Introducing Thyrathen
A research journal on Greek folk magic, myth, and folklore
What is Θύραθεν?
The term θύραθεν [thyrathen] was used in Byzantine times to denote learning and topics “outside” Orthodox Christian doctrine, to include pagan and pre-Christian thought.
My work in this area is driven by multiple observations of problematic (some may say colonialist) received wisdom in the discipline of Classics, as well as related fields, in relation to Greek myth, history, and thought. Some of these “problems” relate to translation, others to assumptions regarding continuity of language, culture, and practice within the Greek-speaking milieu during and after the Byzantine era.
There is a wealth of material and modern Greek scholarship on these topics that has been largely ignored or misrepresented in the anglophone bibliography, and mistaken conclusions drawn in my own field of Western Esotericism, among others. In this sense, as Greek scholars, we too, are thyrathen vis-a-vis the academic establishment, with efforts to address such matters frequently misunderstood.
My current critical translation work aims to begin addressing this issue, through an interdisciplinary research approach comprising linguistic, historic, archaeological and anthropological evidence where appropriate, to shed further light on those aspects of Greek history that continue to be only hazily understood. I aim, in time, to produce peer-reviewed articles and conference contributions on these topics.
Why this, why now
Magic in modern Greece was the PhD I didn’t get to do, because I was encouraged in a different direction and ended up specialising in the French Occult Revival.
Nevertheless, it is a phenomenon and topic area that is interwoven throughout my culture, and I have spent many years observing, participating in, and occasionally, studying it.
After several years of intense academic and artistic activity, I was forced into hiatus while family illness took centre stage. Faced with a double bereavement after 6 years of intensive caregiving and newly acquired health issues of my own, I felt the need to drastically rethink my priorities.
I spent a winter gathering and exploring the available material and realised this was a rich, untapped seam of significance to my academic field. My sense is that circumstances have matured and that there is no time like the present.
As I gradually return to my previous beloved activities of writing, teaching, and making art, Thyrathen is a semi-formal vehicle and initial point of reference for me to begin sharing my findings and experience, and hopefully, to begin building community interest in a topic that I for one, find utterly fascinating.
Noting a significant surge of interest in diverse neglected, or poorly understood cultures, especially in the context of decolonising academic understandings of cultures hitherto subjected to Eurocentric or West-centric perspectives, this seems the ideal time to begin discussing neglected Greek topics that belong in this conversation.
It is my perspective that Greek culture and material has been severely mishandled within most academic disciplines, with the notable exceptions of Hellenic and Byzantine Studies, both niche fields doing important work that is not sufficiently diffused into neighbouring disciplines.
These are some of the observations that have led me to explore this area, and to create a vehicle through which to share them. In time, these will mature into proper studies to be shared in the appropriate venues. This is a starting point, and a place for dialogue.
Who is it for?
Thyrathen is for scholars and lay readers interested in Greek thought in any shape or form, but it is also for esoteric practitioners working with Greek material, and especially educators and thought leaders in that milieu.
What to expect
I am launching this site as I work on a newly commissioned critical translation of Horapollo’s Hieroglyphica, with several other projects in the wings. I plan to post snippets and ‘aha-moments’ from my research into terms and concepts drawn from the translation, alongside earlier work of related interest.
I am currently studying a range of untranslated pre-modern Greek texts on magic, dream interpretation, and theology, and aim to build a body of work exploring and sharing these in coming years.
I am also working with collections of folk tales from around the Greek countryside, some collected in the 1870s. There is good modern Greek scholarship on these which forms a starting point for my own exploration. I will be sharing some of these folktales in translation for the enjoyment of readers; formal studies will follow in due course.
I also intend to post explanations of commonly misunderstood factual and mythical concepts. Some of the topics on my current draft list include:
What is Greek folk Orthodoxy? How is it differentiated from mainstream religion?
Samples of material: Folk incantations, traditions, rituals
Orthodox theology vis-a-vis established ‘esoteric’ material (such as the Hermetica)
What is Greek, what is Roman, and why specifying this matters (hint: Ovid’s version of the Greek myths garbles their sociocultural substrate; studies that do not take this into account then misrepresent the Greek context altogether. This needs to be corrected).
Greek sacred art and its role in religious and secular life
Secularity in Greek thought
When heroes became saints: the heroic demigods and their transformation
The role of personification in Greek religious thought
On the evolution of Greek language
Working with Greek manuscripts
Why philology isn’t enough: issues in the Classics
Perceptions of time in Greek magical thinking
Greek folk saints and their role in everyday life
Material culture: The secret language of embroidery and carving
Herms and roadside shrines
Household gods: Household saints
Lay exorcisms and the evil eye
Herbal lore
Folk magic for baptisms, weddings and funerals
My hope is to gradually inspire dialogue with others fascinated by these topics, building towards more solid discussions that may change the way we explore and discuss these topics.
Courses
I am also using this venue to share video lectures on related topics: I ran two highly successful courses on Greek myth and sacred art a few years ago, and will be making them available again through this site. In time I may also develop further courses relating to the new areas I am exploring. View available and free lectures here.
Why subscribe
At present all posts will be free, as they will be fairly short (it will all be in the book!)
However, as time and health allow, I hope to also write more in-depth essays, produce video blogs, and share annotated sections from my translations. Access to these will be limited to protect intellectual rights and to ensure the material reaches only those with a professional interest in the material.
As this is all time consuming and reflects many hours of intensive research, I will be grateful for any support. At this point, ‘Pledging” simply means you’re encouraging me to carry on and find my posts worthwhile! But even if you just subscribe for free (which is fine!), please let me know what you’re enjoying; it will help me tweak the material accordingly, and it’s nice to know people enjoy what you write!
When you click this button:
it will give you the Free option, where you can follow public posts, or two Pledge options which will not charge you now, but will allow you to become a founding member once I launch the paid version, and give you access to more in depth work as well as live chats when these do launch. You can always opt out of these at any time. And if not, you’re still very welcome - feel free to reach out, repost, or join the conversation!
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More stuff
If you’re interested in seeing more of my other work, visit my website here, or check out my Youtube channel where you’ll find several free lectures. Find out more about my art here, visit my online art store here, and find out about my books here.
Thank you!
Disclaimer
Some readers may question whether I am adopting an ideological or political agenda: I say clearly that I am not, and that the purpose of this journal is to provide detailed, and importantly, critical documentation of every claim made here, with appropriate scholarly support.
My aim is to bring this rich seam of tradition and practice to light across the language barrier, and to address glaring errors and lacunae in the bibliography from a critical scholarly perspective and share it with my academic field and the interested lay reader. I am primarily a cultural historian specialised in esoteric thought, but I am also sensitive to linguistic, ethnographic, anthropological, and sociological perspectives and will be aiming to build these into my formal work. Disciplinary boundaries can often hinder mutual understanding, and it is my hope to bridge some of these.
I largely take my lead from distinguished Classicist and Hellenist Prof. Dr. Margaret Alexiou as follows (emphasis mine):
I wish to challenge the appropriation of “Greek” as defining only the ancient part of the tradition, to the exclusion of its medieval and modern inheritors; to question the validity of universalist, archetypalist, or reductionist theories; and to replace one-way Hellenist perspectives on continuity with a dynamic understanding of interaction, with across various stages of Greek and with contiguous cultures. In other words we must look forward, backward, and sideways.
Margaret Alexiou, After Antiquity: Greek Language, Myth, and Metaphor (2018, Cornell University Press), 3.
“Continuity” is currently an unfashionable term among a wide range of Greek scholars of different persuasions… The case against continuity has been argued most forcefully by historians, who have pointed out that comparisons between ancient and modern Greece omit or distort evidence for fundamental changes during the Byzantine and Ottoman periods. Anthropologists too, reacting against E. B. Tylor’s “survivalism” in a justifiable validation of Modern Greece for its own sake rather than because of its links to the past, have tended to reject diachronic comparison in favour of intensive synchronic field analysis, although the past decades have seen a trend toward diachronic reintegration of history and anthropology. Synchronic perspectives have also characterised structuralist and generative studies in linguistics. While this emphasis may have enhanced the status of both Byzantine and modern Greek studies within each of these three disciplines, it has - unwittingly, perhaps - played into the hands of those classicists whose vision extends beyond antiquity only when Greek is not concerned. It has also facilitated the compartmentalisation of Greek studies into three discrete categories - ancient, Byzantine, and modern - with concomitant sneers against trespassers, thereby affording others the excuse to marginalise or trivialise postclassical Greek. Surely there is room to pursue both synchronic and diachronic approaches side by side, so long as they take account of the processes of change?
The case for continuity has been dormant, associated with “romantic Hellenism,” a product of nineteenth-century nationalism and survivalist theories of culture. Proponents have included on the one hand, Greek folklorists and linguists intent on proving their claim to the ancient heritage and on disproving the pernicious racism of nineteenth-century attacks on the purity of the medieval and modern Hellenes, and, not the other, European and American classical scholars of allegedly romantic or philhellenic leanings. While their various ideological baggages need no longer be taken on board, there is no reason to reject all their results, particularly in the areas of language, religion, and mythology… The painstaking work of these scholars does not have to be brushed aside for us now to develop more sophisticated models for cultural transmission, taking account of the complex interaction between oral and written forms which has operated ever since literacy has existed…. In order to edit any classical text, the critic must first become familiar with the changing forms of language known to the Byzantine scribes and scholars who transmitted them. Any form of Greek from any period may be relevant to our understanding of a given text…
The major question to be addressed concerns the kind of “continuity” we are talking about, and this is where politics come into play. Adherents of survivalism and discontinuity alike rely on a static or idealised model of “Greece.” If such notions are rejected as a largely modern fabrication, then “non-Greek” influences can be assessed at each stage of cultural transmission without undermining the integrity of the language and culture as a whole, becoming the focus of inclusion and interaction rather than exclusion.
Margaret Alexiou, After Antiquity: Greek Language, Myth, and Metaphor (2018, Cornell University Press), 13.
So please feel free to critique according to scholarly convention, which means, do your homework properly first, both in terms of what I am saying and the evidence I am providing, as well as the relevant scholarly literature. Do please bear in mind, however, that firstly this is a semi-formal research diary, not an academic journal.
Secondly, I’m probably already working on it and may ask you to wait for the full article rather than unpack it in a comment. Posts here are as much a way for me to “write through” the topics I am exploring, as a place to share insights, spark dialogue and build community.
Therefore, though I expect queries and welcome critiques, I ask for this to be read as intended, and for criticisms to be intellectually rigorous, but expressed according to conventions of common courtesy.
I categorically will not tolerate accusations of political agendas. My agenda is one of intellectual integrity in fields where historical errors and lacunae require addressing, and disciplines whose own boundaries have distorted accurate understanding.
I’ll be pledging as soon as I can get onto Substack on the web. The app which is what I most often use wouldn’t let me.
Every bit of this sounds absolutely fascinating to me. I followed the link to your site too, and your art is incredible - you have experimented with so many different styles. I am looking forward to reading your content and going on an educational journey through the history of my adopted land (or rather, the land that adopted me).