Peter Mark Adams
Peter Mark Adams is an author, poet and essayist specialising in the ethnography and visuality of ritual, sacred landscape, esotericism, consciousness and healing.
“A remarkably well-written, researched and argued book. I couldn’t say I am already convinced of all of its claims, but the work of both authors raises the bar for the research on the tarot & its history. A work that cannot be ignored.”
By PETER MARK ADAMS
Two Esoteric Tarots
Scarlet Imprint, 2023
Two Esoteric Tarots is the record of a fascinating conversation between Peter Mark Adams and Christophe Poncet, convened and with a foreword by César Pedreros. They compare their journeys of discovery into two wildly contrasting tarot decks, the dark ritual landscape of the elite Sola-Busca tarocchi, as revealed in The Game of Saturn, and the luminous and popular Tarot de Marseille, the subject of the forthcoming Tarot of Marsilio.
Scholarly research has firmly maintained that the tarot had no spiritual, esoteric or divinatory dimension before the mid-eighteenth century. However, working independently, Peter Mark Adams and Christophe Poncet have shattered that consensus with their original research, providing abundant evidence that pushes back the date of an esoteric tradition – concealed in plain sight – by almost three centuries.
Readers of The Game of Saturn will find Peter Mark Adams’ most recent thinking here, as he decodes the ritual grammar of a performative theurgy which encompasses the grotesque, the abject and the antinomian in service of a draconian deity and Renaissance statecraft.
Parallel to this, Christophe Poncet discovered Platonic philosophy embedded in the imagery and construction of the Tarot de Marseille. A revelation which propelled him into a profound investigation, unearthing connections between the Florentine aristocracy, the Medici family, Marsilio Ficino, Botticelli, and the heretical philosophical underpinnings of the Italian Renaissance.
When brought into dialogue, Adams and Poncet’s insights converge, to illuminate and fundamentally change our understanding of the tarot, and the submerged currents of the Renaissance, both dark and light, which formed Western esotericism.
A benchmark text for students of the tarot, symbolism, theurgy and performative ritual from two of the leading researchers into the hidden legacy of the tarot.
::By PETER MARK ADAMS
Hagia Sophia Sanctum of Kronos:
Spiritual Dissent in an Age of Tyranny
Scarlet Imprint, 2023
‘Hagia Sophia / Sanctum of Kronos’ traces a journey across the Hellenistic world as its classical culture teeters on the brink of extinction at the hands of religious zelots.
The sack of the sanctuary of the Mysteries of Eleusis triggered a centuries long effort to preserve its metaphysical and initiatory traditions for posterity.
Tracking this great endeavour, executed in the face of severe persecution, takes us on a journey through the fifth and sixth centuries CE; from the sanctuary of Eleusis to Athens and on to Alexandria before crossing to Asia Minor and, ultimately, to Constantinople. En route we encounter some of humanity’s greatest spiritual teachers.
In Constantinople, under the nose of the authorities, one of the world’s greatest buildings, the Hagia Sophia, was erected based upon astrological timing and embodying a sacred architecture that captured the living essence of the Hellenistic spiritual tradition; a supreme expression of spiritual defiance and dissent in an age of tyranny.
“
.”Another Master Work by Peter Mark Adams! As one in search of the lost consciousness technologies of the Ancients, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Peter reveals the multidimensionality of the human being by skillfully mapping the energy field of intelligence supported by ground-breaking scientists such as Rupert Sheldrake. His rational and logical methodology delivers a solid melding of scientific theories and energy healing that questions the terms of existence in which the scientific world operates. What makes this book a page-turner is the collection of real-life energy healing cases.
Packed with mystery and wonderment, perhaps the most powerful thing about this book is that Peter provides hope by expanding what is possible on one’s own healing journey.
By PETER MARK ADAMS
The Power of the Healing Field: Energy Medicine, PSI Abilities, and Ancestral Healing
Explores how energy healing works through multilayered and interconnected fields of consciousness
Sharing remarkable cases of healing and transformation from more than 20 years of professional energy healing work, Peter Mark Adams illustrates the role of transpersonal fields of consciousness in healing a range of issues, from inherited family and ancestral problems to past lives, near-death experiences, and spirit attachment.
- Illustrates the role of transpersonal fields of consciousness in healing a range of issues, from inherited family and ancestral problems, to past lives and womb trauma, to near-death experiences, merged identities, and spirit attachment
- Shares remarkable cases of healing and personal transformation from the author’s more than 20 years of energy healing work, as well as experiences from other gifted healers, psychics, and shamans
- Provides diagrams of the human energy body, the spectrum of states of awareness, the multilayered fields of consciousness, and the psycho-energetic dynamics of the transformation process
By PETER MARK ADAMS
Mystai: Dancing out the Mysteries of Dionysos
Scarlet Imprint, 2019
The frescoes’ vivid and allusive imagery illuminates both the ritual activity of the participants as well as its esoteric import.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 paperback edition of Peter Mark Adams’ Mystai is now in stock and available from Scarlet Imprint website. Beautifully printed on 170 gsm paper, the imagery comes vividly to life with Adams’ elucidation of the ritual dynamics illustrated in the frescoes.
First glimpse of the fine edition of Mystai by Peter Mark Adams.
Three quarter bound in purple goatskin with marbled boards and endpapers.
Mystai- Dancing out the Mysteries of Dionysos by Peter Mark Adams was officially launched at Treadwell’s !
We are delighted with its design by Alkistis Dimech.
We are blessed by the friendship and collaboration of Peter Grey, Alkistis Dimech and Paul Holman. Thank you guys!
Thank you Christina and all of Treadwells staff, thank you Nevra Topcu who recorded the whole event, thank you Paul Bolding, Juliet Sharman-Burke, Karsten of Watkins Books, Ever Orchid, and all of the friends and readers who came and joined us for the launch party.
And thank you Rambo, for being around!
By PETER MARK ADAMS
The Game of Saturn
Scarlet Imprint, 2019
The Game of Saturn is the first full length, scholarly study of the enigmatic Renaissance masterwork known as the Sola-Busca tarot. It reveals the existence of a pagan liturgical and ritual tradition active amongst members of the Renaissance elite and encoded within the deck. Beneath its beautifully decorated surface, its imagery ranges from the obscure to the grotesque; we encounter scenes of homoeroticism, wounding, immolation and decapitation redolent of hidden meanings, violent transformations and obscure rites.
For the first time in over five hundred years, the clues embedded within the cards reveal a dark Gnostic grimoire replete with pagan theurgical and astral magical rites. Careful analysis demonstrates that the presiding deity of this ‘cult object’ is none other than the Gnostic demiurge in its most archaic and violent form: the Afro-Levantine serpent-dragon, Ba’al Hammon, also known as Kronos and Saturn, though more notoriously as the biblical Moloch, the devourer of children.
Conveyed from Constantinople to Italy in the dying years of the Byzantine Empire, the pagan Platonist George Gemistos Plethon sought to ensure the survival of the living essence of Neoplatonic theurgy by transplanting it to the elite families of the Italian Renaissance. Within that violent and sorcerous milieu, Plethon’s vision of a theurgically enlightened elite mutated into its dark shadow – a Saturnian brotherhood, operating within a cosmology of predation, which sought to channel the draconian current to preserve elite wealth, power and control. This development marks the birth of an ‘illumined elite’ over three centuries before Adam Weishaupt’s ‘Illuminati.’ The deck captures the essence of this magical tradition and constitutes a Western terma whose talismanic properties may serve to establish an initiatory link with the current.
This work fully explores the historical context for the deck’s creation against the background of tense Ferrarese-Venetian diplomatic intrigue and espionage. The recovery of the deck’s encoded narratives constitutes a significant contribution to Renaissance scholarship, art history, tarot studies and the history of Western esotericism.