Adam McLean (born 7 March 1948, Glasgow) is a Scottish writer, editor, and publisher who has done more than any other individual to make alchemical texts and imagery accessible to a modern English-speaking audience. John Granger named him as one of the three figureheads of modern alchemical influence alongside Carl Jung and Titus Burckhardt. McLean accessed the wealth of alchemical manuscripts in the Ferguson Collection at Glasgow University Library, the Young Collection, and the John Read Collection at the University of St Andrews, building from these resources a publishing and editorial project that has shaped the field for over four decades.

McLean's editorial career began in 1978 with the founding of the Hermetic Journal, which he published until 1992, and the Magnum Opus Hermetic Sourceworks series, which has produced 55 editions of key source texts of the Hermetic tradition through 2018. The series includes landmark editions of the Rosary of the Philosophers, the Splendor Solis, the Mutus Liber, and — most significant for Atalanta Fugiens scholarship — Joscelyn Godwin's 1987 edition of the Atalanta Fugiens with the first complete recording of the fifty fugues. McLean's role as publisher of Godwin's edition made him instrumental in bringing Maier's work to a new generation of readers and performers.

In 1995 McLean founded The Alchemy Website (originally at levity.com/alchemy, now alchemywebsite.com), which became the most comprehensive online resource for alchemical texts, images, and encyclopedic information. The site's Atalanta Fugiens section hosts the English translation from British Library MS Sloane 3645, transcribed collaboratively by Clay Holden (emblems 1-10), Hereward Tilton (11-34), and Peter Branwin (35-50). In 1999, McLean hand-coloured all fifty emblem plates, creating a vivid chromatic interpretation that highlights allegorical details invisible in the monochrome originals — the alchemical colors of nigredo (black), albedo (white), citrinitas (yellow), and rubedo (red) become literally visible in his painted versions.

McLean's approach to alchemy is distinctive in combining scholarly editing with artistic practice. He treats alchemical images not merely as illustrations of textual ideas but as autonomous symbolic compositions that reward visual meditation — an approach that aligns with Maier's own multi-sensory pedagogy. His colouring of the AF plates is itself a form of interpretive scholarship, requiring decisions about which elements should be red (sulphurous), which white (mercurial), and which gold (perfected) — decisions grounded in alchemical theory.

For this site, McLean's contributions are threefold. His Magnum Opus series published the Godwin edition that remains the standard English-language reference. His Alchemy Website made the AF texts freely available online for the first time, democratizing access to a work previously confined to rare book rooms. And his hand-coloured plates offer a visual interpretation that complements the black-and-white scholarship of De Jong and Tilton with chromatic insight into the alchemical color symbolism encoded in Merian's engravings.