Mary Anne Atwood

Mary Anne Atwood (née South), (1817–1910), was an English writer on hermeticism and spiritual alchemy.

Born in Gosport, Hampshire, to Thomas South, a researcher into the history of spirituality, she assisted and collaborated with her father from her youth. Mary Anne married the Anglican Reverend Alban Thomas Atwood in 1859, and moved to his parish near Thirsk in North Yorkshire where she spent the rest of her life. She continued private correspondence with several influential Theosophists until her death in 1910. Her final words, "I cannot find my centre of gravity."

She is buried at Leake Church, in Yorkshire.

Works

Mary Anne's first publication, Early Magnetism in its higher relations to humanity (1846) was issued pseudonymously as the work of Θυος Μαθος (Gk. thuos mathos), an anagram of Thomas South.

Mary Anne wrote A Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery (1850) at her father's request, and in parallel with his own composition of a lengthy poem on the same subject. Thomas South paid for the book to be published anonymously in 1850, but without having read it, trusting his daughter's judgement. Reading it after publication, he believed Mary Anne had revealed many hermetic secrets that were better left unpublished, and therefore bought up the remaining stock and, with his daughter, burnt them, along with the unfinished manuscript of his poem. Only a few copies of the book survived.