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. Hagia Sophia as the name implies is about the grand mosque in Istanbul, formerly known as the Church of Holy Wisdom. Starting with the construction of the current building in 532 by Justinian I, Adams takes the reader on a philosophical tour of this UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Now, the emphasis here is on the word philosophical. Adams does for the Hagia Sophia what the mysterious 20th century French alchemist Fulcanelli did for the great French cathedrals – he shows it as more than a place of exoteric worship but as the embodiment of classical wisdom and initiatic traditions. Of course, fortunately for us, Adams does a superior job in several respects in that we know who he is and what his sources are for his reasoning and conclusions – and there is no roasting Antimony or boiling Mercury involved in the path he lays out for us.

Keeping in the style previously laid out in his books The Game of Saturn: Decoding the Sola-Busca Tarocchi (2019) and Mystai: Dancing Out the Mysteries of Dionysos (2017), Hagia Sophia is a detailed look at a complex and difficult topic. This means the reader must already be familiar with the subject matter at hand or be comfortable taking a dive into the deep and of the pool. Words and ideas of the specialist are the order of the day and not the exception. For example, Adams writes:

[…] the Hagia Sophia still engenders a passionate response, exerts the atmosphere peculiar to the massif; imposes upon the visitor by virtue of its sheer scale, its commanding presence; but to enter is to experience another type of space, one quite unlike any other; it is to encounter the natural chiaroscuro of its vast vault […] (p. 9)

and,

Above, from the framed panels of the variegated marble revetment, hybrid figures assert a watchful presence; interspersed by soaring columns of Thessalian Green and Imperial Porphyry that, towering above, morph into involute foliate forms; whilst the light channelled through the vault’s vast emptiness casts intense beams, catching the fabric here to reveal the dazzle of gold tesserae, there the azure glow of the dome’s high sills; reminders of the structure’s intricate geometry, its sculpted forms even enroll the vastness of the illuminating sky to serve them. (p.9)

I had no idea what the word “chiaroscuro” means (it is the contrasting light and shade falling unevenly from a direction) or that Thessalian Green and Imperial Porphyry are not colours but types of stone – so I looked them up. Please note this is just page nine and I am certain that readers will find themselves in a similar situation. This is pleasant, enjoyable, and very informative reading, but it is not particularly easy for someone new to the subject.

But this is both its blessing and curse, we get a crash course in Classical theurgy and sacred architecture at the same time. We acquire our knowledge slowly and with some reverence for the material, and not in a hurried pace like a fast-food drive-thru. This is really high quality research and deserves the reader's attention, and I might even say – devotion to the subject at hand. One reads a book like this because one wants to learn, and that it will make you do.

In our journey Adams takes us through the Hagia Sophia for the purpose of examining seven key areas of architecture and construction. These, according to his thesis, are not simply decorative, or even symbolic as we use the term today, but in fact, are talismanic in nature. That is, the designers and builders of the Hagia Sophia looked upon it as a literal and not symbolic house or dwelling place of metaphysical power. In this manner it becomes a sort of three-, or even four-dimensional “mandala” not unlike what one sees in some of the more elaborate ceremonies of Tibetan Buddhism. That is, instead of a flat two-dimensional representation of the ideas, a physical representation is built, and in this instance, one that is life-size rather than a model or miniature.

This view means, according to Adams, that the building 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. This was conducted through the “hieratic art” whose foundational practice was aimed at the purification of the astral power or body of the initiate.

Adams quotes Hierocles of Alexandria: “Philosophy is united with the art of sacred things since this art is concerned with the purification of the luminous body (augoeides), and if you separate philosophical thinking from this art, you will find that it no longer has the same power.” (p. 26) While such a thought may be interesting from an academic perspective, we must ask, “What does that mean to me today when clearly philosophy and the esoteric arts appear to be further apart than ever?”

To this we see Adams outlining the importance of continuity of lineage in both an historical and aspiritual context as seen in the 6th Century CE when pressure to conform to “imperial Christian” views was increasing.

In esoteric thought, a physical interruption to a lineage does not represent an insuperable problem; since a lineage is conceptualised as the direct relationship – a “golden chain” – obtaining between certain other-dimensional higher order beings and a “group soul” incarnating through successive members of an extended spiritual family that constitutes a “divine race”; esoterically, such a connection is thought to be capable of laying dormant for several generations before subsequently reasserting itself. (p. 30)

Even more importantly, Adams examines Hellenistic theurgy not as a dead science or even something that can be resurrected by devoted disciples seeking the mysteries, but basic truths on how to deal with tyranny – political oppression primarily, but any oppression that seeks to impose itself on the individual. His description of the reign of Justinian in the sixth century and the widespread fear of arrest and self-censorship it produced would have made the Stasi proud, or at least got a nod and a wink from many contemporary idealists and their notions of what it needed to “save” humanity, the planet, or whatever else is the justification for their oppression – making the lessons learned important to us today.

Adams writes:

Given this otherworldly spiritual commitment, the scholarchs and followers of the school of Athens would have felt a spiritual imperative to preserve their system of belief and practices in the face of the imperially sanctioned suppression being increasingly imposed upon them. Indeed their core texts implied just such a responsibility; for the very existence of tyranny had a spiritual dimension – had, as it were, its roots within the sphere of that larger, invisible reality whose ultimate conception was a concept of justice embedded within and defining the cosmic order, wise men tell us, Callicles, that heaven and earth and gods and men are held together by communion and friendship, by orderliness, temperance, and justice (Plato, Gorgias). Tyranny, therefore, is a violation of cosmic law. As we saw earlier, an integral part of the school of Athen’ spiritual path involved an incremental program of ethical development known as the “ladder of virtues.” Having realised a state of theurgical union or henosis, the illumined soul – in line with Plato’s exhortation – would grasp the ethical imperative to descend into successive incarnations and seek out opportunities to contribute towards the spiritual progress of all those open to that ideal on a personal, institutional and political level. (p. 64-65)

These “Hellenic Bodhisattvas” if you will, did not simply attain their illumination and abandon humanity to its ignorance, but from the perspective of their inner awakening, inner wisdom, seek to aid humanity towards a similar existence in greater harmony with their theurgic views of cosmic order. To achieve this, the power of ascent, or initiatic virtue, is both the seed and the fruit of the work undertaken. This is the secret of life itself.

To this end, Adams states that Hagia Sophia was not only constructed according to classical understanding of mechanics and construction, but also according to its ideals of harmony and beauty which in and of themselves are an understanding and expression of metaphysical realities. The temple is a sacred landscape where humanity participates in the divine, and that divine is superior to whatever doctrine may hold the physical deed to the temple at the moment: be it Christian or Muslim – that Hellenic theurgy makes it a living gateway to the classical past. It is an initiatic chamber, a “library in stone,” and talisman all rolled into one. It is – as Fulcanelli suggested in his work The Mystery of the Cathedrals – the Great Work hidden in plain sight, making it the ultimate piece of resistance to metaphysical and political tyranny.

This hidden landscape is ever present and creates a world full of gods. In his works Adams has pointed out the classical path to participating in this intertwined hermetic reality of inner and outer metaphysics. The power of art lies in its power of sympathy, a foundational theory in magic, or “like attracts like” and “like is known by like.” Through art we can experience profound spiritual realities, not abstractly, but very concretely as well as their power to “induce” them in us through dreams, inspiration, or other insights.

When looked at as part of a trilogy, Hagia Sophia is a somewhat more accessible volume than Game of Saturn or Mystai in that many of the symbols and ideas presented can be found in a variety of later Christian churches, and, in part, can be resurrected through understanding and implementing ideas of the power of place such as found in Chinese and Indian schools of placement, or Marsillio Ficino's Three Books on Life. When examined as a stand alone, Hagia Sophia is a detailed introduction to the theory and practice of theurgy for not only the past, but current generation.

‘Hagia Sophia’ by Peter Mark Adams

‘Magic in Merlin’s Realm’ by Francis Young

‘ANARCH’ by Gast Bouschet. Reviewed by Peter Mark Adams.