Email:        adam@alchemywebsite.com
Address :   Adam McLean, 15 Keir Street,
                    Glasgow, G41 2NP, U.K.
Telephone : 0141 429 5614
                    0044 141 429 5614 internationally
                
  Click for access to
  different sections


Symbolism
 Reading texts
 Sequences
 English alchemy
 Ripley Scroll
 Trinosophia
 Metamorphosis
 Exploring Emblems

Currency convertor


Study Course on Emblems
by Adam McLean
Emblematic thinking has been one of the powerful tools that works behind our culture. It is rarely understood though we all use emblems and symbols every day. This study course aims to trace the evolution of the emblem in Western thought and culture from the medieval period through to the present age, and lead us to a deep encounter with the significance of this device in our thought. The course will not take an abstract or overly academic view on the subject but more of an experiental one. So much of this emblematic material is either unfamiliar and obscure, or masked from us by overlays of interpretation. Emblems lie behind the structure of many artworks, and are found in woodcuts and engraved inllustrations to many early books, are used in astrological prints, alchemical, masonic and other mystical diagrams. They are much misunderstood, as modern commentators often remove them from their original context and press their own interpretations and preconceptions onto them.
Adam McLean has made a study of emblems for many years, and has focussed in his other courses on the use of emblematic forms in alchemy. Now in this course he will show the emblem in its wider context.
This course will be intensive though not too abstract and intellectual. Rather it will expose the students to a wide range of emblematic materials, some comfortably familiar, others almost entirely unknown. The lessons will be quite short and not require reams and reams of reading. The course will be entirely self-contained and it will not be neccesary to undertake additional external reading. One should come away from this course with a greater appreciation of the place of the emblem in our culture, and be able to some extent to place and read an emblem in its correct context.
Each lesson will present an emblem or related group of emblems, together with some contextualisation and analysis of its content, together with ideas about how to approach emblems and view them in the way they were intended to be seen.
Each week you will receive a lesson by email in the form of a pdf file, so you should provide a stable email address when you register. The Course on Emblems will consist of 50 lessons thus lasting a year. .
This course will begin later in 2006

To register for advance (no payment necessary at this stage) please email adam@alchemywebsite.com
If you have any questions before you purchase any of these courses please email Adam McLean adam@alchemywebsite.com

Please note these lessons are copyright © Adam McLean, and no part may be reproduced or distributed in any form (including the Internet) without the permission of Adam McLean.