The UK’s Scarlet Imprint publishing house have opened pre-ordering for Mystai by Peter Mark Adams. The work is an important contribution to our understanding of the rites of initiation into the Dionysian mystery cults.
The publisher’s newsletter says:
“In landscape format (210 x 290 mm), 192 pp, Mystai is illustrated with 38 images including full colour photographs of the restored frescoes. A précis, full contents and an excerpt from the text, as well as details of the editions, can be found on our website.
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“The Dionysian themed frescoes 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 recent restoration of the frescoes has provided a fresh opportunity to elucidate theritual processes hidden in plain sight. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, Peter Mark Adams draws on current scholarship on dithyrambic performance; the ritual dress of Greco-Roman priestesses; classical philology and the comparative ethnography of rites of higher initiation. With the same attention to detail which he demonstrated in The Game of Saturn, Adams reveals the stages of initiation encoded and accomplished in dance, gesture, ordeal and sign.
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“Pre-order is for the limited standard and fine editions. The standard edition is due from the printer on the week commencing 23rd September, with the fine edition to follow in a further six weeks. A paperback edition will be available in due course.
“There will be a launch party on Saturday 19th October at Treadwell’s Bookshop in London.”
pre-order here: https://scarletimprint.com/publications/mystai
