A SUGGESTIVE INQUIRY INTO THE HERMETIC MYSTERY WITH A DISSERTATION ON THE More Celebrated of the Alchemical Philosophers BEING AN ATTEMPT TOWARDS THE RECOVERY OF THE ANCIENT EXPERIMENT OF NATURE. REVISED EDITION: WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ALSO AN APPENDIX CONTAINING THE MEMORABILIA OF With Photogravure Portrait of the Authoress Belfast: WILLIAM TAIT, 87 Marlborough Park North. LONDON: J. M. WATKINS, 21 Cecil Court, W.C. INTRODUCTION. 66 'Alchemy is philosophy; it is the philosophy, the seeking out of THE SOPHIA in the mind."* THIS is the re-issue of a book with a strange history; a book moreover not only entirely unknown, for reasons that will presently appear, to all but the meagrest minority, but one treating of a subject hitherto excluded from consideration by exponents of conventional learning. Whether even now men devoted professionally or otherwise to philosophy, divinity or science will give it the least attention is problematical. Be that as it may, it is believed that among those to whom the book and its subject-matter will be new there will be not a few who will accord it at least an interested and respectful notice, whilst many others who are already aware of the book's existence and the general tenor of its theme will welcome its re-issue and the fact that after nearly seventy years of suppression it now becomes generally accessible. In the interests of the book itself, and for the information of those whom it will now reach, it is desirable that something should be said of its authorship and previous history, the reasons for its suppression and its reappearance, and lastly of the subject of which it treats. I. The Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery was originally published anonymously in 1850 by the London house of Trelawney Saunders. It was the work of a comparatively young woman named Mary Anne South, who later, by marriage, became Mrs. Mary Anne Atwood. She was a daughter, born in 1817, of Thomas South, of Bury House, Gosport, Hampshire, a gentleman of leisure and certain means, a scholar and somewhat of a recluse, and the possessor of an exceptionally fine specialised * From a private note-book of the authoress of this volume. |