The theomagical reformation of Thomas Vaughan: Magic and the occult in early modern British theology

This dissertation examines the thought of Welsh theologian and magician, Thomas Vaughan (Eugenius Philalethes). I argue that Vaughan played an important role in the ongoing theological, scientific, and magico-alchemical conversations of seventeenth-century Britain. While literary scholars have considered Vaughan in relation to his brother Henry, and historians of science have started to review Vaughan's alchemical work, to my knowledge, Thomas has never been considered as a theologian or magician. Through close readings of Vaughan's published writings, analyses of their public reception, and explorations of the writers who influenced Vaughan, I seek to make a case for Vaughan as a "theomagus," or Christian magician. Vaughan was involved in the universal reform movement of Samuel Hartlib and allied himself with a magical branch of reform associated with the late fifteenth-century humanist Marsilio Ficino and sixteenth-century magician Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa. Vaughan sought to restore peace and religious unity through the prisca theologia (or 'original theology'), a primordial wisdom inherent in Creation, but lost to humanity through the Fall of Adam and subsequent ages of sin.;Vaughan saw the alchemical process as a mirror of divine creation, wherein God was the preeminent alchemist. Through study and divine revelation, Vaughan believed that all humans could eventually participate in the transmutation of creation, and actually assist in salvation. After all, as Vaughan noted, "Salvation it self is nothing else but transmutation ." Vaughan was not the first early modern thinker to note parallels between creation and alchemy, but he stands out in his emphasis on the role humans could play in this ongoing transmutation. As exceptional as his thought may appear today, it occupies a significant place on the spectrum of mid-seventeenth-century British theology.;Reformers like John Calvin and Martin Luther pointed to the capacity of 'mere' humans to reform the monolithic institution of the church, but magical theologians like Vaughan pointed to the capacity of 'mere' fallen humans to help effect salvation for all of creation. This was a heady prospect for those emerging from decades of war and religious conflict, and a prospect, I suggest, that found a permanent place in the development of Christian theology.