131 - Atwood (Mary Anne) The Hermetic Mystery & Alchemy, first edition, bookplates, owners notations to text, foxing throughout, offsetting to endpapers, full contemporary marbled calf, gilt ruled, titles in gilt, raised bands, scuffs and ligth shelfwear, 8vo, London, Trelawney Saunders, 1850.

Atwood (Mary Anne) The Hermetic Mystery & Alchemy, first edition, bookplates, owners notations to text, foxing throughout, offsetting to endpapers, full contemporary marbled calf, gilt ruled, titles in gilt, raised bands, scuffs and ligth shelfwear, 8vo, London, Trelawney Saunders, 1850. *** Anonymously published in 1850, The Hermetic Mystery and Alchemy: A suggestive inquiry was the result of many years of experimentation and research into spirituality and mysticism by Atwood and her farther, Thomas South. They sought to reframe alchemy as a spiritual goal rather than a metallurgic physical process and the text went on to influence and inform spiritual interpretations of alchemy for the next one hundred years and beyond. First editions of the work are almost unobtainable. South, having read the work post publication, brough almost all the existing copies and burnt them due to his belief that they revealed arcane mystical knowledge to the general public. The book features the personal bookplate of Thomas South himself, with its distinctive Ouroboros motif.