Vaughan

The average rating for The Works Of Thomas Vaughan based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-08-12 00:00:00 Brock Smith This is a fascinating book. It might have been rated higher with a better editor as Edwardian Occultist Waite tended to argue with Vaughan too much in the footnotes (yes, I loved typing "Edwardian Occultist.") My purpose was searching for the principles or archetypes of the 17th-Century Vaughan metaphysical philosophy not so much of the alchemic formulae. However, I did learn that to get a phoenix, one must be on a magic mountain (the first tricky part) then tie a male and female snake together (the second tricky part although this led me to a fascinating review of reptile reproduction). The snakes will turn into an ugly toad which will transform into a dragon which will then morph into a swan which then becomes a phoenix. Now you know. All magical humor aside, there is something at the bottom of Vaughan's writings including a deep Christian faith in the spiritual creations of God and a real and spiritual purpose of the physical world. There is reference to the pre-existence of the soul of man, a discussion questioning how Adam's sons could have known how to sacrifice without divine instruction, the proposition that matter and a soul have a physical and spiritual component, the concept of a divine or spiritual feminine principle, and a firm belief in a physical resurrection reuniting male and female. That all sounds good to me.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-02-20 00:00:00 Thomas Nolan One of the absolute classics of alchemy and occult philosophy. I didn't find the actual edition I read, University Books 1968, which includes a foreword by Kenneth Rexroth which I highly recommend.