Among occultists, Hermetic writers, modern Templar groups, and conspiracy theorists, Michael Psellos has been imagined as a guardian of occult Hermetic knowledge, the secret founder of the Knights Templar, and a key figure in global conspiracy narratives. This article traces the development of this alternative reception in the West and explores its adoption by Turkish conspiracy theorists who, despite their anti-Western stance, have integrated it into their narratives about the New World Order. The dramatic reconstruction of Psellos’ scholarly pursuits in this modern underground reception has created a ‘double reality’ that diverges radically from academic interpretations of Psellos.

The aim of this article is to present the sources available to the ordinary Turkish citizen for forming an opinion about Byzantium. These sources range from the written (school curricula to newspapers) to the visual (cinema to television), and I categorize them on the basis of a set of criteria such as accessibility, control over the audience, and intellectual depth. I aim to show how non-state actors have been laying the groundwork for a more informed perception of Byzantium. Movies, theatrical productions, and cartoons in humorous magazines satirizing the essentializing view of the Byzantine past through parody, are shown to play a deconstructive role in this process.

This article suggests that a possible source of inspiration for Cavafy's poem ‘Waiting for the barbarians’ can be identified in a passage of the Byzantine historian Niketas Choniates concerning the arrival of German ambassadors at the court of Alexios III in Constantinople in 1196. The context of diplomacy, the city's decadent atmosphere, the emperor's self-humiliation and the unsuccessful ostentation of luxury and royal attire are prominent features linking both texts.