Thomas Vaughan And The Rosicrucian Revival In Britain

Thomas Vaughan’s challenging books on alchemy, magic, and other esoterica make better sense in the context of the Rosicrucian ideas he introduced to English readers in the seventeenth century. This is the first scholarly book on his life, sources, writings, and subsequent influence.

"In the first book-length study of Thomas Vaughan (1621-1666), Thomas Willard builds on recent scholarship in Western esotericism to show that his curious books offer much more than the lively quotations extracted from them. Treating more than alchemy and the Hermetic tradition, they develop themes from the synthesis of alchemy, magic, and Christian cabala, associated associated with the Rosicrucian movement that Vaughan introduced to English readers. His books respond to a moment in history when the breakdown in book censorship during the English Civil War allowed books with radical ideas to circulate, while political upheaval in the universities created audiences for new ideas. This book will be of interest to students of early modern religion, philosophy, science, and culture as seen by an intelligent and eloquent outsider"--

Although it is fashionable among modernists to claim that globalism emerged only since ca. 1800, the opposite can well be documented through careful comparative and transdisciplinary studies, as this volume demonstrates, offering a wide range of innovative perspectives on often neglected literary, philosophical, historical, or medical documents. Texts, images, ideas, knowledge, and objects migrated throughout the world already in the pre-modern world, even if the quantitative level compared to the modern world might have been different. In fact, by means of translations and trade, for instance, global connections were established and maintained over the centuries. Archetypal motifs developed in many literatures indicate how much pre-modern people actually shared. But we also discover hard-core facts of global economic exchange, import of exotic medicine, and, on another level, intensive intellectual debates on religious issues. Literary evidence serves best to expose the extent to which contacts with people in foreign countries were imaginable, often desirable, and at times feared, of course. The pre-modern world was much more on the move and reached out to distant lands out of curiosity, economic interests, and political and military concerns. Diplomats crisscrossed the continents, and artists, poets, and craftsmen traveled widely. We can identify, for instance, both the Vikings and the Arabs as global players long before the rise of modern globalism, so this volume promises to rewrite many of our traditional notions about pre-modern worldviews, economic conditions, and the literary sharing on a global level, as perhaps best expressed by the genre of the fable.

The essays collected in this volume examine manifestations of our sublime cosmos in ancient literature and its reception. Individual themes include religious mystery; calendrical and cyclical thinking as ordering principles of human experience; divine birth and the manifold nature of divinity (both awesome and terrifying); contemplation of the sky and meteorological (ir)regularity; fears associated with overpowering natural and anthropogenic events; and the aspirations and limitations of human expression. In texts ranging from Homer to Keats, the volume's chapters apply diverse critical methods and approaches that engage with sublimity in various aesthetic, agential and metaphysical aspects. The ancient texts – epic, dramatic, historiographic and lyric – treated here are rooted in a remote world where, within a framework of (perceived) celestial order, literature, myth and science still communicated profoundly, a tradition that continued in literary receptions of these ancient works. This volume honours the intellectual legacy of Thomas D. Worthen, a scholar whose expertise and insights cut across multiple disciplines, and who influenced and inspired students and colleagues at the University of Arizona, USA, for over three decades. Beyond clarifying temporally and culturally distant contemplations of the human universe, these essays aim to inform the continuing sense of wonder and horror at the sublime heights and depths of our ever-changing cosmos.

The study of pre-modern anthropology requires the close examination of the relationship between nature and human society, which has been both precarious and threatening as well as productive, soothing, inviting, and pleasurable. Much depends on the specific circumstances, as the works by philosophers, theologians, poets, artists, and medical practitioners have regularly demonstrated. It would not be good enough, as previous scholarship has commonly done, to examine simply what the various writers or artists had to say about nature. While modern scientists consider just the hard-core data of the objective world, cultural historians and literary scholars endeavor to comprehend the deeper meaning of the concept of nature presented by countless writers and artists. Only when we have a good grasp of the interactions between people and their natural environment, are we in a position to identify and interpret mental structures, social and economic relationships, medical and scientific concepts of human health, and the messages about all existence as depicted in major art works. In light of the current conditions threatening to bring upon us a global crisis, it matters centrally to take into consideration pre-modern discourses on nature and its enormous powers to understand the topoi and tropes determining the concepts through which we perceive nature. Nature thus proves to be a force far beyond all human comprehensibility, being both material and spiritual depending on our critical approaches.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1800's Edition.

This is an essential book for anyone interested in Rosicrucian philosophy, esoteric philosophy, alchemy, and alternative interpretations of the Bible. This edition has a new typeset, and preface. It contains Anthroposophia Theomagic, Anima Magica Abscondita, Magia Adamica, and Coelum Terrae.

The author has essayed to collect the mass of material which exists for the elucidation of this curious problem of European history, and to depict the mysterious brotherhood as they are revealed in their own manifestoes. The work is clear in statement and replete with learning, and affords the first complete' and trustworthy account of the origin, development, and decay of Rosicrucianism ever published in English. This is the Fellowship Edition including an essay by Rosicrucian critic H. Gruber. Contents: Preface. Introduction. Chapter I. On The State Of Mystical Philosophy In Germany At The Close Of The Sixteenth Century. Chapter Ii. The Prophecy Of Paracelsus, And The Universal Reformation Of The Whole Wide World. Chapter Iii. The Fama Fraternitatis Of The Meritorious Order Of The Rosy Cross, Addressed To The Learned In General, And The Governors Of Europe. Chapter Iv. The Confession Of The Rosicrucian Fraternity, Addressed To The Learned Of Europe. Chapter V. The Chymical Marriage Of Christian Rosencreutz. Chapter Vi. On The Connection Of The Rosicrucian Claims With Those Of Alchemy And Magic. Chapter Vii. Antiquity Of The Rosicrucian Fraternity. Chapter Viii. The Case Of Johann Valentin Andreas. Chapter Ix. Progress Of Rosicrucianism In Germany. Chapter X. Rosicrucian Apologists: Michael Maier. Chapter Xi. Rosicrucian Apologists: Robert Fludd. Chapter Xii. Rosicrucian Apologists: Thomas Vaughan. Chapter Xiii. Rosicrucian Apologists: John Heydon. Chapter Xiv. Rosicrucianism In France. Chapter Xv. Connection Between The Rosicrucians And Freemasons. Chapter Xvi. Modern Rosicrucian Societies. Conclusion. Additional Notes. Appendix Of Additional Documents. A Rosicrucian Allegory. The Rosie Crucian Prayer To God.