Occult history and alchemy

H. Stanley Redgrove

1887 – 1943

Herbert Stanley Redgrove was a British chemist and occult scholar who helped found the Alchemical Society in London and contributed to bridging scientific and esoteric approaches to the history of occult philosophy. His Alchemy: Ancient and Modern (1911) provided a careful historical survey of alchemical doctrines and their relationship to chemistry, mysticism, and modern science, while Bygone Beliefs (1920) examined magical and pseudoscientific ideas from antiquity through the Renaissance. Redgrove occupied a distinctive niche as a scientifically trained author who took the history of occultism seriously, making his work valuable both to historians of science and to practitioners interested in the intellectual pedigree of their traditions.