Hagioptasia Theory
@hagioptasiatheory.bsky.social
A groundbreaking framework revealing how the natural yet illusory sense of extraordinary ‘specialness’ shapes human behaviour, belief, & culture.
https://hagioptasia.wordpress.com
https://hagioptasia.wordpress.com
Reposted by Hagioptasia Theory
Reposted by Hagioptasia Theory
Understanding Branding Through Contemporary Art (pt.1)
We build our sense of “cool” from personal & cultural codes of status.
Our natural sensitivity to social status makes “cool” things feel deeply meaningful.
Remove the status cues, & the 'meaning' vanishes.
We build our sense of “cool” from personal & cultural codes of status.
Our natural sensitivity to social status makes “cool” things feel deeply meaningful.
Remove the status cues, & the 'meaning' vanishes.
November 5, 2025 at 11:26 AM
Understanding Branding Through Contemporary Art (pt.1)
We build our sense of “cool” from personal & cultural codes of status.
Our natural sensitivity to social status makes “cool” things feel deeply meaningful.
Remove the status cues, & the 'meaning' vanishes.
We build our sense of “cool” from personal & cultural codes of status.
Our natural sensitivity to social status makes “cool” things feel deeply meaningful.
Remove the status cues, & the 'meaning' vanishes.
Understanding Branding Through Contemporary Art (pt.1)
We build our sense of “cool” from personal & cultural codes of status.
Our natural sensitivity to social status makes “cool” things feel deeply meaningful.
Remove the status cues, & the 'meaning' vanishes.
We build our sense of “cool” from personal & cultural codes of status.
Our natural sensitivity to social status makes “cool” things feel deeply meaningful.
Remove the status cues, & the 'meaning' vanishes.
November 5, 2025 at 11:26 AM
Understanding Branding Through Contemporary Art (pt.1)
We build our sense of “cool” from personal & cultural codes of status.
Our natural sensitivity to social status makes “cool” things feel deeply meaningful.
Remove the status cues, & the 'meaning' vanishes.
We build our sense of “cool” from personal & cultural codes of status.
Our natural sensitivity to social status makes “cool” things feel deeply meaningful.
Remove the status cues, & the 'meaning' vanishes.
Reposted by Hagioptasia Theory
Reposted by Hagioptasia Theory
The Art Establishment Doesn't Understand Art:
hagioptasia.wordpress.com/2025/03/13/t...
hagioptasia.wordpress.com/2025/03/13/t...
The Art Establishment Doesn’t Understand Art
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…
hagioptasia.wordpress.com
March 14, 2025 at 7:49 AM
The Art Establishment Doesn't Understand Art:
hagioptasia.wordpress.com/2025/03/13/t...
hagioptasia.wordpress.com/2025/03/13/t...
New preprint:
Hagioptasia: Convergent Evidence for a Unified Construct of Perceived Specialness - A Theoretical Framework
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...
Hagioptasia: Convergent Evidence for a Unified Construct of Perceived Specialness - A Theoretical Framework
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...
Hagioptasia: Convergent Evidence for a Unified Construct of Perceived Specialness
This article proposes hagioptasia (Greek: hagios = holy, optasia = vision) as a foundational psychological construct describing the perceptual tendency to experience stimuli as possessing extraordinar...
doi.org
September 24, 2025 at 1:39 AM
New preprint:
Hagioptasia: Convergent Evidence for a Unified Construct of Perceived Specialness - A Theoretical Framework
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...
Hagioptasia: Convergent Evidence for a Unified Construct of Perceived Specialness - A Theoretical Framework
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...
"My skepticism about these improbable claims led me to do some research, which quickly exposed every one as false."
hagioptasia.wordpress.com/2024/03/29/a...
hagioptasia.wordpress.com/2024/03/29/a...
A Critical Evaluation of Lisa Feldman Barrett’s ‘How Emotions Are Made’
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…
hagioptasia.wordpress.com
September 14, 2025 at 3:00 PM
"My skepticism about these improbable claims led me to do some research, which quickly exposed every one as false."
hagioptasia.wordpress.com/2024/03/29/a...
hagioptasia.wordpress.com/2024/03/29/a...
Quick test:
Recall a childhood memory that feels somehow 'magical'.
You rationally know it was an ordinary day, yet it still feels deeply 'special'.
That specialness-perception is hagioptasia - the mechanism behind nostalgia, sacredness, & much more.
hagioptasia.wordpress.com
Recall a childhood memory that feels somehow 'magical'.
You rationally know it was an ordinary day, yet it still feels deeply 'special'.
That specialness-perception is hagioptasia - the mechanism behind nostalgia, sacredness, & much more.
hagioptasia.wordpress.com
Hagioptasia
“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
hagioptasia.wordpress.com
August 3, 2025 at 1:10 PM
Quick test:
Recall a childhood memory that feels somehow 'magical'.
You rationally know it was an ordinary day, yet it still feels deeply 'special'.
That specialness-perception is hagioptasia - the mechanism behind nostalgia, sacredness, & much more.
hagioptasia.wordpress.com
Recall a childhood memory that feels somehow 'magical'.
You rationally know it was an ordinary day, yet it still feels deeply 'special'.
That specialness-perception is hagioptasia - the mechanism behind nostalgia, sacredness, & much more.
hagioptasia.wordpress.com
If hagioptasia exists as proposed, it's the missing evolutionary key explaining why humans create gods, worship celebrities, & desire empty status - all driven by our capacity to perceive illusory 'specialness'. But if you don't agree, please provide a good reason why.
July 13, 2025 at 7:25 PM
If hagioptasia exists as proposed, it's the missing evolutionary key explaining why humans create gods, worship celebrities, & desire empty status - all driven by our capacity to perceive illusory 'specialness'. But if you don't agree, please provide a good reason why.
The Science of the Sacred: A Secular Path to Spirituality
hagioptasia.wordpress.com/2025/06/22/t...
hagioptasia.wordpress.com/2025/06/22/t...
The Science of the Sacred: A Secular Path to Spirituality
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…
hagioptasia.wordpress.com
June 22, 2025 at 2:29 PM
The Science of the Sacred: A Secular Path to Spirituality
hagioptasia.wordpress.com/2025/06/22/t...
hagioptasia.wordpress.com/2025/06/22/t...
Seeing the Sacred: How the Romans Understood What Modern Thought Overlooks
hagioptasia.wordpress.com/2025/05/26/s...
hagioptasia.wordpress.com/2025/05/26/s...
Seeing the Sacred: How the Romans Understood What Modern Thought Overlooks
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…
hagioptasia.wordpress.com
May 26, 2025 at 5:21 PM
Seeing the Sacred: How the Romans Understood What Modern Thought Overlooks
hagioptasia.wordpress.com/2025/05/26/s...
hagioptasia.wordpress.com/2025/05/26/s...
Reposted by Hagioptasia Theory
What Pascal Boyer Missed About Religion - And Why It Matters
hagioptasia.wordpress.com/2025/05/12/w...
hagioptasia.wordpress.com/2025/05/12/w...
What Pascal Boyer Missed About Religion – And Why It Matters
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…
hagioptasia.wordpress.com
May 12, 2025 at 9:49 AM
What Pascal Boyer Missed About Religion - And Why It Matters
hagioptasia.wordpress.com/2025/05/12/w...
hagioptasia.wordpress.com/2025/05/12/w...
What Pascal Boyer Missed About Religion - And Why It Matters
hagioptasia.wordpress.com/2025/05/12/w...
hagioptasia.wordpress.com/2025/05/12/w...
What Pascal Boyer Missed About Religion – And Why It Matters
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…
hagioptasia.wordpress.com
May 12, 2025 at 9:49 AM
What Pascal Boyer Missed About Religion - And Why It Matters
hagioptasia.wordpress.com/2025/05/12/w...
hagioptasia.wordpress.com/2025/05/12/w...
The Art Establishment Doesn't Understand Art:
hagioptasia.wordpress.com/2025/03/13/t...
hagioptasia.wordpress.com/2025/03/13/t...
The Art Establishment Doesn’t Understand Art
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…
hagioptasia.wordpress.com
March 14, 2025 at 7:49 AM
The Art Establishment Doesn't Understand Art:
hagioptasia.wordpress.com/2025/03/13/t...
hagioptasia.wordpress.com/2025/03/13/t...
"Hagioptasia's paradoxical nature – illusory yet compelling, acknowledged yet influential – positions it as a distinct perceptual root beneath various emotional responses, offering new theoretical frameworks for understanding human meaning-making"
hagioptasia.wordpress.com/2025/02/24/h...
hagioptasia.wordpress.com/2025/02/24/h...
Hagioptasia: A Fundamental Perceptual Tendency in Human Psychology
Introduction Hagioptasia (‘holy vision’) represents a fundamental human perceptual tendency to experience an illusory sense of extraordinary ‘specialness’ in various aspects…
hagioptasia.wordpress.com
February 25, 2025 at 8:28 PM
"Hagioptasia's paradoxical nature – illusory yet compelling, acknowledged yet influential – positions it as a distinct perceptual root beneath various emotional responses, offering new theoretical frameworks for understanding human meaning-making"
hagioptasia.wordpress.com/2025/02/24/h...
hagioptasia.wordpress.com/2025/02/24/h...
Reposted by Hagioptasia Theory
My latest blog post is on ‘hagioptasia’ - the tendency to perceive an aura of specialness around certain things or places - and how this is expressed in emo music.
@hagioptasiatheory.bsky.social
#music #psychology
@hagioptasiatheory.bsky.social
#music #psychology
Expressions of Hagioptasia in Emo Music
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...
www.samwoolfe.com
February 24, 2025 at 11:46 AM
My latest blog post is on ‘hagioptasia’ - the tendency to perceive an aura of specialness around certain things or places - and how this is expressed in emo music.
@hagioptasiatheory.bsky.social
#music #psychology
@hagioptasiatheory.bsky.social
#music #psychology