William Alexander Ayton (28 April 1816 – 1 January 1909) was a British Anglican clergyman with an interest in alchemy. He was Vicar of Chacombe (in Northamptonshire) from 1873 to 1894. In 1894 he retired on a small pension, and he died at Saffron Walden (in Hertfordshire) in 1909.[1][2][3] He translated from Latin the life of John Dee written by Thomas Smith.[4]
Ayton became a vegetarian in 1868 after visiting the family of his friend Joseph Wallace. Ayton converted to Wallace's dietary system.[7]
References
The Alchemist of the Golden Dawn, The Letters of Revd. W. A. Ayton to F. L. Gardner and Others 1886-1905 (1985) edited Ellic Howe
Notes
^Ronald Decker and Michael Dummett, A History of the Occult Tarot 1870-1970 (2003) p.62, 'a clergyman of the Church of England and well known in occult circles as an alchemist'.
^The Reverend William Alexander Ayton was one of the oldest initiates of the original Golden Dawn, joining (along with his wife Anne) among William Wynn Westcott's earliest recruits just a few months after the founding of the Hermetic Order in 1888. As G. H. Frater Virtute Orta Occidunt Rarius (those rising by virtue rarely decline), Ayton achieved the grade of 5= 6 a year later, at the age of 74. He was at the time still active as a priest, and as the Vicar of Chacombe in Oxfordshire; he had been a freemason for twenty years, and was also associated with the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light. He retired on a pension in 1894 and lived into his 92nd year, dying in 1909 in Hertfordshire.[1]
^William Alexander Ayton (1816-1909), Vicar of Chacombe, Northamptonshire. He had an alchemical laboratory in his cellar and was afraid that his Bishop would learn of its existence[2]
