Introduction

This book is a structured digest of Mary Anne Atwood’s A Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery (1850). Its aim is to state, as plainly as the text allows, what the book says and the method it hints at.

How to read it

• Chapters — one page per chapter of the book, in the book’s order (Parts I–IV).
• Part syntheses — one page closing each Part, drawing its chapters together.
• Overall Book Synthesis — the argument of the whole book at a glance.
• The Method in Plain Terms — the method the book hints at: what the work is done on, by what agent, what it asks of the operator, its stages, signs, impediments and result.
• Appendix: Table Talk and Memorabilia — Atwood’s later notes, headed “Begun August 1860”. They are a later layer and are kept separate throughout.
• Master Lexicon and Concordance — every term, person, work and voice the book uses, with what the book says about each.

Ground rules

• The book is the only source. Nothing is added from outside knowledge or later scholarship. Names keep the book’s spellings.
• Quotations are verbatim and carry references: III.2 ¶7 is paragraph 7 of Part III, chapter 2; I.3 n7 is footnote 7 of Part I, chapter 3; APP ¶35 is item 35 of the Appendix.
• Voices are kept apart. Atwood’s own position is distinguished from the authorities she quotes, and the text says whether she endorses, qualifies or rejects them.
• Stated vs interpreted. Where a meaning is inferred rather than said by the text, it is marked as such (“apparently”, “interpreted”) with its basis.
• Translations of Latin and other passages are the book’s own where it gives one; otherwise they are marked as ours and are not used as evidence on their own.

A SillyTavern worldbook built from the Lexicon is available in the project repository.