ute one of the most curious literary forgeries which are to be
met with in the whole range of Hermetic literature; and Hermetic
literature, it is known, has been enriched by many triumphs of
invention. I shall deal with the narratives plainly on the provisional
assumption that Miss Vaughan has been herself deceived in regard to
them. They are based upon family papers said to be now in possession of
the Charleston Dogmatic Directory. The central facts which are sought to
be established by means of these papers have been mentioned already in
my eighth chapter, namely, that Miss Vaughan is one of the two last
descendants of the alchemist Thomas Vaughan; that this personage made a
compact with Satan in the year 1645, that under the name of Eirenaeus
Philalethes, he wrote the well-known alchemical work entitled "An Open
Entrance to the Closed Palace of the King," and that he consummated a
mystical marriage with Venus-Astarte, of which the Palladian
Templar-Mistress is the last development. For the purposes of these
narratives the birth of Thomas Vaughan is placed in the year 1612, and
his death, or rather translation, in the year 1678. At the age of
twenty-four years, that is to say, in 1636, he proceeded to London, and
there connected himself with the mystic Robert Fludd, by whom he was
initiated into a lower grade of the Rosicrucian Fraternity, and received
a letter of introduction to the Grand Master, Johann Valentin Andreae,
which he took over to Stuttgart and presented. In 1637, having returned
to London, he was present at the death of Robert Fludd, which occurred
in that year. In 1638 he made his first voyage to America, where he was
hospitably entertained by a Protestant minister, named John Cotton, but
his visit was not characterised by any remarkable occurrence. At this
period the alchemist is represented by his descendant as a Puritan
impregnated with the secret doctrine of Robert Fludd. In 1639 Vaughan
returned to England, but was immediately attracted to Denmark by the
discovery of a golden horn adorned with mysterious figures, which he and
his colleagues in alchemy supposed to typify the search for the
philosophical stone. At the age of twenty-eight, Vaughan made further
progress in the Rosicrucian Fraternity, being advanced to the grade of
_Adeptus Minor_ by Amos Komenski, in which year also Elias Ashmole
entered the order. Accompanied by Komenski, Vaughan proceeded to
Hamburg, thence by himself to Sweden, and su