YSEE was founded in Athens on 17 June 1997, at a point when small circles of Greeks had already begun independently reviving worship of the Olympian gods through study of Homer, Hesiod, the Orphic Hymns and the surviving archaeological and epigraphic record of ancient cult. The council's founding gave that scattered revival a single public and legal face, one able to negotiate with the Greek state, coordinate festival calendars across separate practising groups, and represent Hellenismos in the country's ongoing, often difficult, public conversation about what counts as a legitimate religion under a constitution that names Orthodox Christianity as the prevailing faith. Since its founding YSEE has been the most consistently visible Hellenic polytheist body in Greece, though it operates alongside other, smaller reconstructionist groups that do not all share its specific positions or its preferred name for the religion.