A mendacious biography of the English mystic, Thomas Vaughan.II.A secret history of the English Rosicrucian Fraternity, and of its connection with Masonry, which is also an impudent fraud.

The two constitute one of the most curious literary forgeries which are to be met with in the whole range of Hermetic literature; and Hermetic literature, it is known, has been enriched by many triumphs of invention.

I shall deal with the narratives plainly on the provisional assumption that Miss Vaughan has been herself deceived in regard to them.

They are based upon family papers said to be now in possession of the Charleston Dogmatic Directory.

The central facts which are sought to be established by means of these papers have been mentioned already in my eighth chapter, namely, that Miss Vaughan is one of the two last descendants of the alchemist Thomas Vaughan; that this personage made a compact with Satan in the year 1645, that under the name of Eirenaeus Philalethes, he wrote the well-known alchemical work entitled "An Open Entrance to the Closed Palace of the King," and that he consummated a mystical marriage with Venus-Astarte, of which the Palladian Templar-Mistress is the last development.