Magia Adamica

About This Edition

This Diotimos edition presents the complete Magia Adamica publication of 1650: the historical title, the dedications to Mathew Harbert and Thomas Henshaw, P. B.’s commendatory poem, Vaughan’s address to the reader, the argument of Magia Adamica, and the complete appended Coelum Terrae. The latter includes the Hyanthe poem, the stone’s speeches, the closing address to the book, the doxology and Amen. The printed correction notice is included in full, with its Greek forms recovered from the surviving 1650 leaf in the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica copy of The Man-Mouse. Its entries for The Man-Mouse concern another work; the separate Man-Mouse text bound into the surviving Getty volume is outside this edition’s scope.

Thomas Vaughan published under the name Eugenius Philalethes, which remains visible in the historical text. His original language here is English. The new reading modernises that English and translates the embedded Latin, Greek and Hebrew material afresh; it does not claim that this book was originally written in Latin. Where Vaughan follows a foreign quotation with an English rendering of his own, both the fresh translation and his rendering are retained and distinguished.

The original wording accompanies the modern reading in the parallel edition. Stable passage references connect the two works with notes, interpretive essays, a historical glossary, contextual lexicon entries, reading routes, questions and the subject index. These aids are editorial contributions. They distinguish Vaughan’s claims from their interpretation and invite readers to return to the historical passage.