I was honoured to have recently been invited to the Meeting in the Circle study group led by the wonderful Sorita D’Este, to give a lecture on some of my recent work. The lecture was delivered on March 8th, and the recording is available to subscribers.
Here’s the abstract and a couple of slides and links to the material I based the lecture on!
Discovering the Avatars of the Gods: Not abandoned, but transformed
It is often thought that the pagan gods of the Mediterranean were abandoned sometime in late antiquity as Christianity predominated, whether through choice or coercion.
What is less understood is how much pagan belief, practice, and worship survived, not in secret, but through subversive integration within the new religion itself. This is most visible in folk traditions and documents from late antique and medieval periods bemoaning the powerful cults and practices still surviving throughout the rural areas of the Byzantine empire (now Greece, the Balkans, and parts of Asia Minor).
This is most visible in the folk practices and folktales of these regions, which remain well established living traditions. In this talk, Sasha Chaitow draws on her experience of life in Greece and her scholarly research to reveal the unusual strategies allowing the survival of pagan practice and worship, often with the conscious tolerance of the official faith.
Despite their syncretisation with Orthodox Christianity, core elements of cyclical rituals, magical practices, divination, use of amulets and spells remain common knowledge. She makes particular reference to avatars of much-loved deities, including Hekate, to reveal the living traditions that never left the Mediterranean.
https://thyrathen.substack.com
