The Seba library treats Fasting in 9 passages, across 7 authors (including Palmer, G. E. H. and Sherrard, Philip and Ware, Kallistos (trs.), Climacus, John, James, William).
Those engaged in spiritual warfare regain their original state by practicing two commandments - obedience and fasting; for evil has infiltrated our human condition by means of their opposites.
Gregory of Sinai presents fasting as one of two foundational remedial commandments by which the practitioner reverses the primal fall, assigning it specifically to those in the middle way who have achieved a degree of self-mastery.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995thesis
The three most comprehensive virtues of the soul are prayer, silence and fasting. Thus you should refresh yourself with the contemplation of created realities when you relax from prayer.
This passage establishes fasting as one of three co-equal comprehensive virtues structuring the contemplative life, with each virtue balanced by a permitted relaxation that sustains the practitioner without dissolving the discipline.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995thesis
through fasting withers desire. By means of these virtues the new Adam is formed, made again according to the image of his Creator.
Evagrios articulates fasting as the specifically designated instrument for mortifying desire, situating it within a triadic psycho-spiritual economy alongside compassion and prayer that reconstitutes the human person in the divine image.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995thesis
once it has shrunk there is no possibility of overeating, tingso that henceforth one fasts quite naturally.
Climacus describes the telos of ascetic fasting as its own abolition as an act of will: disciplined practice progressively restructures appetite until abstinence becomes the natural condition of the body rather than a conscious effort.
, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, 600thesis
I practiced fasting and mortification of the flesh… we see the cultivation of hardship cropping out under every sky and in every faith, as a spontaneous need of character.
James documents fasting as a cross-cultural, transdenominational ascetic impulse, framing it not as institutional prescription but as a recurring spontaneous need expressing the will to character-formation.
, The Varieties of Religious Experience Amazon, 1902supporting
Compensatory behaviors such as fasting and self-induced vomiting to avoid weight gain from consuming alcohol have recently been called ‘drunkorexia’.
Wiss reframes fasting in the clinical register as a maladaptive compensatory behavior within the overlap between substance use disorders and eating disorders, illustrating how the same practice carries radically different valences across sacred and pathological contexts.
, The Role of Nutrition in Addiction Recovery: What We Know and What We Don’t, 2019supporting
Prominent among them is ‘Master Zhuang’s Method for Fasting the Mind,’ later also known the ‘Method of Listening to One’s Breath,’ which derives from ch. 4.
Kohn documents the Daoist concept of ‘fasting the mind’ (xinzhai), a meditative technique distinct from alimentary abstinence, in which the practitioner stills sensory and cognitive activity to attend to the primordial qi.
, Daoism Handbook, 2000supporting
when they are happy, they reward their bodies by not eating (Table 2, row 18). Only one obese woman suggested that self-imposed starvation was punishment to her body.
Woodman’s empirical observation that obese women use voluntary not-eating as a reward reveals fasting’s ambiguous role within the food complex, where abstinence functions as positive self-regard rather than punishment, complicating simple pathological readings.
, The Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter: Obesity, Anorexia Nervosa and the Repressed Feminine: a Psychological Study, 1980supporting
aKf.lnvo� [adj.] ‘fasting (from food)’ (ll., only in T)… A scholion on T 163 derives it from Aeol. aKflu, which Hesychius explains as v’laT£lu, £VO£lU ‘fasting, need’.
Beekes provides the Greek etymological record for the adjective meaning ‘fasting from food,’ tracing its probable derivation from roots connoting lack of care or neglect, offering a philological grounding for the concept’s ancient semantic field.
, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010aside