Hagioptasia creates a felt sense that something is unusually significant, or wrong, but in an abstract, elusive way.
It does not present as a clear thought or a specific emotion. Instead, it appears as an atmosphere that seems to belong to the thing itself: a place glows with meaning, an object radiates a sense of wrongness, or a moment feels charged with depth.
We often try to explain this afterwards, using stories, beliefs, or interpretations. But the initial experience arrives wordlessly, as a shift in perception rather than a conclusion or judgement.
The examples below illustrate how the same underlying mechanism produces both positive and negative impressions.
Positive hagioptasia
1. A nostalgic memory
Looking back on a moment earlier in your life, that time seems richer and more meaningful than the present. It appears to glow with a quality you cannot quite name. You know that life back then felt just as ordinary as it does now, yet the memory still feels qualitatively different—as if that moment possessed a depth the present lacks.
2. A landscape vista
On a bright morning walk, the countryside suddenly appears unusually enchanting. The sky and the light feel spiritually charged. Meanwhile, your companion, scrolling through their phone, notices nothing out of the ordinary. It is the same scene, yet a completely different experience. The shift is not in the landscape itself, but in your perception of it.
3. A church, temple, or sacred site
Stepping inside, the space feels heavy with accumulated presence. Even without religious belief, you sense something: an atmosphere that seems to radiate from the building itself. The feeling is not tied to any specific doctrine or thought. It is perceived as a quality of the space.
4. A childhood place
Returning to a particular room, playground, or tree from childhood, it feels charged with significance beyond what is physically present. The place seems to hold something important, even though you know it does not. The sense of specialness persists as if it were an intrinsic property of the place itself.
5. Encountering someone famous
You spot a celebrity in public. Even without being a fan, they seem to carry an intangible glow—as if they are categorically different from ‘ordinary’ people. Rationally, you know this is not true. Yet the impression of their specialness feels immediate and undeniable in the moment.
6. Luxury goods and status symbols
An expensive watch in a display case appears to radiate quality and importance. The object feels inherently significant. Yet once you own it and wear it every day, the glow fades. The mystique depended on distance, context, and presentation, not on the watch itself.
7. Abstract art in a gallery
Standing before an abstract painting, you sense something profound: depth, transcendence, meaning. These qualities feel as if they belong to the artwork itself. Yet if you encountered the same colours on a wall being painted outside the gallery, you would likely walk past without noticing. The cultural context and mystique creates the conditions that trigger the perceptual shift.
8. Music that feels transcendent
A piece of classical music seems to reveal something beyond words—timeless, otherworldly, true. The experience is powerful but impossible to specify. What, exactly, is being revealed remains unclear. The feeling is one of profound significance without clear content.
9. An imagined future
You imagine a future moment: career success, recognition, ownership of something you desire. That imagined state glows with meaning, as if it will finally deliver depth or fulfilment. Yet when such moments actually arrive, the glow of specialness is absent. What was felt was perceptual, not predictive.
Negative hagioptasia
Negative hagioptasia is not fear of something known or clearly identified. It is an abstract sense of wrongness or presence without an obvious source. This ambiguity readily invites personal fantasies of the supernatural and a wide range of cultural interpretations.
1. Darkened woodland at dusk
Walking past woodland as daylight fades, you may feel a sense that something malevolent is present within it — as if an unseen presence were lurking among the trees.
You may know rationally that there is nothing there, and that the place is no more dangerous than earlier in the day. Yet the feeling of uncanny presence persists. This is not a belief, but a perceptual experience of abstract ‘wrongness’ that readily invites supernatural interpretation.
2. Liminal spaces
A hotel corridor at 3 a.m., a deserted train station, an empty shopping mall. These places often feel unsettling in a vague, atmospheric way—as if something is off, without being able to say what.
3. Uncanny dolls or humanoid figures
Certain dolls, mannequins, or robots provoke visceral discomfort despite being harmless. The reaction is not fear of what they might do, but an abstract sense that something about them is fundamentally wrong. They are almost human, but not quite, producing an incomprehensible in-between that the mind registers as disturbing.
4. An unexplained sound in the house
A tap at the window or a creak in the hallway. Before your rational mind identifies the cause—a branch, a settling building—there is a moment when the sound feels intentional, as if something with purpose produced it. The impression of a ghostly presence or unearthly menace arise from the experience of negative hagioptasia.
5. Dark water at night
Looking out over a lake or the ocean in darkness, the water does not merely seem dangerous—it feels wrong, as if it contains something formless and malevolent. Across cultures and history, this experience has been interpreted as spirits, monsters, or cursed depths. The raw experience itself is one of abstract dread—the monsters are cultural explanations.
A shared structure
Whether positive or negative, the underlying pattern is the same. A fleeting perceptual shift makes something feel unusually significant or wrong. This quality appears to belong to the thing itself, rather than being projected by the perceiver.
The experience is abstract, wordless, and resistant to explanation. What comes afterwards—calling it sacred, spooky, glamorous, or uncanny—is interpretation. The underlying mechanism is hagioptasia.
What hagioptasia offers is not a new interpretation of these experiences, but an account of the perceptual mechanism that makes the interpretations feel necessary in the first place.
Hagioptasia 