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.
I’ve borrowed this term because it captures what this publication is about: neglected cultural memory, cross-temporal threads, and the re-evaluation of ideas once pushed to the margins.
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
Because this knowledge is too rich to remain buried. Because we need cultural nuance more than ever. And because I’m finally able to return to the work I was born to do.
If this sounds like a place you want to be, welcome.
Who is it for?
Thyrathen is written for anyone curious about the forgotten channels of Greek cultural memory and the forces that shaped how it's been taught, distorted, or ignored:
Scholars curious about Greek continuities
Practitioners working with Greek material
Teachers and educators seeking depth beyond the Classics syllabus
Anyone drawn to myth, ritual, and the bones of culture
What to expect
Long-form essays on Greek folk practices, myth, and symbolism
Fresh translations of source material
Occasional folklore and horror tales in translation
Mythology courses and lectures—some free, some for paid subscribers
Interdisciplinary posts tying Greek material to wider cultural conversations
This is not an occulture or New Age blog. It’s a semi-formal, research-informed, culturally grounded project that is also deeply personal.
My Invitation to you
If you care about nuance, continuity, and cultural repair — if you’ve ever wondered what still lives in the margins of Greek cultural memory — this project is for you.
Subscribe free to follow along. Go paid to gain full access, help sustain the research and help feed my cats!
More stuff
If you’re interested in seeing more of my other work, visit my website here. Find out more about my art here, visit my online art store here, and find out about my books here.
Thank you!
Subscribe free to follow along. Go paid to gain full access and help sustain the research.
I think both your writing and your purpose/intentions are wonderful I read the ‘voces’article 4am one morning and listening to the video clips was aa amazing trip back to my Cypriot childhood . I will definitely pledge when I get to my laptop and look forward to walking some of this journey with you
Huge thanks for this - this is fascinating material, and I'm glad that someone is writing online on it in English.
One of the problems in acknowledging cultural continuity of this sort is a neurosis that exists in Western European scholarship (this is aside from the straightforward racism that Alexiou refers to - the idea that post-classical Greeks aren't "real" Greeks).
Western European scholarship on continuity between pagan and Christian culture headed down a blind alley in the later 19th century and remained there for much of the 20th century. Following scholars like Wilhelm Mannhardt and James Frazer, it became fashionable to see pagan survivals *everywhere*. If you were a middle-class Londoner, you just needed to make a 30 minute train journey into the countryside and you'd see simple peasants practising folk customs that were unchanged from pagan times - allegedly. Morris dancing was a pagan fertility rite. The Green Man was a pagan god. And so on.
This fantasy was very, very popular and very widely believed (it resurfaced recently when King Charles used the Green Man on his coronation invitations). But it has been discredited since at least the 1970s. And not only discredited but *toxic*. If you believe in significant pagan/Christian cultural continuity at the level of folk religion, you must be a moron. That's on old idea that was debunked decades ago. Do you still believe in James Frazer and Margaret Murray? Are you misinformed or just stupid?
So if you get into this subject in Western Europe, you learn very early on that one thing that you must *not* on any account do is argue for substantial pagan/Christian continuities in popular customs. Because people will think that you are an idiot who doesn't know anything.
Transplant that to the study of Greece - on top of the racist prejudice already referred to - and you have a strong incentive for denial that ancient paganism survived in any form into Orthodox culture.