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 other-
wise 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 reappear-
ance, 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 At wood.
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.

(i)

Introduction.

library of classical, philosophical and metaphysical works,
many of them old, rare and foreign editions, collected in
days when such books were more easily procurable than
now. His studies were concentrated upon a single
subject — the theme and root-reason, albeit obscured by
the current popular religious notions of every age, of all
religion, theosophy and philosophy, — namely the ultimate
nature of the human soul, the spiritual potentialities
latently present in man, and the science of the rectifi-
cation of man from the imperfect state in which he now
finds himself to perfection and integrity in the spiritual
order. This, the subject of the Mysteries of antiquity as
also, if it may so be conceded for the moment, of
Christianity in its original and essential purpose as distinct
from modern popular notions of its implications, he
investigated in the literature in which it has found its
chief expression, the writings of the Platonists, the
mediaeval and subsequent Alchemical Philosophers, and
the myths and mythological poetry of Greece and Rome.
The last mentioned, though little recognised by ordinary
students of the classics as enshrining esoteric religion and
metaphysical teaching of great moment, disclosed to him
a singularly rich field of evidence illustrating and corrobor-
ating the more directly didactic pronouncements of the
philosophers, and Cume with a specially strong appeal to a
temperament naturally poetic and predisposed to metrical
expression. His book-plate, here reproduced, was
obviously an economy of his favourite subject : a glyph
of the aim and goal of Hermetic science. Over an eight-
pointed star — symbol of the ogdoadic creative Logos
whose name is Alpha and Omega — the radiations of which
result in that continuous flow and unbroken circle of
manifestation which is ever returning to its source, is
displayed a dragon's head united to a crown, the diagram
being surmounted by the Virgilian words Hie labor, hoc
opus est. Experimentally to transmute the gross nature
and Teaser elements in man into incorruptible life ; to
unify our polar opposites, the corrupt anima brtda and
the indwelling divine spirit in us ; to sublimate that life-
force which in its crude elementary state works pervertedlv
in our bestial nature and energises the latter' s desires,
passions and self-will, into one-ness of being, will and

(2)

^c^ocj^^

afyxmra^ Smxfy

Introduction.

substance with the immaculate Divine Principle, so that
our carnality becomes divinised and crowned with
immortal life, — that is the Herculean labour, the " Great
Work" testified to, under varying veils of expression,
alike by Greek myth and Roman poet, by Christian
apostle* and Hermetic philosopher.

In these studies Mr. South was ably seconded by his
daughter. She grew up in his library and from being his
pupil became his secretary and intellectual comrade,
possessing his entire confidence both in respect of range
of information and intellectual grip of the recondite
subject to which they were devoted. Between them
there existed an extraordinary affinity of mind and
interest ; they became intellectual equals and, although
a lady of very great charm of manner and appearance,
in no way averse from ordinary pleasures and interests,
the daughter shared her father's tendency to shut himself
off. from them and was content to absorb herself more
and more in the subject of their hearts. The period
was that of the beginnings of the modern interest in
and application of physical, psychologic and psychical
science. Magnetism, electricity, mesmerism, hypnotism,
spiritism, were being much talked about and put to
utilitarian or experimental purposes. The Souths in
conjunction with a fewT friends had themselves experi-
mented in mesmerism, spiritistic and psycho-physical
phenomena and not only had come to know the degree of
value they possessed but, with the advantage of their
researches into the metaphysics of the classical past, had
been led to regard these subjects from a different stand-
point from that of the ordinary uninformed investigator.
They recognised that both the physicist and the psychical
empiricist were rediscovering and exploiting obscure
natural forces the existence of which had been perfectly
familiar to philosophers, metaphysicians and enlightened
occultists of the past, but the manipulation of which has
been kept carefully concealed or expressed only in
cryptic terms, since the perverse or even the unintelligent
use of them might be attended with ill results of both a
mental and moral character. As some possible corrective

* As in 1 Cor. x\\, 35-58.

(3)

Introduction.

to the mesmeric furore of the time and with the idea of
lifting the subject of psychical experimentation to a
loftier level than was popularly accorded it, Miss South
in an emotional moment and at her father's instance
wrote and published (in 1846) a thin octavo volume
(issued by H. Bailliere, London) entitled " Early
Magnetism, in its higher relations to Humanity as veiled
in the Poets and the Prophets " ; by 0YO2 MA90S. As
recently as 1903 she said of it in a letter to a friend :
' It was written when we were greatly excited with
mesmerism and were mixed up with Dr. Elliotson,
Engledue, Ashburner and the rest who were then active
in their advocacy through The Zoist and elsewhere ; . . . .
a mere enthusiastic production at a crisis." This self-
criticism is quite true. The essay certainly shews evidence
of enthusiasm and is written in the rhetorical style
often characterising inexperienced authors acting under
the urge of a new discovery and a strong impulse to
impart it. None the less it displays much learning and
understanding, and read to-day in conjunction with her
later and greater volume, it forms a useful prelude to the
latter and gives us glimpses of the writer's mind at that
period and of the " crisis " as the result of which, she
later asserted, the essay was produced. Before writing
it she had undoubtedly experienced an interior " opening,"
a spiritual coup d'oeil enabling her to see in a flash the
relation of current mesmeric phenomena to central truth,
and the way in which classical myths, poets, and especi-
ally the Scriptures, illustrated her perceptions and con-
firmed her conclusions. For, referring to passages from
the classics and the Bible, she says of herself in a con-
fession modestly buried in the body of her essay (pp.
117-118) ' the inner eye had caught some sparklings
of their lustre, and outward sense devotionally raised,
delighted and refined, and wrapt by verbal sound,*

* The allusion here is to the advanced mystical state called Ganor
by the early English mystic, Richard Rolle, when " meditation is
turned into a song of joy," and " in a plenteous soul the sweetness of
eternal love is taken and the mind into full sweet sound is changed " ;
the rising into consciousness of the music of the ever-sounding Divine
Word.

" Such harmony is in immortal souls,
But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close us in, we cannot hear it."

(4)

Introduction.

and drawing from the responsive glow within, have some
time kindled into light and tasted joy, surpassing
visual rays far as etherial hallowing intellectual flame
outshines the elemental fire ;" and she goes on to indicate
that in her ecstasy she had been on holy ground, " terrain
incognitam to the many, but firmissimam to the happier
few," and in a Sabbath of the senses and deep inner
retirement and central self-communion had felt, seen
and known the Divinity within. I shall refer later to
some salient teachings in this essay. For the moment it
may be of interest to cite a contemporary opinion of it
and of its concealed authorship. A reviewer of it
(probably Jerrold himself) in Douglas J err old's Magazine
for December 184(5 wrote as follows : —

The author of this book, whoever he may be, is one of the
purifying spirits of the age, asserting the grandeur and immortality
of the intellectual, and by the strength and energy of his own
spirit lifting the thoughts to contemplations which always place
the passions and the appetites in that subordinate position
necessary for the purification of the moral and the preparation
of the immortal being. We are not prepared to analyse the work
as a philosophic production, to grant its theory, to test its logic ;
but it has an elevation of argument, a readiness of illustration,
and is so informed with a lofty scholarlike sentiment, that we
will pronounce it worthy of the study it requires

The spiritual nature of man will ever be to those not totally
buried in the flesh, a dark, deeply interesting speculation. And
in these pages the study is conducted in accordance with the
received notions of religion and with a deep natural piety which
we venture to hope is inseparable from true philosophy. There
is a sense of poetry in its sublimest flight, and verses which are
touched with its etherial sounds that make me at times think
the author of that noble and wonderful poem " Festus "* may
have contributed to it. Whoever is its author he has the copious-
ness, comprehension and vigorous utterance that so eminently
distinguish the writers of the olden time who wrote from the fulness
of their souls and the irresistible energy of their spirits

Some three or four years after the issue of this small work
Mr. South decided that the time had arrived when the
matured conclusions from his and his daughter's long
researches into Hermetism should be crystallised into
writing and published. He proposed himself to cast his
own knowledge into metrical form and that his daughter
should express hers independently in a prose treatise.
" My dear father was poetical in his turn of mind and did
not trouble about prose writing," says his daughter in

* By P. J. Bailey, whose Festus was published in 1839.

(5)

Introduction.

the private letter previously quoted from. With the
concurrence of other members of the household it was
agreed that the two should segregate themselves from
the normal family life and duties, and devote themselves
exclusively to their tasks. The father occupied one room
and proceeded with his poem, one intended to be a
lengthy epic of the Hermetic subject ; the daughter
occupied another and compiled the present prose volume
from the expository standpoint, evidencing her theory
by frequent references to authorities and text-books.
The daughter was the first to complete her labours,
considerable as they must needs have been. Such was
his confidence in his daughter's capacity, the father did
not trouble to look at her manuscript or even the proof-
prints of it when they came to hand. The volume was
printed at Mr. South' s cost and was issued, as before
stated, in 1850. A few copies — something under one
hundred in all — had been either sent to public libraries
or sold to purchasers, when the further issue of the book
was abruptly stopped by Mr. South. The entire residue
of the edition was called in, under considerable protest
from the publisher and at a cost of £250 to Mr. South,
and was brought from London to Gosport. There, upon
the lawn of Bury House, the volumes along with the
uncompleted manuscript of Mr. South' s poem were
stacked and a bonfire was made of them. Of the poem
nothing now remains save some twelve lines the daughter
had quoted in her own prose work and to be found on
p. 57 of the present edition. The return of the out-
standing copies of the book was gradually secured as
far as possible, the authoress continuing for years after-
wards to buy in any copy that came upon the market
and often paying as much as ten guineas for it. Of thoseh
so bought in some were destroyed ; a few she retained
for her private use or that of her most intimate and
understanding friends.

This apparently quixotic conduct by Mr. South and
his daughter may be regretted and deemed unwarranted,
but the reasons for it must be respected. No sooner
was the volume completed and made publicly available
than an inhibition of conscience greater in intensity than
the emotional urge which had prompted the compilation

(6)

Introduction.

of the book overtook Mr. South and, though perhaps in a
less degree, his daughter. They were seized by a moral
panic. Two motives animated them in suppressing the
work, and in speaking of them it must be remembered
that we are dealing with two religiously-minded people of
intellectual attainments, insight and moral sensitiveness,
far above the ordinary. They had been handling, and had
upon their consciences the responsibility of publicly
displaying, a subject of extraordinary and — to them at
least — sacred moment. For them the Hermetic subject
was not, as it might be to some enquiring scholar, merely
an interesting or speculative one. They were not dealing
with it simply as a matter of historical research, critical
appreciation, or tentative enquiry into a recondite and
obsolete subject. They had passed far beyond the stage
of curiosity and explorative inquiry, and they knew the
subject to be one involving a practical and vital Art
experimentation in which was desirable only by morally
qualified persons and even then involved such persons in
responsibility of the gravest and was fraught with far-
reaching consequences either for good or evil. If we speak
of it as an Art it is because it is usually so called in the
literature of the subject, but it is really rather an exact
science — and a divine science at that, " holy Alkimy"
as its professors have called it — one involving deep
knowledge of the mental, ps}^chical and spiritual elements
in man and of the way in which they may be practically
controlled and manipulated by another. And of this
Art, as the outcome of their researches and
experiments and the mental illumination that had
come to them, the Souths had come to hold the keys.
They had passed, at least in so far as enlightened intel-
1 jctual grasp of the Hermetic process went, into the
Catena atirea, the succession and long chain of illum-
inated metaphysicians, philosophers and tbeosophers,
who by pureness of life, ardour of quest, humility of
nature, and capacity of understanding have come to
know more than other men of those occulta et secreta
legis Tuce which are hidden from this world's wise and
prudent and are found revealed unto babes. I shall not
labour any claims for them in this respect, for nothing
I can say upon this head will persuade if conviction be

(7)

Introduction.

not forthcoming after perusal of this volume and of such
other information as this introduction provides. The
book had been prompted by the high motive of suggesting
to a public little-informed and unintelligently exercising
itself over the re-discovery of certain obscure natural
forces that those forces were thoroughly well known and
understood by sages and metaphysical thinkers of the
past, albeit shielded from popular gaze, and they desired
to shew that there existed a veritable science of them, a
science perpetuated for ages in a uniform tradition and
testified to by a considerable literature. They had
published the book with, as they had at first thought, all
reasonable reserves of statement, but with such a suffi-
ciency of evidence and exposition as would induce
cultured and seriously minded readers and earnest
aspirants after Divine Wisdom to recognise the validity of
the claims of Hermetism. And now the doubt dawned
upon them with great insistency, had they after all
said too much ? and they came to the conclusion that
they had. They felt themselves to be, as the authoress
herself privately explained years afterwards, not simple
exponents of a recondite philosophy but betrayers of a
sacred secret, and that whilst pointing out the way to a
science hitherto carefully concealed they had really opened
the door to a treasure with a golden key. They felt the
only way to avoid the penalty of such betrayal was to
destroy their handiwork entirely and face all further
results or consequences.*

Coupled with this reason there was another. The normal
devout-mindedness of Mr. South experienced a change
just at this time. It will be recalled that the period was
one of great religious unrest and ferment. Whether or
not Mr. South became caught by the current of con-
temporary Evangelical Revival, his religious life became
suddenly and strangely quickened. The fire of " con-
version" came upon him, and his outlook upon certain
things was opened in a way that caused him to see them

* It may be recalled that, under a like impulse and upon it being
pointed out to him that by publishing it he would be exposing secrets
of the Sanctuary, Coventry Patmore destroyed the manuscript of a
volume containing the fruit of ten years' mystical thought. (See
Patmore's Biography, by Basil Champneys, vol. i., 315-319, and ii.,
57-91.)

(8)

Introduction.

in a different relationship. Especially he was prompted
to re-consider the Hermetic subject in its relation to
Christian soteriology (a subject about which more will be
said in the third part of this introduction) and he broached
the matter to his daughter. In their studies and labours
hitherto they had been actuated by the head rather than
by the heart, and, now that the intellectual energies
involved had achieved their task, an aspect of the subject
occurred to them which up to then had been overlooked.
A new view of philosophy, a larger meaning of religion,
broke upon their mental horizons with a tremendously
illuminating dawn. It did not in the least negative or
discredit what they knew of the Hermetic Art, but they
realised suddenly its sanctity, its tremendous difficulty
and importance. Mentally they had apprehended this
already, but they had not seen it in its true relation to
humanity as a whole or felt its larger than personal
importance. With a profound sense of unworthiness at
having rudely broken in upon holy ground which they
felt was being providentially tended by higher, wiser
hands than theirs, they resolved at once to withdraw the
book, making of it, as also of their long years of patient
labour, a willing sacrifice to a clear conviction which it
were impertinent for third parties to criticise.

Mr. South was about seventy years of age at this time.
Shortly afterwards he died, leaving his fine library to his
daughter, and there is no evidence that he ever regretted
the destruction of the book whose production he had
inspired. His demise broke a rare example of intellectual
comradeship, but, further, it both terminated the
prospect of fulfilling any intentions the pair may have had
of putting the Hermetic experiment into effect, and it
deprived the daughter, innately of an inert and extremely
modest, retiring temperament, of that stimulus to action
which the driving power of her father's vigorous person-
ality had previously supplied. " I have never felt the
same since," she confessed years afterwards ; "' I re-
quired the friction of my father's active and creative
nature to fire my more static turn of mind." That stimulus
withdrawn, her work as an authoress came to an end,
though she lived to her ninety-second year. But for the
small preliminary essay on transcendental Magnetism

(9)

Introduction.

previously mentioned she would have to be regarded as
a woman unius libri, whose work began and ended with the
Suggestive Inquiry. Although her will and reason had
entirely concurred in the suppression of the book, she
admitted in after years that she had felt acutely the
destruction of her intellectual offspring, that at the time
it had been a crushing sorrow to her and had left her in a
sense a broken woman. A fact somewhat mitigating
this grief and reconciling her to the loss was the presence
in the text of the book of a number of minor errors,
misprints and imperfect translations from classical
sources, which offended greatly her extremely accurate
mind, and which would have been corrected had her
father but undertaken to look at her manuscript and
revise her proofs. The residue of some sixty years of
secluded, reflective life granted to her, whilst productive
of no public results, undoubtedly promoted the consolidfc
tion of her thought and the enrichment of her own
interior life. They were of no small value, too, to the few
intimate friends who benefited from her store of know-
ledge and sagacity, and but for these, and one of them
in particular, neither she nor her magnum opus, which has
been conserved and is now re-issued, would probably have
been heard of more.

In 1859 Mary Anne South married the Reverend Alban
Thomas At wood, vicar of Leake, near Thirsk, Yorkshire,
and rural dean, a cultured learned man though less
intellectually powerful and equipped than his wife. He
shared to the ful^l his wife's interest in the progress of
contemporary science and psychical investigations,
though, to use her words, " he never went so far as
alchemy." Personal experiment in spiritistic or psycho-
physical phenomena was precluded by circumstances,
whilst, in view of the discountenance of those subjects
by his profession, Mr. Atwood had no wish to prejudice
his office by being known to be interested in or associated
with them. But from their remote parish the two closely
watched the movements of the times in this respect,
whilst every book and journal bearing upon them reached
them as soon as published. Needless to say they were
fully persuaded of the objective reality of these phenomena
though from their acquaintance with the principles

(10)

Introduction.

governing them, as indoctrinated by the old time
occultists and mystics, they attached a different value
to them from that accorded by the average enquirer.
Moreover they — or the deep perspicacity of at least one
of them — saw in these movements and the general
spiritual unrest of the times the significant portents of a
coming world-crisis.

The marriage was entirely happy and congenial. Mr.
At wood, a man much loved and revered in the district,
was able to conduct his professional duties with a mini-
mum of assistance from his wife, who concerned herself
little with parish affairs beyond regularly attending
church and acting as Lady Bountiful in subscribing to
ijarochial needs. As may be surmised, her interests lay
elsewhere and were beyond the intellectual horizon of
^ose in her environment, among whom moreover the
..,bt of her previous authorship was totally unknown.
A lady who had written the Suggestive Inquiry and who
nourished herself continually upon Thomas Taylor's
Platonist works, Dionysius, St. Thomas Aquinas, Jacob
T^oehme, Dr. Henry More, and Louis Claude de St.
lartin, cannot readily be imagined as accommodating
lerself to mothers' meetings and the multifarious table-
erving which a parish priest is expected to get attended
> by an unsalaried curate in the person of a wife.
lThe marriage, a childless one, subsisted until Mr.
At wood's death in 1883. Thereafter Mrs. At wood con-
tinued to occupy her husband's house, Knayton Lodge,
Thirsk, where she resided until her own decease in 1910.
Juring these years of widowhood she tended to become
i.iore and more a recluse, though still keeping an inter-
ested and watchful eye upon public events. Her political
views were pronouncedly Tory and involved great
admiration for the intellectual powers and philosophic
mind of the late Marquess of Salisbury, whilst she watched
with keen sympathy the growth of the social-democratic
and feminist movements. Her last journey to London
was in 1886, and save for a little driving near home or
for shopping purposes, and an occasional visit to the
Yorkshire coast — Bridlington seems to have attracted
her, in part because of its Priory Church which had once
been served by a noted sixteenth century Hermetist,

Introduction.

Canon Sir George Ripley, — she never left home, and
varied her ceaseless reading only by tending to her
garden. The formation of the modern Theosophical
Society in the early eighties at first greatly interested her
and brought her the prospect of some attention being at
last given to the deeper aspects of philosophy and
re igion in the atmosphere of which she habitually lived .
By way of practical help to this movement, and with the
idea of making, in the event of her death, a serviceable
disposition of the large and valuable library she had
inherited from her father, she presented, without reserve
or condition, the bulk of the collection to its then president
Mr. A. P. Sinnett. She seems to have hoped the Society
would develop into a school upon Pythagorean lines in
which students would pass through an ordered course of
metaphysical and spiritual instruction for which her
books would serve as teaching at special stages. This
sanguine expectation was not fulfilled ; earnest students
were, as always, rare, and the books were not valued
by members or as much utilised as she had hoped. The
Society developed along lines for which she, as a disciple
of the Hermetic doctrine and the Western theosophers
and mystics, had no zeal, and propagated ideas and
conclusions she considered ill-digested. " The Vedanta
and the Hermetic doctrine (she affirmed) when examined
by a competent eye and from a certain high altitude and
with the sympathetic mind are similar, not divergent,
in doctrine," but the teachings and literature issued by
the Society's leaders did not to her mind faithfully
represent either the one or the other. Mrs. At wood's
interest in it accordingly became greatly estranged, and
finally evaporated altogether. In the course of the
Society's subsequent troubles and change of leadership
the library passed into other hands and is now in Scotland,
in the possession of Mr. Scott-Elliot.

The long seclusion at Knayton would have been wholly
untempered by intercourse with minds at all competent
to appreciate or commune with Mrs. At wood but for a
few intimate friends who engaged her in correspondence
and periodically visited her. These included Mrs. Anne
Judith Penny, a deep student and expositor of Boehme
and the widow of Edward Buxton Penny, the translator

(12)

Introduction.

of de St. Martin's works ; Mr. Walter Moseley of Buildwas
Park, Salop, an able scholar and philosophical student ;
Mr. Charles Car let on Massey, of London, a well-known
writer upon mystical religion and esotericism* ; the
Rev. George William Allen, another authority upon
Boehme and mystical philosophy, and founder of The
Seeker, a quarterly magazine of Christian Mysticism,
since his death edited by myself — all of whom predeceased
Mrs. At wood ; and lastly the lady who still survives her
and to whose devotion and enterprise the present re-issue
of the Suggestive Inquiry as well as much of the information
contained in this Introduction are due, Madame Isabelle
de Steiger, of Rockferry, Cheshire. The commencement
of the latter' s friendship coincided with Mrs. At wood's
final visit to London to make over the gift of her father's
library and continued till her death, Madame de Steiger
visiting her once or twice annually and eventually
becoming the legatee of her remaining books and private
papers. The following letter, full of pathos, from the
lonely soul at Knayton to this latest found friend reveals
the affectional and less austere side of Mrs. Atwood's
nature as well as her views — a deep-seeing commentary —
upon contemporary mystical and pseudo-mystical ten-
dencies ; — it is dated 20th October, 1901 (omitted portions
of it relate to irrelevancies) : —

Dearest Friend,

Believe me that when I thus address you as such I have
no one else with whom to enter into theoretic communion. You
are all to me that dear Mrs. Penny was and more. I have been
vouchsafed but one such friend at a time, one man and one
woman. I am no propagandist, which may or may not be selfish,
and am not sure that the one pursuit of my life would be good
for anyone. I did not seek it, but was called to it intermediately
by my dear father's enthusiasm ; and my husband was drawn
and brought to me through the same subsequently, I mean by a
like proclivity. Though theoretically practical I am not so
essentially ; my aim has been to find the Truth irrespective of
self- accomplishment .

I am no saint, as you very well know, but have been vouch-
safed (as I believe through a certain singleness of purpose) a

* For Correspondence between Mr. C. C. Massey and Mrs. Atwood
see the former's Memoir " Thoughts of a Modern Mystic " (1909, Kegan
Paul & Co.) edited by Sir Wra. F. Barrett, f.r.s.

(13)

Introduction.

common insight* to the most advanced and advancing trans-
cendental experience possible on this earth by means of that said
insight which I natter myself is trrre faith, as St. Paul defines it,
the very substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of those
yet unseen by carnal sight. The eye of the mind, if pure and
strengthened by habit, makes for itself a line across, and steps
upward into, the next plane of human evolutionary progress ;
and it is for this return to become co-ordinated to the Divine
Original Image and Archetype that we are sent here, as Boehme
and the rest teach. Souls are not and cannot be co-ordinated
to the Divine Image or Archetype here perfectly, but if well
begun here the line of progress will, I infer and believe, lead on
towards the achievement of its destination hereafter.

Hence the importance ascribed to Faith as not mere belief
or assent. It is a discernment and forecast, but I have talked
(enough)

Why does not the ' New Thought ' wait awhile and study the
ground of the old Doctrine before it vaunts itself ? ' New thought '
indeed which proceeds from no new revelation, no crisis of com-
munication from heaven to earth ! Man has long since been seen
and proven to be a creature fallen off from the divine allegiance,
and he has to be brought back. That is the drift of all religious
doctrine. Why he fell or was allowed to fall is not, either,
inexplicable under the eternal free-will concept — of a yet higher
good to be gained than was otherwise attainable. By the free-will
return in grateful submission the highest realisation of Deity
is accomplished, and it will be accomplished when the times
are ripe

The foregoing letter is typical of a large mass of in-
structive others still extant and from which some day
if occasion arises, it may become possible to publish a
selection. Frequently in her passion for accuracy of
thought and statement in regard to the deeper things and,
perhaps, in the belief that what she said about them was
valuable, she made many drafts of a letter before finally
despatching it, though this may not apply to letters
written, as was the above, when weight of years was
telling upon her energies.

She is described by Madame de Steiger as a gracious
and beautiful old lady, of great courtesy and dignity and
a handsomeness of presence which continued even into
advanced old age. Her chief fascination, however, came
irom her superb intellect and unfathomable knowledge,
the like of which her friend asserts she has never found

* In Mrs. Atwood's intention " common insight " would mean a
power of in-seeing existent potentially in, and therefore common to, all,
but latent and unusual in most because left uncultivated. The majority
exercise not the quality of true faith but merely a 3uperotition of, or
elementary persuasion towards, faith as defined in her letter.

(14)

Introduction.

equalled or approached during a long life spent in touch
with a wide and varied circle of intellectuals. Mrs.
Atwood's high culture she attributes not only to her
innate mental powers and capability of brain but also
to the remarkable classical and philosophical training
her father gave her. She was shrinkingly modest and
retiring ; not given to unbosoming her thought even to
her intimates, but always doing so more freely to one of
her own sex than to her men friends. Years of virtual
isolation and silence had chained a tongue that, when
opportunity for verbal converse arose, could only speak
diffidently and stumblingly, whilst probably the very
weight and wealth of her stored ideas clogged their free
and facile expression. She would never originate dis-
cussion or volunteer information upon her favourite
theme, but would wait until ideas were elicited from her
by intelligent interrogation, and afterwards proceeded
only if they were understood and appreciated. Then, at
times, her great intellect would flash at its brightest,
the depth and fulness of her knowledge would flow forth,
and her marvellous memory yield from its endless store
of references and poetical quotations. I can imagine her,
says Madame de Steiger, holding converse with Plato
fluently, but with any materialistic philosopher of modern
times, no ! ' It usually happened," she adds, " that on
the occasion of my visits we were either involved in the
very meshes of mysticism or we had not much to say."
Though so withdrawn from the world she was no cynic,
but had at heart a love for it and a wish for greater
activity in and closer contact with it ; but her nature,
innately uncourageous and retiring, had been cramped at
the outset by the narrow outlook, the limited life and
conventional restrictions of the early years of the Vic-
torian period, whilst in the later ones her temperamental
inertia and procrastinative disposition precluded any
re-assertion of it. Her abstract metaphysical mind,
withdrawn from interest in the petty details of life, caused
her to appear perhaps a little unsympathetic towards
the life of the district she lived in, and the villagers, to
whom she was an enigma, regarded her with something
like awe. She remained extremely active till past eighty,
shewing few signs of age even after that time, and she

(15)

Introduction.

never knew illness. Personally I never met or corres-
ponded with her, but on being shewn some letters of hers
to the Rev. G. W. Allen in 1906-7 discussing some magazine
writings of mine (she never missed anything connected
with psychical or mystical matters appearing in the public
prints), I asked leave through him to call upon her, but
she replied that being uin a moribund condition" she
could invite no one ; she was good enough, however, to-
send me messages from time to time and to reply to them
through the same indirect channel. And so the world
gradually receded from her. She lived on until the end
in a remote and uninteresting district and in a sombre
stuffy house where things were eventually suffered to
fall to pieces. The ancient pony-chaise wore out, the
even more aged pony and the veteran coachman- gardener
died, and were not replaced ; but their still older mistress
survived them all ; a picturesque personality to the last,
whom the span of nearly ninety-two years touched very
lightly, only fading a little the still brown hair, and whose
intellect remained strong and clear throughout. Her
end came through no form of sickness ; her life went out
as simply as does the light of a lamp expiring for lack of
oil. ' Now I endeavour," said the dying Plotinus, " that
my divine part may return to that divine nature which
flourishes throughout the universe." The same thought, the
same intention and aspiration, we may be sure was present
to the mind of this his modern counterpart, for her
genius and manner are strongly reminiscent of his. Her
last words, one wishes they had been cheerier and more
triumphant, were equally philosophic and entirely
characteristic : " I cannot find my centre of gravity."
We may be assured that they were occasioned bv a
momentary clouding of her strong spirit as it sought
disentanglement from the failing flesh, from which once
liberated it would pass into that central cloudless
Splendour she had contemplated so long and deeply.
Her demise occurred on the 13th April, 1910, and her
interment took place at Leake Church by the side of her
husband, its one time vicar.

In the intellectual heavens of the nineteenth century
shone many brilliant feminine stars whose names and
literary work now form part of a national patrimony,

(16)

Introduction.

their enrichment of which is acknowledged with gratitude
and pride. But if the day should come when the existence
of Mary Anne Atwood becomes of interest and her work
appreciated by at least a competent minority of cultured
judges, the submission now made with deliberation may
yet be acknowledged universally — that of all those
fights there was none of greater magnitude, none of such
intellectual power and brilliance as that which, albeit
self-isolated and occulted by certain conditions of tem-
perament and environment, flamed within the unknown
personality of the authoress of A Suggestive Inquiry into
the Hermetic Mystery. The marvel of her book, apart
from the difficulty and profundity of her subject, is that
it has been written by a woman, and that a comparatively
young one, and at such a period of spiritual benightedness
and low water as the eighteen forties. We know what
unrest and doctrinal disputes then prevailed in the
religious world of this country, how individual consciences
were being racked — Newman's Apologia pro vita sua
alone will testify — by problems of theology and rival
claims of the churches to authoritative teaching and
the exclusive care of souls. Yet all the while, amid
these wranglings and heart-searchings about the mere
accidents and circumferential fripperies of religion, here
was living and writing this unheard of woman with the
clearest vision into the penetralia of Wisdom and central
Truth and carrying about in her mind and heart the
vital secrets of that regeneration of the human soul
to teach which all instituted religion and all theology
are designed. The mere fact of the existence at such a
period and in such an unfavourable environment of an
intellect so fully developed and so richly endowed opens
up the interesting question, how is such an abnormal
soul to be explained and accounted for ? Education,
in the ordinary sense, even of the most select kind, does
not account for intellectual or spiritual prodigies ; it
merely supplies suitable opportunity for their develop-
ment. Interior illumination of the mind in spiritual truth
and metaphysical processes (as was the case with Boehme,
for instance) might be a partial solution in some cases,
and as we have seen, there is evidence that our authoress
had in a measure been so illumined prior to the date of

(17)

Introduction.

writing the Suggestive Inquiry. An explanation, though
I do not press or dogmatise upon it, which does seem to
cover all the ground, is that souls come into this world
imbued with qualities, tendencies and knowledge already
acquired pre-existently, and so carrying with them, in
relation to others, a favourable or unfavourable handicap
in these respects. From evidence I have of her own views,
this I think would be the explanation Mrs. Atwood would
herself have given. Reincarnation, the doctrine of
successive embodiments of the soul upon the physical
plane, so familiar to the East but only in recent years and
in a crude form introduced to the consideration of us
Westerns, she entirely accepted as a fact, but not as a
hope ; as an occurrence in the mercy of the Divine Order
but not as an incident of which man can be proud ; as a
providential concession to the soul's frailty and its diffi-
culty in reintegrating itself into what the hermetist Basil
Valentine calls its " pristine sanity " and the wholeness
which is one with holiness, but not as one on which it can
rely in the hope of evading its present obligations or
relaxing its efforts towards rectitude. And indeed, upon
this hypothesis, she herself, so markedly a spiritual and
intellectual kinswoman of Diotima and Hypatia, might
be regarded as once having been some Greek or Graeco-
Roman soul that formerly, in some home of the Mysteries
perhaps, had learned not a little of the arcana of the
soul's life and now after centuries had stolen back into a
British body, there to take up the dropped threads of the
ontologic wisdom she had previously acquired and to
weave them into concreteness of personal life as another
stage towards the fulfilment of that vital experiment in
which each one of us is really engaged with less or more
awareness or benightedness but so often, God help us ! with
such little intelligence and understanding.

Her book will not be found easy reading or be readily
comprehended by those unversed in its subject-matter,
partly because of its authoress's unusual style and language
and partly because of the cryptic terminology employed
by writers in the line of the Hermetic tradition. These
difficulties are largely incident to those of the subject
itself, which like every other science has gathered round
it a garment of specialised terminology and nucleated its

(18)

Introduction.

elementary ideas and working-principles into /ormulce
meaningless to those unfamiliar with it. Especially absurd
appear to the modern mind the traditional formulae of a
science so little popular as ontology, and notoriously the
alchemic " jargon" is the subject of ridicule by the
conventionally wise of this world whose learning prefers
to range to every subject beneath the sun to considering
that vital one the world-old first maxim of which is
Nosce teipsum, the knowledge of which would supersede
the need for all other knowledge since it would include it.
These difficulties, however, are worthy of being patiently
contended with by the earnest-minded enquirer, whilst
their conquest will bring its own reward by strengthening
and illuminating the understanding ; in any case it is
unwise to reject a priori or as unintelligent and unintelli-
gible nonsense the language uniformly employed by a
formidable cloud of witnesses to a science which has
engaged the profoundest attention of the world's greatest
sages and philosophers.

An extremely deep, close and accurate thinker, Mrs.
Atwood's language was synthetic and selected to match
her thought and was never loose or unconsidered. It may
appear stilted and pedantic ; she herself used to admit
that the book was written in 'a crabbed Latinised
English " that would prove unpalatable. Both her
literary manner and her phrasing reflect her own character
which was developed rather on the intellectual than on
the affectional side, and it is seldom that the cold marble
of her austere but stately style is flushed by any warm-
blooded emotion ; when it is, as for instance in the
concluding chapters of this volume, she rises to heights
of superb and moving eloquence. She attached great
value to words, as being not only means for conveying
ideas, but as, when rightly used, having a magical power
to stimulate the understanding of the attentive hearer
and to evoke responsiveness from as yet unawakened
elements in him. Frequently she used words not in their
modern, colloquial and derived senses, but according to
their original significance, and after this manner she
interpreted the terminology of other exact expressers
of ideas and, in particular, the wording of Scripture.
For example, ' contrition ' colloquially implies penitence ;

(19)

Introduction.

with her it meant ' trituration ' (contra or cum tero) ,
the metaphysical rubbing against or together of two
unreconciled elements ; e.g., the mind's consciousness of
transgression, and 'sin' self-revealed in the presence of
the divine light made manifest within oneself, would set
up such a metaphysical ' contrition ' of the two as would
result in the moral state known as penitence and the
physical concomitant of tears.* Again, ' the stone
which the builders rejected " ; to each of the italicised
words she accorded a far deeper meaning than the super-
ficial reader gives them. With her the phrase meant
that the metaphysical essential ens or substrate of life,
brought from its diffused state into a consolidated one
(a philosophical ' stone ' ) by the enlightened sagacity of
those skilled in that sacred science (i.e., the ' builders'),
was not repudiated, but jactitated, literally cast or
handed to and fro, (re jacio), by and between them in the
course of their Hermetic work ; just as, in a less instructed
and high-motived manner, the mesmeric operator does
in fact ' reject ' and transfer from himself to his patient
a subtle fluid for curative or other purposes.

Before concluding these personal details of Mrs.
Atwood's life, it should be said that it is to her that we
are primarily indebted for our acquaintance with that
extremely valuable treatise on practical mysticism,
Karl von Eckhartshausen's The Cloud upon the Sanctuary, f
to which reference will be made later. Perhaps she alone
in this country, with her extensive acquaintance with
ancient and foreign mystical literature, knew of or
possessed this book in its French version. She introduced it
appreciatively to Madame de Steiger who, seeing its value,
forthwith translated it into English and the translation has
since passed into its third edition. It is supplemented by
instructive notes by the translator for which Mrs. Atwood's
private and personal comments largely formed the
material. A great amount of Mrs. Atwood's thought and
insight has also found its way into two other volumes J
Madame de Steiger has published, largely as the result of
her long and close intimacy with the recluse of Knayton.

* As to this see par. 106 ot the Memorabilia, Appendix, post.
f Published by W. Rider and Son, Ltd., London.

j Or, a Gold Basis (W. Rider and Son, Ltd.) ; and Superhumaniiy

(Elliott Stock).

(20)

Introduction.

II.

The reasons for the book's withdrawal from publicity
having been stated, it is due alike to the memory of the
authoress and to its future readers that those for its
posthumous re-issue should now be given and justified.
Whatever regrets the destruction of her work may have
cost the authoress, there is no doubt that for more than
thirty years afterwards she was wholly reconciled to it
and never wished for its revival, despite representations
from her friends that it might be reprinted to public
advantage. A note of hers, dated 1881, and character-
istically self- deprecatory in its terms, reads as follows : —

It has been proposed to me to republish this book or allow
it to be reprinted. The motives, however, which originally
induced me to withdraw it as far as possible from circulation
persist. The book was written by me during the process of
enquiry and is not a mature result thereof as should have been.
The advocacy and evidence are alike profuse, precipitate and
inexpedient. The correction of the press moreover was remiss.
I may say further of this, as does Madame Blavatsky of her Isis,
that it is as far from being as complete a work as with the materials
at hand it might have been made by a better scholar, or even by
myself with the devotion of more time and care. It is my abiding
wish that so crude an attempt to rehearse the old method of
philosophy should not be re-issued but allowed to remain in
the oblivion it deserves. — M.A.A.

Another note, in terms very similar to the above, was
written by her in 1886, but it contains the following
addition, which she seems to have then copied at the end
of the earlier note also, by way of supplement : —

And in this I cannot be hurried, but rather than have it
open to the pecu^tions and degradation of the many charlatans
such as .... I would set about revising the whole with a view
to re-printing before the copyright has run out.

This last statement discloses the fact that, though not
wishing a re-issue, she contemplated sanctioning one to
meet the circumstances she names, whilst the effect of
both statements is to make clear the fact that her
objection to republication was not now due so much to
scruples on the score of moral propriety or the dread of
possibly betraying sacred secrets, as to fears of literary
piracy or an unauthorised and unre vised reprint of the
book by some freebooter, — contingencies which she
viewed with much alarm. Her attitude was now clearly

(21)

Introduction.

this, that if a reprint was inevitable it were better that
it should be at least one purged of the minor imperfections
present in the original than one which reproduced
them or which was in any way abridged or mutilated.
Her hesitancy as to the wisdom of publishing the book
at all still lingered and its reasons are expressed in
another memorandum of hers : —

The objection to a promulgation of the Divine Art is its
liability to abuse by sordid and audacious souls that would mergo
themselves by a deeper fall into a second and final fall away
from all hope of restoration ;

whilst to her intimates who advocated the book's re-issue
she frequently quoted the following lines from Norton's
Ordinall of Alchymie : —

So this science must ever secret be,
The cause whereof is this, as ye may see,
If one evil man had hereof all his will
All Christiim peace he might easily spill,
And with his hands he might pull down
Rightful kings and princes of renown,
Whereof the sentence of peril and jeopardy
Upon the teacher resteth dreadfully.

The force and validity of these objections, probably
unapparent or even idle to the general reader, may perhaps
appear later when we deal with the practical aspect of
the Hermetic science. It suffices for the moment that
such objections were always present to, and always
weighty with, her who was assuredly the most competent
judge of them.

After the death of her husband, whose professional
status no longer stood in danger of compromise on his
wife's account, Mrs. Atwood was more and more urged
by those who best knew her to resume literary activity and
place herself and her great knowledge at the disposal of a
wider circle of truth-seekers. The invitations however
failed to counteract her retiring, procrastinative dis-
position. But some of the few undestroyed or bought- in
copies of her book she had no hesitation in presenting to
her friends, a fact still further indicating that her original
scruples were moderating. Sometimes a promise was
exacted from the recipient that the book should not leave
his possession or be re-printed ; sometimes no condition
at all seems to have been attached. One copy at

(22)

Introduction.

least I know to have been given by her on the undertaking
that the donee would shew it to no one, destroy
it in due course or provide for its destruction in case of
his death, and take all possible measures to prevent any
reprint, — a condition she afterwards relaxed to the extent
of permitting myself to have the loan of it and the donee
to bequeath it to his son. On the other hand she is to be
found giving a copy, in 1886, to the late Anna Kingsford
and Edward Maitland,* whilst still other copies given
by her about that time contain words of presentation
inscribed by her but no injunction of reserve in regard
to the book. One of these recipients, Mr. Walter Moseley,
previously mentioned and an able classical student,
himself corrected the errors of translation, quotation, and
print which he traced in his copy, and the present reprint
is made with the benefit of his emendations. And finally
Mrs. At wood herself was persuaded to revise the entire
text of the book and the copy containing her revisions
is also still extant ; its corrections have been collated
with those of Mr. Moseley and are likewise incorporated
in the present edition. The fact that she did so revise it
testifies further that her objections to a re-issue, however
strong, had ceased to be insuperable, and that she did
at the time of making the revision seriously contemplate
the inevitability of one. That any intention she may have
harboured of a reprint in her lifetime never passed into
effect is due to her temperamental inertia, which advancing
years and increasing unconcern with the outside world
only accentuated. But if she harboured none at all, it is
clear that she made provision for a posthumous reprint
and, without authorising one in terms, left the material
for it in the event of a re-issue being decided upon by
others.

The testimony of the lady — Madame de Steiger —
whose intimacy, longer and closer than any of the
authoress's friendships, continued till the latter' s death,
is that increasing acquaintance with Mrs. Atwood's

* See two letters from Mrs. Atwood in " Life of Anna Kingsford,"
by E. Maitland, 3rd Ed. Vol. II., pp. 265-6, where she discusses the
Hermetic doctrine, commending A.K.'s and E.M.'s understanding of
and lectures upon it, " of the which I am naturally jealous .... but
you have wisely avoided touching on the experimental methods of
dealing with the Universal Subject."

(23)

Introduction.

genius and teaching prompted her for many years to
take up and express to the latter lady an attitude of
firm dissent from the desire for suppression. Madame
de Steiger was never put upon any such pledge or condition
as had been imposed upon other recipients of the book.
She remonstrated with Mrs. At wood that to inhibit the
re-issue was to hide a talent in a napkin and to rob the
world of the sole contribution to its stock of useful
knowledge the authoress had been able to make. She
urged that far from betraying sacred secrets, the book
had dignified a subject too often misunderstood and
misrepresented by its incompetent critics and had raised
it to the lofty level from which alone it can rightly be
viewed, whilst suppression of the book was less liable
to desecrate truth by exposing it to the unworthy than
to defraud worthy truth-seekers of that light and help
which in our common interdependence there is a moral
incumbency to impart. These often-urged arguments
availed nothing, however, against the older lady's
intractable conservatism, her abnormally restricted
interest in the general intellectual life of the community,
and that dislike of anything involving active or immediate
measures which perhaps more than anything paralysed
her will. When for the last time, a year before her death,
the matter was discussed, it was said to Mrs. Atwood,
1 Dear friend, do not regret having written your book,
for, had you not, you would have done nothing
with your life." She sighed and made no objection, and
there the matter rested . The fact that she unconditionally
bequeathed to Madame de Steiger all her books and papers,
including her revised copies of the Suggestive Inquiry,
must be taken,it is submitted, as signifying full confidence
in her friend's ultimate use of them.

Regarding now the propriet}^ or otherwise of dealing
with the Hermetic doctrine in public as an abstract
question and quite independently of Mrs. Atwood' s
personal scruples, it would seem that to charge herself,
as her sensitive nature prompted her to do, as a betrayer
of sacred secrets, involves a reflection upon every one of
the numerous Hermetic authors of the past. If she
betrayed, so also did they who wrote — not perhaps always
for- publication, though many undoubtedly did — accounts

(24)

Introduction.

of their experiments and treatises upon the doctrine.
The extent of her offence, which it is difficult to treat
as such, was but to collate and focus, in a comprehensive
survey of the subject, the evidence of a cloud of witnesses
testifying to an age-old doctrine and to a uniform theory
and praxis. And if, as is the case, no disclosure of vital
moment is to be found in the deliberately crypticised
records of the latter, who wrote less for public information
than to perpetuate the tradition for the use of such
perspicacious ones as might come to tread the same path
-and give them the benefit of their forerunners' experience,
then the codifier of these numerous testimonies cannot be
said to have exceeded their example. The closest perusal
of the present volume will discover no clue (such as the
authoress herself undoubtedly possessed) enabling an
uninformed or unsuitable person to exploit this science
to his own or another's vital prejudice. As the book's
title implies, its purpose was to suggest rather than to
reveal, to set serious earnest minds upon a path of
reflection, haply to their great profit, rather than to provide
a demonstration of something which, after all, no merely
literary exposition can demonstrate. The deeper secrets
and laws of our being are self-protected ; to learn them
requires an adaptation of character and purpose, and a
humility of mind and spirit, inconsistent with those dis-
played by the perverse or merely curious enquirer. To
understand, let alone practically to explore, the Hermetic
Mystery is not for every one — at least, at his present
state of evolutional unfolding. Si te fata vocant is Virgil's
word upon it, aliter non viribus vllis vincere poteris,
and only to those whose spiritual destiny has already
equipped them with a certain high measure of moral and
intellectual fitness will even a rough notional apprehension
of it be practicable.

Upon these various grounds, then, it is believed that
the authoress of this volume will be absolved by com-
petent judges of all blame for having written it, and the
acquittal will carry with it, as its corollary, a like im-
munity to those who have taken steps towards its present
re-issue. In no spirit of flouting or wilfully contradicting
its writer's wishes is its republication undertaken, but
rather in the cause of truth and of the science to which

(25)

Introduction.

it testifies, to the glory of God and the service of God-
aspiring men, and lastly, as a monument to the memory
of the enlightened woman who compiled it.

As has been indicated above, the text of this edition
is precisely that of the first issue, altered only by such
emendations as the authoress herself had made or ap-
proved in her lifetime. In an Appendix there has been
added a series of Mrs. Atwood's private memoranda and
reflections bearing upon the Hermetic subject and now
for the first time made available. These, written at
intervals some years after the volume itself, are the fruit
of her maturer thought and will be found elucidative of
the doctrine of which the book treats.

III.

Simply stated, Hermetism, or its synonym Alchemy, was
in its primary intention and office the philosophic and
exact science of the regeneration of the human soul from
its present sense-immersed state into the perfection and
nobility of that divine condition in which it was originally
created. Secondarily and incidentally, as will presently
appear, it carried with it a knowledge of the way in which
the life-essence of things belonging to the subhuman
kingdoms — the metallic genera in particular — can, corres-
pondingly, be intensified and raised to a nobler form than
that in which it exists in its present natural state. It is
to this secondary aspect only that the popular mind turns
when Alchemy is mentioned, unaware of the subject's
larger and primary intention, and it is desirable, theref ore,
to treat of the science here first from the larger aspect,
and subsequently from its lesser and subsidiary one.

The science postulates the premiss, which unless
granted at the outset of inquiry into it renders its further
consideration superfluous, that somehow, somewhere,
and for reasons into which we need not now inquire, the
human scul has sustained what is called by theoTogy a
"fall"; a declension from Super- nature into this world
of Nature, a cutting-off — not total, but nearly so — from
its original environment, allegiance and root of being ;
an arrest of the development it would have experienced
but for its lapse into an alien state and plane of existence.

(26)

Introduction.

It promises that reversion to and re-attainment of its
original state are alike feasible and desirable. It assumes,
moreover, that despite the soul's fall there lingers in it,
although in a condition of atrophy and enchantment, a
residual germ of that divine principle which once wholly
actuated it ; a germ capable of being so stimulated into
activity as to raise the personal consciousness even to the
point of unity and identity with the Universal Mind and,
through the healing efficacy of that principle's transmuting
potencies, to effect such an organic change in the psychical,
and even the physical, parts of our present frail and
imperfect nature as will bring them into a divinised
condition. Briefly, it implied that man's present fallen
self, his natural consciousness and organic constitution,
can be metamorphosed, reversed, turned as it were inside
out and outside in ; that divine principle which is now
internalised and occulted being brought forward into
consciousness and function, and the natural principle
now animating him, and exercising in him a usurped
self-willed control, becoming repressed and put back into
subordinacy and hiddenness. Alchemy was therefore
called, as its etymology implies, the " black art" ; but
black only in the sense of being kept religiously secret
and dark, for good reasons which will appear, from those
as yet unready or unfit to be entrusted with the knowledge
of the vital experimentation involved in the science.

Man, of his own natural power and unaided ab extra,
can never rise beyond that external Nature to whose
wheel he is tied. He can develop only along her lines
and within the limits of her laws and potentialities. And
Nature herself being but a flux, a perpetual aggregation
and dispersion of certain forces, the human soul, as, in
Hamlet's words, it " passes through nature to eternity ':
would remain the perpetual sport of that flux, like a cork
caught and revolving in a whirlpool, and be incapable of
breaking loose from it, were it not for the supernatural
principle — the latens Deltas of Aquinas, the hidden
Mercury of the Hermetists — submergedly resident within
him, but capable of being awakened into saving activity.
' Man, without understanding, {i.e., the divine principle)
is nothing worth and is as the beasts that perish." His
soul, his Ego, stands as a mean between the competing;

<27)

Introduction.

claims of the sense-world and Super-nature. Generation
has brought him into touch with and captivity to Nature,
leaving his super-natural principle submerged and passive ;
Re-generation detaches him from the claims of Nature
and the sense-life and re-awakens him to and in his
super-natural principle, with which he can again become
wholly identified and integrated. But the evolutionary
processes of the world of external Nature do not of them-
selves suffice to awaken the latens Deltas in man. Left
to his unaided natural intelligence he would fail even to
divine the fact of its presence within him and would
gravitate more and more towards his sense-pole, denying
the existence of any higher light than that of his brute-
reason ; the world to-day abounds with people of great
powers of natural reason but self -blinded to and incredu-
lous of any larger light within them. Even when led
notionally to accept the fact of the presence in him of
such a light, he still remains unable to awaken the
eternal within him or to discover the limitless poten-
tialities inherent in that supernatural germ. So to do
involves assistance, instruction, revelation, superadded
moreover to those indispensable pre-requisites to rein-
tegration— faith in the possibility of it, ardour of desire
and consistency of purpose to its accomplishment, and
lastly, upon approaching a great mystery, a humility
and self-abnegation entirely foreign to the robust,
self-reliant egoism ordinarily characterising the natural
unregenerate man.

To provide such instruction and assistance has been
in all ages and lands the office of Religion, — a term itself
implying a " binding back " to its original of that which
has deflected therefrom. Religion's primary object is
to promote the re-birth of the human soul, to transfer
its desires and its consciousness from the transient
attractions of the world of sense and phenomena to the
abiding realities of the world of spirit and noumena,
and so to restore the soul to its true line of development
which has become broken and arrested by its fall into
Nature. The numerous religions, the various instituted
religious systems and churches with their diverse forms
of creed, ritual and theology, too often become a travesty
of the primary purpose of Religion itself ; they are born

(28)

Introduction.

from time to time with a view of re-establishing that
primary purpose, which sooner or later tends to become
overgrown and obscured by alien accretions of thought,
doctrine and rites, and eventually degenerate and die ;
for in a fallen world every human institution, every
presentation of truth in so far as the natural mind seizes
it but to distort it, sympathetically shares the fall of
man himself and becomes like him, corrupt and liable to
disintegration. Meanwhile the central original purpose of
Religion persists, — sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et
semper. ' There has never," St. Augustine affirmed,
' been but one religion, nor has it ever been absent from
the world since time began, and it commenced to be called
Christian in apostolic times." It has passed through
many vicissitudes, many forms of expression and per-
version, and has ever been re-stated when the race plunged
too deeply into materialism and spiritual blindness.
And having but one function, it has also one catholic
watchword : " Ye must be born again " (or " from above,"
i.e., from the super- natural Principle).

Now of the process of re-birth there is and always has
been a definite and exact science, the knowledge of which
has been the property of the smallest of minorities and,
for adequate reasons, has not been suffered to be promul-
gated to the multitude, although individuals who earnestly
sought for it never failed in discovering it. The Mystery-
schools of antiquity, at least before the days of their
degeneracy, possessed and administered it ; it was the
raison d'etre of their existence, as was well known to the
public of the time, any member of whom, prepared to
abandon secular life and apply himself to the higher
vocation, could seek admission therein. The Christianity
of the first two centuries took over the doctrine and the
science, confirmed and expanded as they became by the
advent of Christ, but eventually lost them and put in their
place the ecclesiastical machinery and dogmatic theology
which have ruled throughout the subsequent centuries
of European history, with the result that popular
Christianity has for long known nothing of them. With
the enjoi rider of the assured necessity for regeneration
proclaimed by the Master of their faith it and its theo-
logians and pastors are well familiar. But can it be said

(29)

Introduction.

that " Ye must be born again " means for them more than
a vague, mysterious, metaphoric counsel of perfection
capable of being satisfied by living the ordinary natural
life as far as possible in accordance with the standard of
conduct indicated in the Gospels ? Are the words accorded
more than a value for ethical purposes, to the total neglect
of the possibility of their literal practical fulfilment ?
' The common faith " says Mrs. Atwood, very truly,*

is mystery without a fulcrum in this life whereon to
rest the lever of the will " ; yet such a fulcrum would be
at hand were there a definitely recognised method of
giving the Lord's injunction effect. Were that method
generally known, however, it would still be impracticable
in the present state of the world to put it into general
practice ; whilst, moreover, there exist good reasons,
as will be made clear later on in this preface, for the
temporary abeyance of a science that could at no time
be taught or practised save in special circumstances of
seclusion and secrecy. For the moment we are only
emphasising the point that the Christian Master's words
" Ye must be born again " constituted a re-affirmation of
a doctrine which has never been absent from the world,
although comprehended by none save the meagrest few
who devoted themselves to its study or practical pursuit,
and to which, for reasons that will appear, has long been
attached the name Hermetic.

The secrecy surrounding the science has been due
to the mental and moral unpreparedness for it on the part
of those content to live the normal life of the world.
Save under glyph and figure, cryptic memorials and alle-
gories, the details of the experimental process of regenera-
tion could never be made public, nor can they now.
" Bind up the testimony ; seal the law among My
disciples" ; ' Procul este, qyrojani! conclamat vates" ;
• Hehas este bebeloi ! " ; " Cast not your pearls before
swine " ; " It is not meet to take the children's bread and
give it unto dogs " ; — such has uniformly been the
instruction in regard to it, whether its expositor has been
Hebrew prophet, ethnic hierophant, or the Christian
Master Himself. And why ? Because, apart from the

* Tn a letter to C C. Massey, quoted in his Memoir before cited, at p. 67".

(30)

Introduction.

privacy inevitably attaching to sacrosanctities, it involves
perils personal and general ; it lays open the most secret
recesses and properties of the human organism, stripping
bare the quivering roots of the physical and psychic life ;
it leads into contact with magnetic forces of terrific
potency from the knowledge and effects of which we are at
present providentially sheltered and safeguarded by the
grossness of our sense-bodies and the limitations these
impose upon us until such time as we become fitted to
function in independence of them. The subject was one
suited only to true sons of wisdom, — philosophers in
the sense in which Pythagoras and Plato would have
understood a title now accorded to any expositor of the
docta ignorantia concluded from the superficial researches
of modern science. Candidates for the regenerate life,
moreover, were such as were prepared, as how few of
to-day are ?, to renounce and transvalue all the world's
values, to step entirely oat of the world-stream by the
current of which the majority are content to be borne
along, to negate the affirmations of the senses and natural
reason which for the multitude provide the criterion of
the desirable and the true, and generally to adopt towards
phenomenal existence an attitude incomprehensible to
the average man to whom that existence is of paramount
moment. They were animated by no motives of merely
personal salvation or of spiritual superiority over their
fellows ; on the contrary they will be found to have been
the humblest, as they were the wisest, of men. They had
advanced far beyond that complacent stage where
religion consists in fidelity to certain credal propositions
and in " being good " or as good as one can, and where
sufficiency and robustness of faith are represented by the
facile optimism of " God's in His heaven ; all's right
with the Avorld." Their philosophic basis Avas rather that
" the world is out of joint " and all men with it, and in a
condition sorely needing saviours and co-operators with
God to reduce and adjust the dislocation. A great gulf
of incomprehension, attended always with derision and
frequently with persecution, ever divides those whose
energies have not yet spent themselves in attachment
to this external world and those whose spiritual evolution
has advanced far enough to enable them to turn away

(3*)

Introduction.

from it, to see in it no abiding city and to beat a retreat
inwards to the durable reality of the supra-sensible.
The mental attitude of those for whom the Hermetic
science was intended may be found further reflected in
the following statement : —

' In man there must be forces which natural life does
not develop. And the life might pass away unused if the
forces remained idle. To open them up, thereby to make
man like the divine, — this was the task of the Mysteries . . .
We have to do here with a conception of immortality
the significance of which lies bound up with the Universe.
Everything which man undertakes in order to awaken
the eternal within him, he does in order to raise the value
of the world's existence. The fresh knowledge he gains
does not make him an idle spectator of the Universe,
forming images for himself of what would be there just
as much if he did not exist. The force of his knowledge
is a higher one ; it is one of the creative forces of nature.
What flashes up within him spiritually is something
divine which was previously under a spell and which,
failing the knowledge he had gained, must have lain
fallow and waited for some other exorcist. Thus a human
personality does not live in and for itself but for the
world."*

The force referred to, and with which the Her met is t
sought to become identified, is that of the universal
substrate of life ; that which centrally subsists in all that
circumferentially exists from it and without whose
presence no existence would be possible : the Light which
in the philosophical prologue to the fourth Gospel is
called " the life of men " and " without which is nothing
which has been made," however unconscious of its latent
presence its creatures may be — for it ( dwelleth in
darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not."
It is the Light that, anteriorly to that of the solar and
stellar bodies and all other derivatives from it, originated
at the primal Fiat Lux ; ' Light rare, untellable ;
lighting the very light ; beyond all signs, descriptions,
languages " ; the garment, or ' glory," of God ; the

* Christianity as Mystical Fact, by Rudolph Steiner, 3rd Ed.
( Putnam s), p. 55-5(5; a summary but able exposition of the history
and purpose of the Mysteries of antiquity.

(32)

Introduction.

" lumen gloriw " of the Scholastics. It is that Fire which
Heraclitus rightly called " the father of all things," and
that in the present volume is often spoken of as the
Paternal Ens of life, or as Azoth, or as Magnesia (Magnus
Ignis) ; and that elsewhere, under another metaphor, is
spoken of (as in Swinburne's Hertha) as the vitalising
sap of the universal Life Tree, or (as in the Gospels) as
the life-essence of that mystical Vine of which we are
the branches. The source therefore not alone of light
external to us, but of light internal also ; the well-spring
of all intellectual light ; nay more, that without which
there could be no consciousness at all, but by larger and
larger accessions of which, consciousness itself becomes
enlarged and extended indefinitely. This root life-essence ,
then, — something at once spiritual and substantial
(though not to sense) — is the Hermetists' Materia Prima,
the ' First Matter," upon which their whole science
is founded and, as they constantly affirm, without
acquaintance with which no knowledge or practice of
their art is feasible. Est una sola Res ; and it is this
' One Thing," this basal substrate and reality underlying
phenomena, this pure matrix around which has accreted
the impure (because disordered) matter of the sense-world
that one must consciously possess as a passport to the
regenerative work. By the hypothesis, not being anything
externalised, it can be cognised only introspect ively, by
the inwardly " turned eye " of the mind ; " it is gotten,"
says our authoress, ' in Divine contemplation," by
penetrating that darkness which comprehendeth it not,
but in which it lies concealed.

Its explication will be simplified, perhaps, if we think
of it by anotner of its many names, — Ether. Yet it is not
the ether known to the modern physicist, though the
latter is its fringe, its ultimated aspect. The Ether of
the Hermetist is Free Either, — the pre-cosmic " Chaos'
of Hesiod, the Eleutheros, immaculate and incorruptible,
of the Greek philosophers and theologists ; the Ain Soph,
or Divine No-Thing, which is the matrix of all things,
of the Hebrew Kabalists, which streaming free, formless
and unconditioned from its source (it is the mystical
river of Eden in the Mosaic cosmogony) becomes
u divided into four heads," modes or aspects, in the last

(33)

INTRODUCTION.

oi which it is conceived as fixed, bound and conditioned,
the matrix of the protean manifestation, forms and
chemical combinations of the externalised universe, as
well as the plastic medium and vehicles through which
our thoughts and wills function, and which, did we perceive
the results, our psychologic energies are continually
modifying and transposing into new forms. With this
bound impure ether modern physics has in recent years
brought us into touch. It has disclosed the electrical
constitution of gross matter, demonstrated some of the
ether's features, and discerned the probability (well
known to the ancients as a fact) that the ether has many
modes or, alternatively, that there are ethers within the
ether ; whilst the radio-active properties of certain metals
have disclosed even to the physical eye external evidence of
that primal Fire of whose potentalities the Hermetists
knew infinitely more than modern physics has any chance
of discerning. For in no subordinate or derived light,
and by no outward-looking faculty of the mind or eye.
can that Fire or Light be perceived. It must be cognised
in and with its own light, not in that of Nature ; 'In
Thy Light shall we see light," says of it one of those
references to it with which the Scriptures abound.

And thus the origin of the term Hermetic ; for as, with
the Greeks, Zeus omnipotent, the demiurgos and lord of
the lightnings, personified the generative source of the
electrical or ,k fiery ': energies of Nature, and Hermes
was the divine " messenger,'' it is easy to see that, apart
from the possible existence of any historic teacher of this
science named Hermes, the term " messenger " was none
other than an allusion to the vibrant universal Ether
which in its various modes is in fact the medium and
vehicle of all interaction between the different planes and
intelligences of the Kosmos. Hermetism, therefore, is the
science of the Ether and of its modes and potentialities
in the human organism and the subhuman kingdoms.
" The metals of the philosophers are the etherial metals ;
its (the ether's) progressive stages, its processes, the
arising of the ether from and through its lower to its
higher forms and qualities."*

* Seo j). 597 post.

(34)

Introduction.

Man being the measure and image of the universe and,
on the Hermetic hypothesis, having in himself the Ether
in all its modes, the purpose of the science was to effect
a transposition of them, to subordinate the fixed,
adulterated, bound mode, in virtue of which he lives
and is conscious as a child of external Nature, and displace
it by the free pure mode in virtue of which he would
become relatively divinised, and invested with conscious-
ness and powers impracticable to his natural condition.
After purifying his natural self — his bound ether — as
far as practicable, the free divine ether latent in him
would emerge from its present obscurity and could
become focused and nucleated. This, once interiorly
glimpsed and held fast to with confidence and firm
resolution, the gleam of it could be followed through
the murk and fantasies of the psychical regions (or
€ther-modes) which intervene between the natural
mentality and that supreme degree of consciousness the
permanentised attainment of which was the desideratum.
The process is cryptically described in the sixth ^Eneid
where, at the instruction of the initiating Sibyl, iEneas
plucks a twig of the " golden bough " and by its help
penetrates the Tartarean gloom and phantasms of the
" underworld " (his own subjectivity), emerging at
length in Elysium (consciousness on the divine plane) and
finding there " the Paternal E?is of life" personified by
the poet as the explorer's human father. In a still older
allegory, the ramus aureus of Virgil is expressed by the
' golden thread " which enabled Ariadne to find her way
through the labyrinth (of her own subjective nature),
and our own mystical poet Blake repeats the same
parable in his familiar lines : —

I give you the end of a golden string,

Only wind it into a ball,
It will lead you in at heaven's gate

Built in Jerusalem's wall ;

arid the metaphorical ' winding into a ball ''' aptly
illustrates the nucleating of the Light diffusedly latent
in man under the concentration of his spiritual energies
to effect an alliance with their source, until at length that
Light becomes polarised within him, consolidating into
a " philosophical stone," a quasi-objective substantiality

(35)

Introduction.

destined to become for him a vehicle of consciousness
and his new body of regeneration. Invisibile fiet palpabile
et genninabit ut radix. ' Would you fain find the Noble
Stone ? (asks Boehme). Behold we will shew it you
plain enough if you be a Magus and worthy, else you shall
remain blind still. Therefore go to work thus .... go
about in the wheel of life from the first to the seventh
number (power) and through that to the eighth number
(the Fire) and when through it lay hold through the
Tincture on the Eternity, which is the ninth number, and
bring that upon the Cross, which is the tenth number,
which is the end of nature. Here handle the Stone and
take as much of it as you will. No fire will destroy it ;
it is free from the wrath and the outbirth ; its splendour
and light stand in the power of the Majesty ; its body
is out of the eternal substantiality."*

Now this initial process towards discovering the
stone" — for the matter of it had yet to be much
segregated, confected and sublimated — was accomplished
in a condition of magnetic trance mesmerically induced
upon the aspirant by some wise and skilled operator.
For a philosophical ' separation " was necessary ;
' thou shalt separate the gross from the subtle, gently,
with great sagacity." The separation was that of the
aspirant's sense-nature and objective mind from his
subjective nature. The former needed to be reduced to
q "^scence that his consciousness might function in the
latter alone and in a necessarily quickened, vivid manner.
The aspirant therefore would be placed in the condition
of a person at the moment of death or in anaesthesia ;
but with this difference, that, whilst thus reduced to
subjectivity, he woul 1 be at the mercy of the compelling
will and direction of the operator into whose power he
had committed himself. His consciousness, Avithdrawn
from externals, would be restricted to and focused upon
the mind's internal content, and these inania regna he
would be directed to explore and to consider. It would be
his business then to set about cleansing this, his own
Augean stable (as the Herculean myth allegorises the
process), to clarify it and extirpate from it those mala

* Threefold Life of Man, oh. 10, 4-6, where the process is di agram-

matically explained.

(36)

Introduction.

mentis gaudia and other sorry decorations catalogued by
the Roman initiate-poet* as defacing the envelope of
our unpurified subconscious deeps. The Hebrew poet,
too, has eloquently if cryptically described^ his own
perceptions in this state, when, he tells us, a certain
entrancing hand 'fell upon me'' and he was bidden
to look and consider the inward obstructions to the action
of the divine Light ; " so I went in and saw, and behold
every form of creeping things and abominable beasts,
and all the idols of the house of Israel pourtrayed upon the
walls round about," upon which " wall" he perceived the
things men " do in the dark, every man in the chamber
of his imagery," preserved upon the cinematograph-film
of the mind. Gradually cleansing himself with the help
of this self-introspection by a period of pure living and
thinking, the candidate became prepared for the ulterior
purpose for which the trance-state was employed. That
purpose, our authoress explains in her first essay Early
Magnetism (p. 9-10) of which the magnetic trance is
the main theme, was " to conjoin the mind to its lost
universality and pass the consciousness regressively
through its many phases back to that long forgotten
life in Reality .... passing behind the murky media
of sense and fantasy to behold reflected in the brightened
mirror of our own intelligence the pure Truth ; not as it
may appear individually or arbitrarily but in its charac-
teristic necessity and universality."

Tunc ire admundum archeiypum saepe atque redire
Cunctarumque Patrem rerura spectare licebit.

" The trance-state (to condense her further words), when
justly and persevering]y ordered f ir that end, affords
the metaphysical condition pre-eminently perfect ; for
it removes the sensible obstruction and presents a clearer
glass before the mind than it can ever regard in the natural
state. The patient is no sooner lightly entranced than
he begins to feel an internality never before known to him
and which may be intensified as the intention is fixed and
the calibre of the mind and circumstantial conditions
are favourable ; the passive personality collapses from
its circumferential and phenomenal life into that central

* ^neid, VI., 258-281. t Ezekiel, ch viii.

(37)

Introduction.

Omnipresence whose circumference is not ; whilst the
mind, rightly disciplined and related to the Universal,
becomes universalised and one with the great magnetic
Will of Nature, revolving with the Infinite Medium (the
pure Ether) through all its spheres, perceiving all things
in all and in itself, until at length becoming perfectly
converted to its principle, the divinised microcosmic
epitome moves with demiurgic power and grace."

The process in its later stages and amplification is
sufficiently, though with due reserve, indicated in the
present volume, and we shall not therefore here enlarge
upon it farther. But the following epitome of the
alchemical work may be usefully cited. It is extracted
from an article in a magazine*, long ago defunct,
published in the interests of a small circle of enquirers
into unconventional aspects of religion and philosophy.
As the article appears over the initials of Mrs. At wood's
husband and appeared during her married life, it may
be assumed that this passage had been approved and
even inspired by herself, and that it represents her view
of the work of the Alchemists some eighteen years after
the publication of her Suggestive Inquiry : —

" Their primary aim was the rebirth (rebis is one of their
obscure terms for this) of the human natural soul, and its direct
alliance with vital force in nature ; the anima in man was to be
brought into intelligent, active, commanding relation with the
anima media natures, the particular with the universal. The
initiation was peculiar ; it was connected with trance, and more,
with all but total separation of soul from its corporeal dwelling.
(We use this word soul to express the medial in the threefold
nature of man, and as distinguished from spirit, by which we
mean the polar opposite of body). This semi-separation was
effected by means partly artificial and akin to those known to
media in the present day. The secret was sometimes revealed
to an earnest and truthful seeker in one word, and sometimes
in a dream ; experiment and study alone never imparted it ; the
agent and patient, both in one, was thus brought into relation with
life and its various forces and forms, and in the wondrous regener-
ation which took place what was old passed away. But it was
not intended that the neophyte should stop here ; the process was
to be repeated again and again before the great end was reached.
The trials, the watchings, the labours, were tremendous ; tot
esantlatos labores, toils exceeding those of Atlas, is one of their
frequent expressions. The serpentine nature had to be trans-
formed in the vessel of Hermes, and the contest was. one demand-
ing the utmost self-denial, fidelity, resolution, prayer, as well as
surrender of will into God's will, — the gold was to be tried seven

* The Recipient (Quarterly Magazine) for April, 1868, p. 340,

(38)

Introduction.

times in the fire ; not till then was the precious germ capable of
realisation a3 a pure essence, still less of transformation of the
b laser elements of the psychical corporeity. The process is described
as a death, a rest rrection, a purification, an exaltation, a sub-
limation. In the course of it the neophyte, the candidate for
the new nature, had to encounter strange enemies, to go through
experiences like those alluded to in this volume, to reck little
of the mocking voices and whisperings and all kinds of terrors and
phantasies which would be certain to present themselves whilst,
to use the figure of the fine old Eastern allegory which alludes to
these things, he is ascending the mountain on the topmost height
of which was to be found the ' fountain of golden water '."

The Art was called " spagyric '" (separative) because
it entailed separating the subtle from the gross nature ;
first of the mind from the sense-nature, and later of that
principle — nous or pure intellect — which is higher than
mind, from mind itself. It was conserved as a secret
in antiquity as it has also been by its isolated disciples
in later centuries who employed it only in suitable cases
and circumstances. We propose now to say something
in justification of this secrecy and in explanation of the
abeyance into which the Art has fallen.

If the deeper things of personal life be, as we know they
are, ineffable and incommunicable, they create their own
secrecy. Much more so when they pertain to that radical
change of the life which is involved in regeneration.
Regeneration cannot be -taught ; it must be lived
through. The most loving and patient instructor cannot
do more than indicate a certain route of conduct and
thought desirable to be pursued. Every Hermetic author
states that an illuminated understanding is needed to
comprehend the processes of the higher ontological growth,
which must needs be as much beyond the imagination
of the average mind as the physiological and mental
changes in an adult are beyond the comprehension of an
infant. Boehme, who possessed such an illuminated
understanding of both the theory and practice of the
Hermetic science, though he states he never proceeded
to the practice of it, writes : — " Everyone says, Shew me
the way to the manifestation of the good ! — Hear and
observe well, dear reason ; thou must thyself be the way ;
the understanding must be born in thee ; thou must
enter into it, so that the understanding of the work in its
practic art (wherein I deal not) may be opened to thee.

(39)

Introduction.

I write only in the spirit of contemplation, how the
generation of good and evil is, and open the fountain.
He shall draw the water whom God has appointed
thereunto."* The same writer has given the reasons
for secrecy in regard to the practical or " manual " work.
He can be quoted as a comparatively recent authority and
he corroborates earlier ones in asserting that the
experimental work should under no circumstances be
attempted by any but a competent master, that is one
who has himself been already regenerated. Man " has
ability to change nature and to turn the evil into good,
provided he has first changed himself, otherwise he cannot.
.... We tell the seeker, and faithfully warn him as he
loves his temporal and eternal welfare, that we do not
first set upon this way to try the earth and restore that
which is shut up, unless he himself be before borri again
through the divine mercury out of the curse and death
and has the full knowledge of the divine regeneration,
else all that he does is to no purpose ; no learning or
studying avails." t Again in his private correspondence
with enquirers he says : — " Nothing is found of any
fundamental worth unless one doth entrust another with
somewhat, the which is forbidden to the children of God
in whom the grace is revealed, that they cast not pearls
before swine upon pain of eternal punishment. Only
it is freely granted to them to declare the light and to
show the way of attaining the pearl ; but to give the
divine separator into the bestial hand is prohibited,
unless a man knoweth the way and will of that man J."
And again : — " Concerning the philosophical work of the
tincture, its progress is not so bluntly and plainly to be
described ; albeit I have it not in the praxis, the seal of
God lieth before it to conceal the true ground of the same
upon pain of eternal punishment, unless a man knew for
certain that it might not be misused. There is also no
power to attain it unless a man first become that himself
which he seeketh therein ; no skill nor art availeth ;

* Signatura Rerum, ch. XIV., 1, a work which treats of the Hermetic

doctrine extensively. (Everyman Series ; Dent).
t Signatura Rerum, ch. VIII., 26, 40.

% Boehme'a Epistles, 6th Epistle (11th November, 1623) in the 1649
edition (reprinted 1880 by J. Thomson, Glasgow). •

(40)

Introduction.

unless one give the tincture into the hands of another he
cannot prepare it unless he be certainly in the new birth."*
" Trying the earth" ; ' entrusting another with some-
what " ; ' giving the tincture into the hands of another."'
refer to the committal of the personal soul to the dom-
inating will of an operator sufficiently wise and skilled
to assume the responsibility of that soul and to expedite
that regenerative process which in ordinary conditions
would be achievable only in the slow course of normal
development and purgative experiences alike in the
present and the post mortem life. It is of this tremendous
responsibility that Boebme wrote " Look well into whom
you pour oil, for it is poison to many," and that his great
disciple, the saintly William Law, also spoke : — " No
one is a divine Magus till he is qualified to say to his
subject, To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise.
If he is not himself in paradise he can do no paradisaical
workf." And the Pythagorean injunction was to a like
effect : " Increase not thy destiny ; break not a super-
ficies (i.e., do not separate body from soul) lest the sin
of the patient be multiplied in the agent§." It was by
way of warning, in view of the unintelligent, uninstructed
modern practices of mesmerism, hypnotism and spiritual-
istic mediumship, — " the great psychological crime "J as
they have been termed — that the present volume and
its authoress's earlier essay upon Magnetism were pro-
duced ; she wished to indicate the perilous nature of
practices tending to disintegrate what has been sealed in
the providential order, and the unsealing of which can
properly be effected only in and by the methods of the
same order. "What God hath joined let no man put
asunder." For the practices referred to approximate
very closely to the initial stage of the Hermetic experi-
ment, though they are its travesty, the sinister shadow
and unhallowed imitation of a process that can rightly
be undertaken only in a state and in the cause of sanctity .

* 23rd Epistle.

t Law's Letters: Works, vol. 9, 1762 edition (reprinted 1893),
p. 193.

§ Between operator and patient a magnetic Jink becomes created
on the psychic plane, entailing indefinite consequences to both.

% See an able American treatise of this title (1915, Indo- American