Spiritual heart
Kardia — the depth where prayer is born
The spiritual heart (kardia, καρδία) — the inmost depth of the person, where the nous, when gathered, becomes prayer. In the Philokalic tradition this is the seat of the image of God in the human, and the place where the divine energies are received. Palamas's Triads ground the hesychast experience theologically: the uncreated light of Tabor is encountered through the energies of God, of which the human heart is the proper receptive locus. The spiritual heart is not strictly identical to the physical heart-organ; the bodily anchor (the previous point) serves as the pedagogical entrance to this deeper interior.
Point 3 of 4 in Hesychast Prayer of the Heart
Cross-tradition overlaps
No overlapping points are registered for this point.
Sources
Gregory Palamas, Triads I.2 and II.2 (primary_canonical)
Triads I.2 and II.2 place the hesychast’s experience of prayer within Palamas’s account of purification, illumination, and participation in God’s uncreated energies. The heart here is the spiritual interior in which the recollected nous receives divine grace, not simply the physical heart.
Philokalia, vol. IV (primary_canonical)
Philokalia IV gathers relevant Byzantine teaching on inner prayer, including Symeon’s Three Methods of Prayer and Palamite writings on the nous, the heart, and divine illumination. As a compilation, it supports the tradition’s vocabulary and practice context rather than a single author’s independent treatise.