Mystai
Dancing Out the Mysteries of Dionysos
by Peter Mark Adams
Peter Mark Adams’ Mystai: Dancing out the Mysteries of Dionysos is the only full length, scholarly study of the ritual process of initiation into the mysteries of Dionysos as depicted in the frescoes of Pompeii’s Villa of the Mysteries.
The Dionysian themed frescos of Pompeii’s Villa of the Mysteries constitute the single most important theurgical narrative to have survived in the Western esoteric tradition. No other practitioner account of the ritual process for conducting a mystery rite has survived down to today. The frescoes’ vivid and allusive imagery illuminates both the ritual activity of the participants as well as its esoteric import.
The frescoes, created in the most private rooms of the extensive Roman villa, were never meant to be seen by anyone other than the members of the all-female Bakkhic thiasos who conducted their most secret rites within them. Buried and preserved for posterity by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE, these stunning proto-Renaissance images guide the viewer through the consecutive stages of a theurgic rite of initiation into the mysteries of Dionysos.
Uniquely, these newly restored and, here for the first time, stunningly reproduced images guide the reader through the stages of initiation vividly illuminating the ritual activity.
Taking an interdisciplinary approach, Peter Mark Adams interprets the frescoes through the distinct performative lens of the ritualist drawing on current scholarship across the disparate fields of classical philology; the ritual dress codes of Greco-Roman priestesses; art history; and the comparative ethnography of rites of higher initiation to illumine the significance of the ritual grammar and the phenomenology of ritual participation.
Arising from within the unique interface between Greek and Roman culture in Southern Italy, the frescoes attest to the survival of an unbroken initiatic tradition of mystery rites of Dionysos on the Italian peninsula stretching back to the fifth century BCE.
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Table of Contents
Introduction
I · The Performative Nexus of the Mysteries
Dionysos
Orphism
The mysteries I: Myesis
The cultures of dance I: The Korybantic dance
The mysteries II: Telete
The cultures of dance II: The circular chorus
The mysteries III: Epoptai
The cultures of dance III: The chorus of the stars
The deixis of sacred choral dance
II · The Mysteries in their Campanian Social Milieu
Dionysos in Campania
Dionysian thiasoi and lineage holders
III · Reading the Frescoes’ Implicit Narratives
The Villa of the Mysteries
The rooms and their frescoes
Designing an esoteric narrative
Modes of visuality
Imagistic modes of religion and the theatre of memory
Heterotopias and the interstices of initiatory space
Chronotopic inversion
The frescoes’ exotopic female gaze
IV · The Initiatory Drama of the Mysteries
Reading the frescoes
The North Wall
I · Family group of itinerant initiatrix
II · Ritual of purification
III · The rural idyll
IV · The ‘alarmed woman’
The East Wall
I · The Korybantic scene
II · The epiphany of the gods
On the epiphanies of gods
Monosandalos
Ariadne as protomystês
Ariadne’s thread
III · The initiatory crux
The South Wall
I · Of this men shall know nothing
The role of entheogens in Bakkhic ritual
II · The dance of the bakkhe
III · The robing of the bride
The West Wall
The Domina
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
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38 images, including colour photographs of the restored frescoes
Paperback Edition
192 pages. Printed in full colour on 170 gsm paper.
ISBN: 978-1-912316-12-0
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Press, reviews, endorsements
“…a talismanic and beautifully illustrated tome… a textual and iconographic dreamlike journey into the Dionysian Mysteries… I wholeheartedly recommend that those interested in the Mysteries, both in theory and practice, should indulge in Mystai seeking within every page an epiphany and a celebration of the great god Dionysos immersing oneself into the ritually-centred visuality of the Villa of the Mysteries to generate a beautiful and untamed constellation of theurgic experiences.”
Damon Zacharias Lycourinos for Paralibrum - Read the full review here
Book Review by Foolish Fish - watch on YouTube here
Author Talk by Peter Mark Adams at Watkins Books - watch on YouTube here
Interview with Peter Mark Adams on the Institute for Hermetic Studies podcast - watch on YouTube here
Interview with Peter Mark Adams on the Spirit World Centre channel - watch on YouTube here
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About the Author
Peter Mark Adams is an author, poet, esotericist and professional energy worker specialising in the ethnography and visuality of ritual, sacred landscape, esotericism, consciousness and healing.
Peter’s esoteric non-fiction is published by Scarlet Imprint; non-fiction concerning energy healing and consciousness by Inner Traditions. Peter’s literary prose and poetry has appeared in Corbel Stone Press’ literary journal Reliquiae: Journal of Nature, Landscape & Mythology and the Bosphorus Review of Books. Reviews of esoterically related works have appeared on the dedicated esoteric book review site, Paralibrum.
A range of essays examining other than human encounters have appeared in the peer reviewed journals Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal and The Journal of Exceptional Experiences and Psychology, and are available on Peter’s academia.edu page. With a background in Philosophy from the University of Liverpool, Peter pursues advanced studies on iconology and iconographic; Renaissance art and material culture with the Warburg Institute’s School of Advanced Studies in London.
