[...] this book is an implicit argument for the rehabilitation of phenomenological experience as a legitimate category of architectural analysis. Adams’ account of the Hagia Sophia’s spatial and optical effects as deliberately engineered states of consciousness points towards a methodology for the study of sacred architecture that takes seriously both the intentionality of designers and the lived experience of those who move through the spaces they create.

Ritual & Epiphany in the Mysteries of Mithras sits naturally alongside Adams’ earlier work as the masculine counterpart to Mystai […]. Together, the two books represent a sustained and serious attempt to recover the experiential core of ancient mystery practice, not as historical reconstruction for its own sake, but as a contribution to understanding the deeper roots of Western esoteric tradition.

I would recommend this publication to anyone with an interest in the tarot, and it works well as both an introduction to the historical, cultural, and spiritual contexts of both the Sola-Busca and Tarot de Marseille. It is a triumph of two passionate and sincere researchers and a genuine benefit to an audience within and without the magical community – perhaps even art critics.

Hagia Sophia Sanctum of Kronos: Spiritual Dissent in an Age of Tyranny is Peter Mark Adams’ third book in a series of writings on classical initiation and its survival into the Renaissance. According to Adams, the Hagia Sophia itself is the incarnation of the most important ideas of Hellenistic theurgy, or spiritual practice wherein identification with, and even possession by one’s chosen devotional deity was the ideal.

A meticulous study of this book will most likely feel like a daydream transporting the reader to the ancient world of the Mysteries and their gods initiated by Adams’s eloquent writing and personal insights supported by beautiful images of the frescoes of the Villa of the Mysteries and other ancient iconographies and artifacts. The functional combination of text and imagery is what makes Mystai such a potent and inspiring book.