The Wound and the Wonder: Why I Had to Write This Book Free
I do not think this book began as an argument. It began, rather, as a wound so ordinary that at first I could not name…
Some decisions are made to look like facts.
A test score. A ranking. A market. A verdict passed on a seven-year-old. They arrive wearing the face of measurement — neutral, settled, simply how things are — and that face is exactly what makes them obeyed.
Every one of them was chosen by someone, for a reason, and could have been chosen otherwise. Seeing the choice inside the fact is the whole of it.
What is it serving?
How
One question, at four heights
Written once and published in thirty-three languages, so a child in Ljubljana and an editor in Lisbon meet the same question.
Wonder
Ages 6 to 11
The feeling that there is more than they are being shown.
Learn
For students
The science of their own minds, beginning with the news that intelligence was never a fixed quantity.
Thrones of the Invisible
The argument in full
How power stopped wearing crowns, and so stopped being argued with.
News
Every month
The news read past the frame it is reported in — what is presented as inevitable, who decided it, and what it serves — as a monthly paper in your own language and country.
33
languages
106
countries covered
7
books, in every language
98
chapters, tales and stories
33 chapters of the book, 20 Learn tales and 45 Wonder stories — written once and published in every language edition.
About the author
Jan Verellen
Nine years at university and two master's degrees taught him one thing: learning is a craft, not a verdict.
Thrones of the Invisible traces the history of divine power in search of a vision for a better tomorrow. From it grew two companions — Learn, its tales for older readers, and Wonder, illustrated stories for children — so the same thread reaches every age.
A book by Jan Verellen
Thrones of the Invisible
The history of divine power, from the first altars to the algorithm: how every age found a new way to make its own choices look like nature, and what it costs to stop noticing. Thirty-three chapters, ending on a vow rather than a verdict.
33 chapters · The first 2 are free to read
Start anywhere — the first two are free
The first two stories of every series are free to read.
Begin reading
All 33 chaptersWhat Is Divine Power? Free
Words, it seems to me, can outlive the worlds that first gave them force. They pass from age to age like worn coins, their images half-erased but still…
Fire, Sky, and the First Altars: The Dawn of Divine Power
When I try to follow the history of divine power back toward its beginning, I do not begin with kings, scriptures, or temples. I begin with people…
Cities of God and King: Divine Power in the Ancient Civilizations
As I leave behind the first altars, graves, and sacred landscapes of earlier human life, I find myself walking toward the stone geometry of the earliest…
The One Above All: The Birth of Monotheism and Universal Divine Power
There is, to my mind, a kind of night that belongs especially to the desert. It is not the soft night of forests, where leaves and water seem to murmur…
Virtue, Law, and the Rational Empire: Divine Power in Classical Antiquity
Even after tracing the rise of monotheism, I find I must return to the painted colonnades of the Greek world. Historically and imaginatively, classical…
Learn
Twenty tales about the mind that will not sit still
How learning actually works — growth and neuroplasticity, memory and sleep, stress, failure as feedback, the weight of praise — told as stories rather than lessons. Each one is tied to a chapter of the book, and each one ends where a verdict usually begins.
Wonder
Fifty-two illustrated stories for ages 6 to 11
The same thread, made small enough to carry: every one is about a person turning out to be more than anyone guessed. Watercolours on every page, and at the end of each story something to try yourself.
About THRINV
Why any of this exists
A small publisher in Tallinn with one question: who decided this, and could it be otherwise?
Read more →Schools
A seat for every pupil
One class or a whole school, at €1 per pupil per year — every tale and story in the pupils' own language.
For schools →Newsletter
Have it arrive instead
Each new article, in your language, by email. No charge, and one click to stop.
Sign up →For AI assistants
The Invisible Lens
THRINV runs an MCP server — the standard by which an AI assistant connects to an outside source. Point your assistant at it and it reasons with Thrones of the Invisible instead of about it: reading a text or a policy through the book's lens, building a classroom lesson on any topic, or turning the diagnostic on itself. Every claim is grounded in a real passage and cited by chapter.
Three calls are free.
For the trade
Sell it, or print it in your own pages
Booksellers
Every title, in thirty-three languages
Thrones of the Invisible, Learn and the five Wonder volumes are printed on demand and shipped worldwide, so there is no stock to carry and nothing to return. Trade orders go through the BookVault shop, at the trade discount.
Newspapers and magazines
Exclusive rights to your market
About one article a day, and no other publisher in your language and country is licensed while you hold it. You publish 48 hours before anyone else — including us — and you get the English original with a working translation in your language. The first month is free.
Read every word
The first two stories of each series are free to read. THRINV membership unlocks the whole book, every story in Wonder & Learn and three news articles a month, for €5 a month; THRINV News adds the monthly edition in your own language and country, for €15 a month.