Books

Introduction
Prologue

Part I · The Golden Chain

Sacred Structure / Ineffable Space
Designers, Architects and Builders
The Rites of Eleusis
The Survival of the Mysteries and their Hereditary Lineage
Plutarch’s School of Advanced Hellenistic Studies
Asclepigenia: The last Eleusinian Priestess
Metaphysics, the Ineffable and Non-Discursivity
The Ladder of Virtues
Mathematics as Contemplative Practice
Geometrical Form, Harmonic and Mathematical Ratios
The Offspring of the Gods
The Face of Tyranny and Spiritual Dissent: Virtue as a political imperative
Alexandria: The last of the Hellenistic teachers
Constantinople: The city as palimpsest and the erasure of the past
Procopius of Caesarea
       The reign of Justinian and Theodora
Ekphrasae, Hidden Transcripts and Countervailing Narratives
Procopius’ Ekphrasis of the Hagia Sophia

Part II · Sacred Landscape/Sacred Architecture

Sacred Landscape
Sacred Architecture
Chôra / Chorós: Performance and participation
Symbola and Sunthemata: The metaphysics of participation
Acheiropoieta: The poetics of participation
Enargeia: The phenomenology of participation
Time and Timing: Astronomy and astrology

Part III · The Immateriality of Stone

The Immateriality of Stone · I
The structural design
The physical architecture
The Immateriality of Stone · II
The decorative scheme
The building’s solstitial alignment
The marble revetment
Poseidon, who governs the world of souls & the winter solstice
The sea of marble
The rivers of the underworld
Titanic forms
The floral meadow
The mirrored dome

Part IV · The Return of the Golden Age of Kronos

The Iconology
The Cycle of Procession
The Cycle of Reversion
The Building’s Thematic Layers
The Return of the Golden Age of Kronos
The Tower of Kronos on the Isles of the Blessed
The Role of the Building

Postscript

Appendix i: Astrological Elective Reading for the Commencement of Construction of the Hagia Sophia in 532 CE by Gamze Güzen
Appendix ii: The Design and Reflective properties of the Original Dome by Harper Feist

A century or more of scholarship dedicated to the building has left one fundamental question unanswered: what overarching theme guided the designer’s ambitious vision as they planned and supervised the creation of this, the largest and most innovative building ever attempted –one that would remain unequalled for a thousand years?
The question arises due to the existence of seven features of the building’s design that are otherwise difficult to account for – and some vital cultural and literary clues that we will deal with in due course. These features cast doubt on the claim that the building, as originally conceived, embodied a specifically Christian theme; and point in an entirely different direction to the source of their inspiration. Our task, then, is to see through history’s discursive accretions and restore the designer’s originary intent – mapping and counter-mapping thestructure, its origins and the meanings ascribed to it. Let’s now briefly reprise these pieces of evidence and use them to guide us to the heart of the building’s underlying metaphysics.
The first fact is a simple one – the building’s longitudinal axis is orientated to the winter solstice – an alignment that begs the question, was this a functional or symbolic alignment, or both? For the winter solstice had considerable import in the Hellenistic world of that day.
The second point is that from its inauguration in the sixth century (in 537 CE) to the ninth century – a period of some 300 years – one of the most distinctive features of the Hagia Sophia was the absence of all Christian figural imagery. Only after the complete redesign and reconstruction of the central dome in 563 CE (26 years after the inauguration of the building) do we encounter evidence of the addition of a simple cross at its apex.1 My contention is that the building’s structural design and decorative scheme nevertheless constitute a distinctive language; our task, therefore, is to seek to understand its syntax and grammar and to use this to recover the designer’s thematic intent, to resurrect the ‘message’ embedded at the heart of the design – a message that has remained occluded for the last fifteen hundred years.
The third issue to attract our attention is the fact that the building’s vast marble floor appears to have been inlaid with book-matched Proconessian marble suggestive of ripples crossing a large body of water. From the earliest days, this feature was remarked upon and employed as a poetic metaphor in ekphrases. What body of water did the designers envisage this feature representing?
Our fourth point, following on from this, is the rather curious – and almost never mentioned – presence (high up, well above head height, on the massive supporting pier facing into the deeply shadowed south gallery) of embedded plaques bearing the emblem of the ancient Hellenic sea god, Poseidon – the only unique, structurally embedded identifying mark in the entire building that appears to date from its earliest days. Was this emblem placed here to provide a ‘key’ – should one be needed – to how the vast sealike floor behind should be ‘read’? In any case, it is a curious device to find in an age in which the emperor, Justinian, was brutally engaged in suppressing traditional Hellenistic beliefs and practices. Although we will discuss the marble revetment shortly, in the present context it is worth noting that on an adjacent face of the same pier the book-matched marble distinctively forms a large, horned goat-like figure – so prominent is it that it has remained a popular feature for centuries. Was this a deliberate or an accidental feature of the decorative design?
Our fifth point is that the vast expanse of the marble floor is traversed by four broad bands of green Thessalian marble (verde antico). Because of the vastness of the floor, from the perspective of someone entering the building, these bands are scarcely visible. They have generally been interpreted as representing rivers; but before jumping to the conclusion that they must represent the four rivers of the biblical Garden of Eden, we should note that the garden of Eden actually had one river that subsequently separated into four named rivers after leaving Eden;4 and in any case such a reading is hardly consistent with the rest of the floor representing a great sea rather than a garden. From an aesthetic perspective, the transverse bands of green marble are arranged asymmetrically across the floor space, are of differing widths and demonstrate no alignment either with any of their surroundings or the columns bordering the floorspace. If these bands are thought to represent rivers, what rivers do they represent?
Our sixth point is that from a practical engineering perspective – that of imparting the maximum stability to the entire structure – the building’s original dome (spanning almost 32 metres) should have been constructed with the steepest possible pitch in order to channel as much of its massive weight as possible down into its four supporting piers. In the event, the designers appear to have opted for the shallowest possible design;5 one in which the weight of the dome would inevitably exert a much greater lateral force than was functionally necessary; thereby increasing the risk of the supporting pillars being pushed apart and threatening the dome with collapse. For them to have placed the viability of the structure at the mercy of such a design highlights an order of priorities other than the merely practical; what were these other priorities?
Our seventh point concerns the variegated, book-matched marble revetment that decorates the vast interior. To explain, book-matching is a technique of slicing a block of marble much as you would slice a loaf of bread. Each resulting panel is numbered and then the front of the first slice and the back of the second slice are polished; this process being repeated throughout the marble block. If the polished sides of the panels are then placed adjacent to one another, the patterns made by the veins running throughout the marble block will give the impression that the panels are mirror images of each other. Now, a comparison of the way in which the designers cut and book-matched the marble revetment with that of the near contemporary San Vitale in Ravenna (the Byzantine capital of Northern Italy) reveals a distinct difference in aesthetic orientation; especially in the light of the fact that this highly specialised work possibly employed the same craftsmen. The book-matched marble revetment of San Vitale, utilising four carefully mounted panels, exhibits harmonious ‘rosetta-like’ patterns. In contradistinction to this, within the second and topmost layers of the Hagia Sophia’s revetment, the book-matched – and ‘framed’– panels combine two carefully chosen, matching panels that exhibit jagged shapes reminiscent of hybrid figures – ‘horned beasts’ and ‘arachnids.’ Clearly a distinct visual scheme underpinned the careful selection and placement of these pictorially framed panels; how do these bizarre images relate to the building’s overall theme?
These seven observations raise an important cultural point: although we respond to the various components of design as embodying functional, symbolicor aesthetic values; how would they have been perceived by the designers themselves? To answer this question we must enter their world and see it, in as much as we can, through their metaphysically-infused vision. Who, then, were the designers; and what mindscape did they inhabit?

Hagia Sophia, Sanctum of Kronos Peter Mark Adams on Glitch Bottle
Platonic Survivals In Sacred Architecture: Hagia Sophia Peter Mark Adams on Rune Soup
Conversations from the Edge Peter Mark Adams discusses Hagia Sophia / Sanctum of Kronos with Mark Stavish
Hagia Sophia / Sanctum of Kronos Peter Mark Adams on Spirit Box
Sacred Art, Architecture, and Hellenistic Mysteries Peter Mark Adams on Coffee & Divination