Spiritualism and the nineteenth-century revival
Mary Anne Atwood
Mary Anne South
English writer whose Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery, published in 1850 under her maiden name, argued that the real subject of alchemy was the perfecting of the practitioner rather than of metal.
- Dates
- 1817 – 1910
- Dating
- documented dates
Place in the tradition
Everything later called spiritual alchemy runs back through this book, including the readings Silberer and Jung gave it.
a note on the record
History and later legend
She and her father withdrew the book almost at once and burned the remaining copies, believing it had said too much; it was reprinted in 1918 from a surviving copy.
the written record
Principal works
-
1850
A Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery
The book that began the modern reading of alchemy as an inner discipline, withdrawn and burned by its author within months of publication.
held in the source catalogue Read at archive.org ↗