I’m a big fan of Adam McLean’s work and I have his Alchemical Emblems Foundation course which I’d highly recommend. He has sent word that a complementary study course is now available. Here is what he says:

“My study course on Exploring Alchemical Emblems is now available on CD-Rom. To a great extent it complements my Foundation study course on Alchemical Symbolism. It consists of a series of twenty four audio visual presentations for the Windows operating system, approximately five to ten minutes long. The total running time for the entire course is about three and a half hours, with 210 megabytes of data on the disc.

In each of these presentations, you are guided through an emblem by my commentary. The software zooms into areas and explores each emblem in exhaustive detail. The commentary teases out all the puzzling components of the emblem, providing you with insights into how emblems were structured and the narrative or message they contain.

If you were to study a presentation each week, you should, at the end of six months, have become very familiar with the ways in which the alchemists presented their ideas in emblematic form.

The course provides penetrating insights into the obscurities of these elaborate alchemical emblems. It does not repeat the standard, boring, simplistic, vague, new-age esoteric interpretations, but instead forensically examines the structure of the emblems and allows us to see again the original intention of their creators. Each emblem is looked at in its own proper context.

These emblems are among the great treasures of the alchemical tradition.

One need not merely admire them for their delightful form, but through this course come to see what they mean.

Just go to this page for information and a short sample.”