A Royalist clergyman from Brecon, Wales, Thomas was the twin brother of the poet Henry Vaughan,[1][2] both being born at Newton, in the parish of St. Bridget's, in 1621.
[4] Although still based in Oxford, he became Rector of Llansantffraed (St Bridget), Wales, in 1640 and took up medical studies, motivated by the lack of doctors there.
He corresponded with Samuel Hartlib, who by 1650 was paying attention to Vaughan as author,[11] and established a reputation with his book Anthroposophia Theomagica, a magico-mystical work.
He was a self-described member of the "Society of Unknown Philosophers", and was responsible for translating into English in 1652 the Fama Fraternitatis Rosae Crucis, an anonymous Rosicrucian manifesto first published in 1614 in Kassel, Germany.
[9] Allen G. Debus has written that a simple explanation of Vaughan's natural philosophy, in its mature form, is as the De occulta of Cornelius Agrippa, in an exposition coming via the views of Michael Sendivogius.
[17][18] According to some writers of catalogues of hermetic and alchemical treatises (such as John Ferguson, Denis Ian Duveen, Vinci Verginelli et al.), Thomas Vaughan could be the anonymous author of the treatise Reconditorium ac Reclusorium Opulentiae Sapientiaeque Numinis Mundi Magni, cui deditur in titulum CHYMICA VANNUS... Amstelodami... Anno 1666, i. e. a mysterious masterpiece of the hermetic tradition.