Lumen de Lumine

Bibliography and Source Credits

The Governing First Edition

Vaughan, Thomas, writing as Eugenius Philalethes. Lumen de lumine: or a new magicall light discovered, and communicated to the world. London: printed for H. Blunden at the Castle in Cornhill, 1651. Wellcome Collection, EPB/A/69096.4; Wing V150; ESTC R146. Catalogue: https://wellcomecollection.org/works/f4sqjzf5

Official image manifest: https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/presentation/b30340160 . Library PDF: https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/pdf/b30340160 . Library OCR: https://api.wellcomecollection.org/text/v1/b30340160 . OCR assisted navigation and transcription but did not govern readings against the images.

The catalogue identifies the edition as English, first edition, sixteen unnumbered pages and 101 pages, illustrated. Its Public Domain Mark applies to the historical digitised material. Credit for the source images, including the reproduced emblem: Wellcome Collection. Public Domain Mark information: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/

A Related Publication of Vaughan

The Fame and Confession of the Fraternity of R. C. London, 1652. Folger Shakespeare Library catalogue record 138910 attributes the English translation and original prefatory material to Thomas Vaughan, under Eugenius Philalethes. Record: https://catalog.folger.edu/record/138910 . Cited for publication context, not used as a substitute for the 1651 mountain letter or as proof of organisational membership.

Distinguishing the Philalethes Names

The Chymistry of Isaac Newton, introduction to Cambridge Add. MS 3975, identifies writings under Eirenaeus Philalethes with George Starkey. https://newton.dlib.indiana.edu/text/ALCH00110/introduction . This scholarly manuscript-project record supports distinguishing Eirenaeus from Vaughan’s Eugenius. It does not govern the wording of Lumen.

The Homeric Parallel

Homer, Iliad 8.456, in Homeri Opera, Oxford University Press, 1920, Greek text distributed through Perseus and reproduced in the Dominican Ministry of Education’s virtual library. The line supports the recovery of the worn first word in the Greek quotation on printed page 14. Primary text PDF, printed page 167: https://ministeriodeeducacion.gob.do/docs/biblioteca-virtual/gvMO-homero-iliadapdf.PDF . This parallel clarifies a small reading; it does not replace the 1651 witness as the edition’s source.

Editorial Contributions

The modern English reading, translations of foreign-language passages, introduction, notes, essays, glossary, contextual lexicon, figure guide, reading routes and index were prepared for Diotimos Editions in 2026. Historical text and modern commentary are separately labelled. No later abridgment or collected edition has been silently substituted for the selected first-edition witness.

Biblical citations and classical attributions are retained as features of the historical text. Notes distinguish an identifiable reference from an attribution that has not been independently established. The study apparatus offers historical interpretation and reading support rather than validation of every natural or theological claim.