Prelest

Prelest is the Orthodox term for spiritual delusion — the counterfeit of grace, in which a person mistakes imagination or demonic deception for genuine spiritual experience and is puffed up by it.

Oversimplified

• Spiritual delusion: taking a false spiritual experience for a true one, with pride as both its root and its fruit.

Summary

Prelest (Russian; Greek plani) is a word for which English has no exact equivalent: it names the whole range of false spiritual experience — as Fr. Seraphim Rose puts it, "from simple illusion and beguilement to actual possession" — in which a counterfeit is taken for the genuine and the result is an accelerated growth of pride.[^rose] The ascetic Fathers warn of it constantly, because the spiritual life is precisely where the enemy imitates grace most convincingly. St. Diadochos of Photiki cautions that spiritual sweetness itself can be faked — "an illusion of grace, coming from the deceiver with a counterfeit joy" — so that what tells the true from the false is not intensity of feeling but humility and discernment.[^diad] This is why Orthodoxy is wary of chasing visions, raptures, and "experiences," and why it insists on sobriety, obedience, and the testing of every spirit (1 John 4.1). The safeguard against prelest is not less prayer but humbler prayer — and a trustworthy guide (see Hesychasm, Nous, Prayer). Cross-link Hesychasm, Nous, Prayer, Demons.

Sources

[^rose]: Fr. Seraphim Rose, Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future — prelest as the counterfeit of true spiritual experience, ranging "from simple illusion and beguilement to actual possession," and producing pride. [^diad]: St. Diadochos of Photiki, On Spiritual Knowledge and Discrimination (Philokalia) — spiritual sweetness can be counterfeited, "an illusion of grace, coming from the deceiver with a counterfeit joy"; discrimination, not feeling, distinguishes true from false.