Léo Taxil’s legend about Thomas Vaughan reads like occult fiction at its most sensational. According to the hoax, everything changed for the Vaughan line on March 25th, 1645, when Oliver Cromwell granted Thomas Vaughan the privilege of beheading William Laud, the Archbishop of Canterbury. In Taxil’s tale, Vaughan steeped a cloth in Laud’s blood and burned it as a sacrifice to Satan, who then appeared personally to make a pact. The Prince of Darkness promised Vaughan not only the philosopher’s stone but also an additional 33 years of life, after which he would be transported—without dying—to Lucifer’s eternal kingdom of pure flames.
The legend grows even more fantastic. About two years later, Vaughan supposedly traveled to New England, where on a clear summer night, he encountered Venus-Astarte, a succubus goddess sleeping on a mystical bed. From their unholy union came a child, whose descendants would eventually produce the Palladian virgin, Diana Vaughan.1
The Real Thomas Vaughan
As Vaughan himself wrote in his epistle to readers: “Wisdom (saith Solomon) is to a man an infinite Treasure, for she is the Breath of the Power of God, and a pure Influence that floweth from the Glory of the Almighty; she is the Brightness of Eternal Light, and an undefiled Mirror of the Majesty of God, and an Image of his Goodness; she teacheth us Soberness and Prudence, Righteousness and Strength”.3
Vaughan’s connection to early speculative Freemasonry, while tangential, is intriguing. Along with influential contemporaries like Elias Ashmole, Robert Fludd, and Robert Moray, he’s considered an early influence on modern Freemasonry. His relationship with Robert Moray is particularly noteworthy. Moray, one of Vaughan’s patrons and possibly a great Rosicrucian supporter, became a Freemason in 1641 and chose a five-pointed star surrounded by mystically significant Greek letters as his Mason Mark—though records show he attended only two stated meetings.
Rosicrucians and Freemasons
By the 19th century, some historians believed that when Rosicrucianism reached England, it transformed into Freemasonry.4 We now understand there are indeed strong links between the two traditions dating to the mid-17th century, and early accepted Freemasonry may owe its success partly to this popular association. The factual Vaughan offers Masonic students rich material for study, including his mystical interpretation of Jacob’s ladder in Magia Adamica and his introductory poem in the 1651 English translation of Agrippa’s De occulta philosophia libri tres.5
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1 Arthur Edward Waite, Devil-Worship In France or The Question of Lucifer (George Redway, 1896), 170–73.
2 David Stevenson, The Origins of Freemasonry: Scotland’s Century 1590-1710 (Cambridge University Press, 1988), 101–2.
3 Epistle to the Reader in Christian Rosencreutz, The Fame and Confession of the Fraternity of R.C., Commonly, of the Rosie Cross : with a Praeface Annexed Thereto, and a Short Declaration of Their Physicall Work, trans. Thomas Vaughan (London : Printed by J.M. for Giles Calvert, 1652).
4 Frances A. Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (Barnes & Noble (1996), Hardcover, 269 pages, 1996), 208–12.
5 Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, ed. and trans. Donald Tyson, ed. Donald Tyson, trans. James Freake, Llewellyn’s Sourcebook (Llewellyn Publications, 1994) xlvii-xlviii.
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