he founder of modern Freemasonry; and gives an
exhaustive account of his career on the authority of family archives.
The following paragraphs contain the substance of her narrative, the
"legend of Philalethes," as it was told to Miss Vaughan by her father
and her uncle, who were intimate friends of Albert Pike.

The traditional accounts of Thomas Vaughan, says Miss Vaughan, contain
serious errors. The dates of his birth and of his death, and the
pseudonym under which he wrote are all incorrectly stated[24] (p. 110).
He was born in Monmouth in 1612, being two years the elder of his
brother Henry. The two boys were brought up at Oxford, after their
father's death, by their uncle, Robert Vaughan the antiquary,[25] and
entered at Jesus College (p. 114). In 1636, at the age of 24, Thomas
Vaughan went to London, and became the disciple of Robert Fludd, who was
a Rosicrucian (p. 148). The real nature of the Rosicrucians has hitherto
been a mystery. They were in reality Luciferians, and carried on in
secret during the seventeenth century that warfare against Adonai, the
god of the Catholics, out of which had already sprung Wiclif, Luther,
and the Reformation, and out of which was some day to spring, more
deadly and more dangerous still, Freemasonry. The Fraternity of
Rosie-Cross was founded by Faustus Socinus in 1597. He was succeeded as
head of it by Caesar Cremonini (1604-1617), Michael Maier (1617-1622),
Valentin Andreae (1622-1654), and Thomas Vaughan (1654-1678).[26] When
Thomas Vaughan first came to London in 1636, Valentin Andreae was
_Summus Magister_ of the Fraternity, and amongst its leading members
were Robert Fludd and Amos Komenski, or Comenius (pp. 129-148). Robert
Fludd initiated Thomas Vaughan into the lower degrees of the Golden
Cross (p. 148), and sent him to Andreae at Calw, near Stuttgart, with a
letter in which he prophesied for him a miraculous future (p. 163).
After this visit to Germany, Vaughan returned to London, and after
Fludd's death, in 1637, undertook in 1638 his first visit to America. In
many of his writings he speaks as a Christian minister, and at this time
he probably passed as a Nonconformist (p. 164). He was back in London
early in June, 1639 (p. 165), and in the same year visited Denmark, and
made a report to Komenski on the mysterious golden horn found at Tondern
in that country (p. 166). In 1640 Vaughan received from Komenski the
first initiation of the Rosie Cross, and chose the pseudony