Splendor Solis Academy
A place for the Light to shine through
Visit the most beautiful of all Alchemical manuscripts, where Golden illuminations reveal their Mysteries
Splendor Solis, 1582
Enjoy on-line resources and Guide Book introducing the illuminations in wonderful close-up.
Explore a full curriculum of initiatory courses from first beginnings to full Apprenticeship.
Contribute to a branch of a true Alchemical Mystery School with ancient lineage and extensive Archive
Join in! We are 'Pilgrims all', following the Way of the Imaginal, meeting on-line, by post, and in person.
Meet the Alchemical Apprentice Guide
Hallo! I’m Dr Marie Angelo, a scholar of Archetypal Psychology, and a long-term esoteric practitioner of the Western Mystery tradition. For more information and to see an archive of my work and study please also visit www.imaginalstudies.org
I founded the Splendor Solis Academy to provide resources and practical studies for those who are drawn to these most beautiful Alchemical illuminations. Everything you see has been written and taught for twenty plus years, in small groups, conference presentations, a university MA,’Imaginal Studies’ research groups.
In 2019 my Splendor Solis Tarot: Inner Alchemies of Mithraic Light was published. I wanted to share the illuminations with a wider group, and at the same time, set out the Mystery School curriculum of initiatory studies we’ve been exploring all these years – making the Tarot book also our Academy Prospectus (large copies are available only from www.alchimiapublishing.com).
Now, for the 2020’s I’ve been piloting online studies. They begin with a Visitors’ Gallery, so you can take a leisurely long look at the details and hear from the illuminations themselves – after all, I’m not the head of the Academy! In the world of living images, the Animate Sun is Head, at once Principal and key principle of ‘Light shining-through’.
I take the role of Apprentice Guide, bringing groups together in the manner of a pilgrimage, to set off from ‘the Inn of Beginnings’ on travels through imaginal lands. The skills of visionary imagination progressively open what mystics call ‘the eye of the heart’, liberating us from personal fantasising to visit the illuminations on their own radiant ground. Such visits can become a true Apprenticeship in the Alchemical Mysteries of Mithraic Light, ‘secret of all alchemy’, but like all Alchemists, we say festina lente, ‘make haste slowly’… It needs ‘a clear and kindly eye’ to go inward, and so we begin with Gallery Visits and their ‘Secrets of Seeing’.