Hesychasm and Psychedelics: Altered States, Purgation, and the Question of Authentic Mysticism
Hesychasm is a form of monastic asceticism rooted in the tradition of the Desert Fathers and given a systematic articulation by the Byzantine author Gregory Palamas (1296–1359). This article considers how the mystical experiences described in Palamas’s Triads compare to the altered states at the center of contemporary psychedelic research, turning to the discipline of Comparative Theology as a helpful framework to bring into dialogue the hesychastic understanding of deification as a trajectory grounded in the reception of the sacraments and the therapeutic impact of psychedelic experiences.