Photo: Daniel Laidler, October 2026 Whenever I describe hagioptasia, I can anticipate the objections. Isn’t it just awe? Or nostalgia? Or beauty? Haven’t we already got words for these experiences?…

What often feels like longing for a place may really be longing for an elusive perception A 1980s postcard from Westward Ho!, North Devon. Nostalgia is usually described as a warm affection for the…

There’s a feeling you’ve had at the Grand Canyon, near a celebrity, or falling in love: a sense of sacred weight radiating outward. Psychologists now have a name for it—hagioptasia—and evidence for ho...

神圣感来自物品本身！这个让你心跳加速的“神秘光环”，其实是大脑在0.3秒内伪造出来的信号！ 你明明知

There’s a feeling you’ve had at the Grand Canyon, near a celebrity, or falling in love: a sense of sacred weight radiating outward. Psychologists now have a name for it—hagioptasia—and evidence for ho...

A field that systematically avoids its central question is, by definition, bullshitting Mike Nelson – The Asset Strippers (2019) at Tate Britain In August 2019, I had a public Twitter exchange with…

What hagioptasia theory reveals about the psychological foundations of aesthetic experience Francis Alÿs The Ambassador 2001 © Francis Alÿs In “The Art Question”, Nigel Warbur…

Longing, sacredness, and the feeling of significance “As I stood beside a flowering currant bush on a summer day there suddenly arose in me without warning, and as if from a depth not of year…

Hagioptasia is a proposed perceptual mode underlying experiences such as sacredness, glamour, nostalgia, artistic profundity and eeriness.

A theoretical development This work develops the theoretical framework of hagioptasia, extending it through the concept of ‘mystique decay’. The argument presented is that mystique deca…

Context transforms everything. The same object, two entirely different experiences of meaning. Have you ever stood in a gallery, quietly contemplating a pile of industrial debris, a looping video, …

Context transforms everything. The same object, two entirely different experiences of meaning. Have you ever stood in a gallery, quietly contemplating a pile of industrial debris, a looping video, …

Ancient pagan beliefs help to reveal the mind’s power to create meaning and illusion ‘The Sacred Grove, Beloved of the Arts and the Muses’ (c.1885) by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes The Roma…

A field that systematically avoids its central question is, by definition, bullshitting Mike Nelson – The Asset Strippers (2019) at Tate Britain In August 2019, I had a public Twitter exchange with…

A field that systematically avoids its central question is, by definition, bullshitting Mike Nelson – The Asset Strippers (2019) at Tate Britain In August 2019, I had a public Twitter exchange with…

Your ancestors survived because they felt dread in ambiguous situations. This system still runs. Even my most rational friends—people who dismiss astrology and mock paranormal investigators—will qu…

Your ancestors survived because they felt dread in ambiguous situations. This system still runs. Even my most rational friends—people who dismiss astrology and mock paranormal investigators—will qu…

A Nightmare in Neuroscience: Dr. Barrett’s zombie ideas rise again! This Halloween, let’s delve into the truly terrifying concept of ‘zombie ideas’ in psychology. These aren…

The Psychology of Why Art Can Seem So Deeply Meaningful Magdalena Abakanowicz’s Embryology (1978–80) at Tate Modern. Photo by Adam Fagen, 2018 Have you ever stood before a celebrated art…

This article proposes hagioptasia (Greek: hagios = holy, optasia = vision) as a foundational psychological construct describing the perceptual tendency to experience stimuli as possessing extraordinar...

In her book ‘How Emotions Are Made’, Lisa Feldman Barrett proposes a theory that challenges ‘conventional wisdom’ regarding the origins of human emotion. She argues that emotions are not innate, bu…

I was in my parents’ back garden a few years ago when I heard a blackbird singing in the old apple tree. Suddenly I was seven years old again, and that same patch of grass felt bathed in this…

“When you see somebody on the street, they can really have an aura. But then when they open their mouth, there goes the aura. ‘Aura’ must be until you open your mouth.” Andy Warhol

A Guide to Spiritual Experience – Without Invoking the Supernatural Interior of Ticehurst church, East Sussex. Photo by the author. When I left primary school at eleven, our class received pa…

What hagioptasia theory reveals about the psychological foundations of aesthetic experience Francis Alÿs The Ambassador 2001 © Francis Alÿs In “The Art Question”, Nigel Warburton’…

Ancient pagan beliefs help to reveal the mind’s power to create meaning and illusion ‘The Sacred Grove, Beloved of the Arts and the Muses’ (c.1885) by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes The Roma…

A Guide to Spiritual Experience – Without Invoking the Supernatural Interior of Ticehurst church, East Sussex. Photo by the author. When I left primary school at eleven, our class received pa…

Ancient pagan beliefs help to reveal the mind’s power to create meaning and illusion ‘The Sacred Grove, Beloved of the Arts and the Muses’ (c.1885) by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes The Roma…

In the early 2000s, Pascal Boyer’s landmark work Religion Explained transformed our understanding of religious thought by framing it as a by-product of ordinary cognitive processes rather tha…

In the early 2000s, Pascal Boyer’s landmark work Religion Explained transformed our understanding of religious thought by framing it as a by-product of ordinary cognitive processes rather tha…

How a recently identified human tendency has shaped our notions of transcendence, meaning, and the sacred. Our evolved psychological nature inclines us to seek and recognise concepts of ‘sacr…

In her book ‘How Emotions Are Made’, Lisa Feldman Barrett proposes a theory that challenges ‘conventional wisdom’ regarding the origins of human emotion. She argues that emotions are no…

How a recently identified human tendency has shaped our notions of transcendence, meaning, and the sacred. Our evolved psychological nature inclines us to seek and recognise concepts of ‘sacr…

The Psychology of Why Art Can Seem So Deeply Meaningful Magdalena Abakanowicz’s Embryology (1978–80) at Tate Modern. Photo by Adam Fagen, 2018 Have you ever stood before a celebrated art…

Introduction Hagioptasia (‘holy vision’) represents a fundamental human perceptual tendency to experience an illusory sense of extraordinary ‘specialness’ in various aspects…

I recently came across the term hagioptasia, coined by musician Daniel Laidler. It refers to a fleeting sense of significance and specialness, which eludes explanation. Laidler describes this experien...