This is the central page for the old website presenting various portions of the priestcraft of Dionysos Thriambos, a minister of New AEon Gnosticism. Many of the original contents are still linked from this page, but the priest Dionysos Thriambos has been consecrated as the bishop T Polyphilus, and old and new materials will gradually be reoriented to the new main page of the site Vigorous Food & Divine Madness. Please update any links and bookmarks accordingly.

"What is an Adytum, anyway?"

From Mackey's Revised Encyclopedia of Freemasonry: The most retired and secret part of the ancient temples, into which the people were not permitted to enter, but which was accessible to priests only, was called the adytum. Hence the derivation of the word from the Greek privative prefix a, and duein, to enter = that which is not to be entered. In the adytum was generally to be found a TafoV, or tomb, or some relics or sacred images of the god to whom the temple was consecrated. It being supposed that temples owed their origin to the superstitious reverence paid by the ancients to their deceased friends, and as most of the gods were men who had been deified on account of their virtues, temples were, perhaps, at first only stately monuments erected in honor of the dead. Thus the interior of the temple was originally nothing more than a cavity regarded as a place for the reception of a person interred, and in it was to be found the soroV, or coffin, the TafoV, or tomb, or, among the Scandinavians, the barrow, or mound grave.

In time, the statue or image of a god took the place of the coffin; but the reverence for the spot as one of peculiar sanctity remained, and this interior part of the temple became, among the Greeks, the shkoV, or chapel, among the Romans the adytum, or forbidden place, and among the Jews the kodesh hakodashim, the Holy of Holies [Sanctum Sanctorum]. "The sanctity thus acquired," says Dudley (Naology, page 393), "by the cell of interment might readily and with propriety be assigned to any fabric capable of containing the body of the departed friend, or the relic, or even the symbol, of the presence or existence of a divine personage." Thus it has happened that there was in every ancient temple an adytum or most holy place. The adytum of the small temple of Pompeii is still in excellent preservation. It is carried some steps above the level of the main building, and, like the Jewish sanctuary, is wi thout light.

From Mackenzie's Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia: That which is inaccessible or impenetrable; it is a word descriptive of the holy of holies in the temple of Jerusalem, and of all other temples of ancient worship. Adyta existed in all temples in Egypt, and usually consisted of three blocks or pillars, answering to those of Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty; also representing the mysterious Triad of the Deity. In the Druidical mysteries the adytum was especially sacred, and in Britain the Adytum, or Lodge, was actually supported by three stones or pillars, by passing under which the aspirant was supposed to obtain for himself regeneration. In the Hindu system the arrangement was the same, the names the same, and three human heads crowned the pillars. In the more esoteric rites of Masonry, the adytum is considered to be the heart and conscience of a man, always to be held inviolable, and that sacred solitude in which he can commune with the Shekinah [divine presence or LV X]; which if any man behold he shall surely die. Three ideas enter in to the Divine Word; three form the adytum; three officers rule a Lodge.