The present article inquires into the status of the apocryphal text as well as into its relations with the imaginaire social as described by Cornelius Castoriadis in his seminal study The imaginary institution of society. What distinguishes the apocryphal text is its ambivalent relation to the great tradition. By drawing on the figure of amplification, it pretends to complement the semantic horizon of the given tradition, while at the same time it goes beyond it. The marginal text thus becomes the vehicle of an imaginaire apocryphe which is characterised by a particular ambivalence: Always in danger of being marginalized or forgotten, the apocryphal text can yet be subject to an astonishing reappearance in the domain of the literary canon, a re-entry into the imaginaire institué of society.