McLean, Adam
Description
Much of the English alchemical writings of the 14th to 17th centuries, is full of allegory and enigma,
but well expressed and intriguing. This was rec
...
ognised by the 17th century antiquarian Elias Ashmole,
who decided to collect this material and put it into print and this was issued in 1652 as the famous
Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, the 'theatre' or manual of English alchemy. It contains the major
writings of Ripley, Norton and Charnock among others.
Though this book is readily available today to people in cheap facsimiles and on the internet, it is rarely
read and certainly mostly misunderstood. This is partly due to the old English, with the many spelling
variations and the use of words whose meanings have changed or become obsolete in modern English.
This makes the work rather opaque to anyone who has not previously studied early English material,
and must be completely infuriating to people whose first language is not English. In order to remedy this,
Adam McLean has devised this study course which leads the reader through most of the material in the
book. Each lesson provides a transcription into modern English together with an analysis and explanation
of the key points made in these key alchemical writings.
For the first time each of the works will be explained line by line, section by section, idea by idea.
Adam McLean allows the work itself to speak its message clearly, rather than adopting the style of most
modern commentators on alchemical texts, who instead of trying to understand the works in themselves,
project their own philosophical or esoteric ideas onto the texts, thus further confusing and burying the
message of the original alchemists. This course will be entirely based on understanding the texts themselves
and not on such external preconceptions.
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