Marios Koutsoukos, "Restoring the Ancient Religion: The Theurgic Orthopraxy of Iamblichus" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2026)

July 30, 2026

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“Where is the Church of Miracles?” That question, posed by a modern Greek Orthodox archbishop, is the thread Mario Koutsoukos pulls to make sense of the philosopher Iamblichus. Writing in the late third century, at the tail end of Rome’s “crisis of the third century,” Iamblichus produced a public letter to his former teacher Porphyry—a text now called On the Mysteries—that was nothing less than a manifesto for a religion that actually works. For Iamblichus, religion without efficacious ritual, without visible divine presence, was mere custom. His project was to theorize how ritual could produce direct, verifiable contact with the gods, and in doing so, he reshaped the religious landscape of the late Roman world and, eventually, of Western esotericism.

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What you'll learn

1 (01:44) **Iamblichus and the Third-Century Religious Crisis** - How the political and military crisis of the third century reshaped Roman religion and created the context for Iamblichus’s work.
2 (03:37) **Correcting the Image of Iamblichus as a Fringe Mystic** - Koutsoukos shows that Iamblichus was deeply embedded in elite Roman civic life, not a marginal figure.
3 (04:55) **The Core Debate: Porphyry vs. Iamblichus on Ritual and Human Nature** - The intellectual fight that structures Iamblichus’s *On the Mysteries* turns on two different views of the soul’s relationship to the body.
4 (06:14) **Re-signifying Religion: What Ritual Actually Does** - Iamblichus’s project is not to change existing practices but to redefine what they accomplish and who gets to say how they work.
5 (08:56) **Diocletian’s Vague Restoration and the Fight Over Practice** - Diocletian’s push to restore Roman religion sent clear signals without providing a manual, sparking intense debates about what proper practice meant.
6 (10:17) **Iamblichus’s Social and Political Position** - Koutsoukos explains Iamblichus’s biography and how it positions him as a spokesperson for religious reform.
7 (15:06) **The Letter to Porphyry: A Public Manifesto** - The text *On the Mysteries* is a public letter designed to broadcast a message far beyond its immediate addressee.

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Show Notes

Restoring the Ancient Religion: The Theurgic Orthopraxy of Iamblichus (Palgrave MacMillan, 2026) reconsiders Iamblichus’ Response to Porphyry, Late Antiquity’s seminal work on theurgy, which is often referred to as De Mysteriis. Was this text intended to be more than just a defense of ritualism or a philosophical crossing of metaphysical wits between Porphyry and Iamblichus? This volume examines whether De Mysteriis constituted a manifesto of restoration, a call to resignify and revive a religion that Iamblichus felt was spiraling into barren traditionalism.
Through a nuanced examination of Iamblichus’ theurgy, this book shows the emergence of a sophisticated philosophic-ritualistic system, one designed to reform religious practice through divine epiphanies and direct communication with the gods. Using a thorough textual analysis, this book uncovers crucial distinctions between theurgy and magic and explores the mechanics of divine illumination during theurgic rituals in the context of Iamblichus' intricate hierarchy of spiritual beings. In this system, this book demonstrates, material objects could become vessels of divine power and humans could become interlocutors with the divine itself.

New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review

Marios Koutsoukos received his PhD in Classics from the University of Liverpool, UK. His current research focuses on Late Antique theurgy, hermeticism, Graeco-Egyptian magic, animated statues and the survival of mystery cults beyond the sixth century. He also works as a fiction author, translator and screenwriter.

Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston

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