Workshop rganised by: Bernd-Christian Otto in collaboration with Dirk Johannsen (Oslo University, Norway)

CAS-E Workshop “Predictice Processing and the Study of Esoteric Practices”

January 21, 2026

Organised by Bernd-Christian Otto in collaboration with Dirk Johannsen, Oslo University, Norway

In recent years, foundational assumptions within the cognitive science of religion have been challenged by the rapid development of new models of the mind emerging from the cognitive sciences. One such shift involves moving away from the modular mind perspective, which envisions the mind as a set of specialized mental tools designed to process domain-specific information—a view often rooted in evolutionary psychology. In its place, the predictive processing framework has emerged as a major contender, offering a more integrated understanding of mental activity. This framework emphasises the mind’s continuous and dynamic construction of world models and the enactment of these models within cultural contexts, positioning prediction error minimisation as a unifying principle for navigating and engaging with the environment.

In the study of esoteric practices, applications of the predictive processing framework have often focused on the representational aspects of predictive coding, emphasizing how prior expectations may shape sensory experiences. However, the broader logic underpinning this framework—namely, the reduction of uncertainty through the maximisation of expected model evidence—offers significant potential for more expansive applications. This workshop aims to engage with ongoing debates concerning embodied and enactive formulations within predictive processing and active inference. It seeks to highlight the transition from the representational aspects of sensory ‘real-making’ to the broader, participatory processes of ‘world-making’ that characterise esoteric practices. By shifting the focus to how embodied agents ‘self-evidence’ their world in both perception and action, we explore how practitioners enact, embody, and co-create their worlds through predictive engagement with esoteric practices.

This workshop is planned as a one-day event with three sessions. The first session (9-10:30 o’clock) will be a structured colloquium where we discuss a pre-arranged 30-page reader with two pivotal texts outlining basic tenets of predictive coding and its eventual application in the study of esotericism. After a coffee break (10:30-11:00 o’clock), we will have a panel with four 20-minute presentations by invited guests (11-13 o’clock; titles and abstracts are provided below). After the lunch break (13-14:30 o’clock), a structured plenary discussion between the guests and CAS-E’s local team, fellows and staff will explore collaboratively how the predictive processing model could be applied to further research within and beyond CAS-E (14:30-16 o’clock). The workshop will be accompanied by providing a reader with key texts about the predictive processing model, circulated one week ahead of the event.  

Guest Presentations

Olivia Cejvan, Malmö

Gods playing dice: theorising the unpredictable in ritual magic through predictive coding

This paper discusses predictive processing, focusing on the unpredictable results of ritual magic in the interplay between training, material culture, didactics, social support and cognitive processes. According to the predictive coding framework, our perception can deliberately be “hacked”, as perception is shaped by habitual estimations at the neurological level that can be altered through training. “Top-down processing” can override the bottom-up sensory input and make us sense what is not physically there. As seeing the unseen is a frequent goal with esoteric practices, this theory becomes highly relevant for the study of esotericism. I use it to analyze my learning process during fieldwork in two initiatory societies (Golden Dawn and Wicca). I experienced the effects of re-wiring my top-down processing, leading to better kataphatic abilities. Repetitive training in ritual and meditation sharpened my sensations and led to alterations in consciousness, shaped by anticipation and cumulative experience of magical practice. Predictive coding insights suggest that perception involves continuous adaptive learning, influenced by surroundings and dedicated training. I discuss how my wardrobe as well as the woods became “designer environments” that facilitated concentration in conjunction with ritual tools and clothing, yet highlighting how, with training, the need for material anchors subsided. Ritual practice became increasingly portable, entangled with everyday life, as I learnt to practice magic in cafés, parks, during short coffee breaks, on the commute, during sleepless nights and while queuing in the supermarket. This leads to the key point of this paper, concerning the unpredictability involved in predictive processing. My results of ritual magic, such as the frequency and intensity of astral visions, remained unpredictable. Despite diligent training, my kataphatic abilities did not increase in a clear-cut progression, as one might expect from daily, systematic training. The frequent randomness of ritual outcomes complicates the predictive coding theory. It raises questions about whether my measurements, such as the magical diary and self-assessments, fail to capture the process fully or if predictive coding theory itself needs supplementation, as will be discussed here.

Andrea Franchetto, Stockholm

Predictive Processing and the Aesthetics of Ritual Praxis: Presencing the Holy Daimon in 21st-century ritual magic.

This paper tests a methodology developed to study rituals of perceptual presence (Franchetto 2024) in firsthand accounts of religious experiences (ritual diaries) and prescriptive texts of ritual procedures (ritual handbooks) in contemporary ritual magic. The author investigates the experience of numinous presence, as described in Frater Acher’s Holy Daimon (2023 [2018])—a personal ritual diary and handbook for entering into contact with the holy daimon, or guardian angel—through the Predictive Processing account of perception. Accordingly, perception is a guessing game in which the brain attempts to predict what is out there in the environment by constantly forming hypotheses that are tested against sensory input. Predictive processing provides a valuable framework for exploring the “efficacy” of rituals of perceptual presence. Ritual praxis can create dynamic interactions between strong priors and error signals to shape perception, while also culturally signifying non-ordinary experiences, such as sensing the presence of other-than-human agents. The paper will analyse the ritual praxis in Acher’s Holy Daimon through 1) the event-schema analysis of the reported experiences, 2) a structural analysis of the sensorium of ritual procedures, and 3) a semiotic analysis of the materiality of the ritual space. This three-pronged methodology will be tested to understand how the aesthetics of ritual praxis can generate and sustain experiences of perceptual presence.

Dirk Johannsen, Oslo

Lucy and the Blind Magician: Active Inference and Distributed Epistemic Foraging in Esoteric Practice

While being a shooting star in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, W.B. Yeats was moody. He had dedicated his life to the craft but was hardly getting any visions. His cousin Lucy, on the other hand, seemed to inhabit a magical world, despite not being initiated. Apparitions and direct encounters with spiritual beings seemed to come naturally to “the only witch in the family.” His uncle George was, at least, able to hear faint voices. But Yeats was left with his moods and soon attended to them as his mode of sensing the invisible realm. This presentation discusses active inference as a framework for understanding esoteric experiences not as “controlled hallucinations” driven by strong priors, but as instances of epistemic foraging guided by uncertainty inscribed in shared generative models. Introducing active inference as a way of modelling dynamic agent-environment relations, I argue that conceptualising both narrative and ritual prescriptions as attentional protocols allows to historicize the cognitive dynamics at play in esoteric practice. 

Jana Nenadalová, Brno

Is predictive processing the new magic bullet? On the role of randomness in unusual experiences

Esoteric, spiritual, and other special experiences are a lived reality for many around the world. Yet, in practices aimed at hearing voices, having visions, or experiencing other special sensory perceptions, not everyone is able to do so. And for others, visions are coming unexpectedly, or not coming at all, even though they are trying hard to get them. Recent developments in cognitive neuroscience and the anthropology of religious experiences have led to a theoretical framework of predictive processing and the kindling of special percepts, suggesting that with sustained practice, people may learn to have special experiences. However, it seems that for some, predictive processing has become a kind of “magic bullet” that explains sensory relationships with spiritual beings in one shot. Is it really that simple, or are there other variables that also need to be considered important? Can such an interpretation of predictive processing be caused by an overly simplistic understanding of it? In the talk, I will focus on the importance of practice, the problems of the predictive processing framework in studying special experiences (what specifically the theory can promise and what it does not claim), and on the role of other factors, such as environment, uncertainty, individual history, socialization, and psychological dispositions. I will argue that randomness and the relative uniqueness of having special experiences “on demand” are actually key: if prolonged practice were enough, then everybody could become an expert and perceive what they expected to envision. However, would such information even be valuable if it only verifies previous expectations? I argue that this is not the case, because the randomness and unexpectedness of visions – at least to some extent – are a key to novelty and new insights.