Magia Adamica

Publication and Transmission

1650: The Publication

Magia Adamica appeared in London under the name Eugenius Philalethes, printed by T. W. for H. Blunden. Its title announces Coelum Terrae as an added discovery of the first matter. The two discourses share the numbered sequence: Magia’s final sentence continues onto the top of page 78, before Coelum begins on that same page. The first treatise is therefore not complete if it stops at page 77. See the historical title, Magia’s conclusion and Coelum’s opening.

1656: A Later Title and a Supplementary Witness

The later issue bears a 1656 title naming John Allen at the Rising Sun in Paul’s Churchyard. Its surviving microfilm supplies a supplementary witness to pages and foreign-language material missing or imperfect in the 1650 Getty copy and its machine-readable transcription. Its title supplies the Greek Epictetus motto where the Getty title leaf is absent. This edition identifies that use rather than presenting a later title as a surviving 1650 leaf.

The Transcribed and Digitised Witnesses

The Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership transcription identifies the 1650 work as A64768.0001.001. The Internet Archive’s Getty copy provides page images of an imperfect bound volume; a separate microfilm digitisation preserves the 1656 issue. Digital access makes these witnesses comparable, but it does not remove missing leaves, typographical ambiguities or the need to distinguish books bound together. Full links and credits appear in Sources and Editorial Credits.

The Present Edition

The Diotimos reading is prepared from the 1650 text with explicitly identified supplementary witnesses, preserving the complete publication’s contents and recording significant decisions in passage notes. The new headings, interpretive essays, glossary and routes belong to the present edition, rather than to Vaughan’s seventeenth-century page.