Concerning Thomas South, Mary Ann South, and the book, Early Magnetism In its Higher Relations to Humanity
"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 few friends had themselves experimented 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 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 especially the Scriptures, illustrated her perceptions and confirmed her conclusions. For, referring to passages from
the classics and the Bible, she says of herself in a confession 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."