"I could produce a thousand authors more, but that were tedious. I shall conclude with one of the Rosy Brothers, whose testimony is equivalent to the best of these, but his instruction far more excellent. His discourse of the First Matter is somewhat large, and to avoid prolixity I shall forbear the Latin, but I will give thee his sense in punctual, plain English.
I am a goddess (saith he, speaking in the person of Nature), for beauty and extraction famous, born out of our own proper sea which compasseth the whole earth and is ever restless. Out of my breasts I pour forth milk and blood: boil these two till they are turned into silver and gold. O most excellent subject, out of which all things in this world are generated, though at the first sight thou art poison, adorned with the name of the Flying Eagle. Thou art the First Matter, the seed of Divine Benediction, in whose body there is heat and rain, which notwithstanding are hidden from the wicked, because of thy habit and virgin vestures which are scattered over all the world.
Thy parents are the sun and moon; in thee there is water and wine, gold also and silver upon earth, that mortal man may rejoice. After this matter God sends us His blessing and wisdom with rain and the beams of the sun, to the eternal glory of His Name. But consider, O man, what things God bestows upon thee by this means. Torture the Eagle till she weeps and the Lion be weakened and bleed to death. The blood of this Lion, incorporated with the tears of the Eagle, is the treasure of the earth. These creatures use to devour and kill one another, but notwithstanding their love is mutual, and they put on the property and nature of a Salamander, which if it remains in the fire without any detriment, it cures all the diseases of men, beasts, and metals.
After that the ancient philosophers had perfectly understood this subject they diligently sought in this mystery for the centre of the middlemost tree in the Terrestrial Paradise, entering in by five litigious gates. The first gate was the knowledge of the True Matter, and here arose the first and that a most bitter conflict. The second was the preparation by which this Matter was to be prepared, that they might obtain the embers of the Eagle and the blood of the Lion. At this gate there is a most sharp fight, for it produceth water and blood and a spiritual, bright body. The third gate is the fire which conduceth to the maturity of the Medicine. The fourth gate is that of multiplication and augmentation, in which proportions and weight are necessary. The fifth and last gate is projection.
But most glorious, full rich and high is he who attains to the fourth gate, for he hath got a universal Medicine for all diseases. This is that great character of the Book of Nature out of which her whole alphabet doth arise. The fifth gate serves only for metals. This mystery, existing from the foundation of the world and the creation of Adam, is of all others the most ancient, a knowledge which God Almighty — by His Word — breathed into Nature, a miraculous power, the blessed fire of life, the transparent carbuncle and red gold of the wise men, and the Divine Benediction of this life. But his mystery, because of the malice and wickedness of men, is given only to few, notwithstanding it lives and moves every day in the sight of the whole world, as it appears by the following parable.
I am a poisonous dragon, present everywhere and to be had for nothing. My water and my fire dissolve and compound. Out of my body thou shalt draw the Green and the Red Lion; but if thou dost not exactly know me thou wilt — with my fire — destroy thy five senses. A most pernicious, quick poison comes out of my nostrils which hath been the destruction of many. Separate therefore the thick from the thin artificially, unless thou dost delight in extreme poverty. I give thee faculties both male and female and the powers both of heaven and earth.
The mysteries of my art are to be performed magnanimously and with great courage if thou wouldst have me overcome the violence of the fire, in which attempt many have lost both their labour and their substance. I am the egg of Nature known only to the wise, such as are pious and modest, who make of me a little world. Ordained I was by the Almighty God for men, but — though many desire me — I am given only to few that they may relieve the poor with my treasures and not set their minds on gold that perisheth. I am called of the philosophers Mercury: my husband is gold philosophical. I am the old dragon that is present everywhere on the face of the earth.
I am father and mother, youthful and ancient, weak and yet most strong, life and death, visible and invisible, hard and soft, descending to the earth and ascending to the heavens, most high and most low, light and heavy. In me the order of Nature is oftentimes inverted — in colour, number, weight, and measure. I have in me the light of Nature; I am dark and bright; I spring from the earth and I come out of heaven; I am well known and yet a mere nothing; all colours shine in me and all metals by the beams of the sun. I am the Carbuncle of the Sun, a most noble, clarified earth, by which thou mayst turn copper, iron, tin, and lead into most pure gold."
— Coelum Terrae by Thomas Vaughan, c. 1650 Translated by Arthur Edward Waite
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Lumen de Lumine and Aula Lucis were meant to be published in one book, about the year 1651. Why this intended design did not come to fruition, Thomas Willard expounds in his excellent introductory essay. What is certain is that both of these tracts offer a profound insight into the Alchemy of Light and the Mysterium Magnum itself: the Prima Materia. It is therefore our pleasure to join together in one volume what was once put asunder, and thus honour the original design of the author, of whom we shall speak presently.
Next to Robert Fludd, the Welsh alchemist Thomas Vaughan (1621–1666), also known as Eugenius Philalethes, has been widely regarded as Britain’s most notable 17th century occultist and alchemical writer. He is believed to be one of the most profound and perhaps most recondite of all visionaries who have seen “the new East beyond the stars.” His magical and alchemical writings, published in the 1650s, established him as a leading interpreter of the Secret Tradition in his time. Aside from being a passionate exponent of alchemy, Vaughan was a mystical philosopher and a visionary largely influenced by the Rosicrucian movement of the 17th century. He translated and published the first English edition of the Rosicrucian Manifestos, Fama and Confessio Fraternitatis, alongside many of their lesser known works, such as “A Letter from the Brothers of R.C. Concerning the Invisible, Magical Mountain, & the Treasure therein Contained,” which he inserted into Lumen de Lumine.
Far from being only a speculative philosopher, Vaughan was also a practising alchemist whose penetrating insight into the mysteries of Nature was tried and tested in the light of laboratory experience. Thus in Lumen de Lumine, by means of an allegoric dream-vision, he introduces the reader to the secret School of Magic in which Thalia—the spirit of Nature—unfolds before the alchemist the cascade of First Matter and its various mineral and metallic generations. These are symbolically represented by the engraved Emblem of the School, created by the celebrated 17th-century artist Robert Vaughan and reproduced in the book. Following this, Vaughan adds eleven short essays, ranging in length from four sentences to fourteen small pages of text. All concern aspects of the alchemical work in both the practical sense—from the First Matter to the projection—and in the expanded sense including Magic and Cabala. The “Magical Aphorisms of Eugenius” which follow are elucidated in a commentary written exclusively for this edition by Prof. Thomas Willard.
“I have resolved with myself to discourse of Light, and to deliver it over to posterity,” writes Thomas Vaughan in the opening lines of Aula Lucis. In this luminous essay, which follows chronologically after Lumen de Lumine, he explains what the descent of Light into Matter truly means for anyone who wishes to have a better understanding of Nature, and especially for the prospective alchemist. At its heart, his thesis concerns not only the regeneration of metals, but the spiritual transmutation of Man. He writes: “He that desires to be happy, let him look after Light, for it is the Cause of Happiness, both temporal and eternal. In the House thereof it may be found, and the House is not far off nor hard to find, for the Light walks in before us and is the Guide to his own habitation.”