"According to St. Augustine the heretical sect of the Manichaeans consumed human seed as their own satanic "Eucharist". Symeon the New Theologian taught in 15th Hymn that the Eucharist was the "seed of Christ" which brings to mind the Manichean heresy. The Bishops of the East at the time were not found of Symeon for this and other teachings. The Bogomil sect (a offshoot of Manichaeanism) was founded in the East not long before the schism which may have been a influence on Symeon."

https://www.academia.edu/37240171/HUMAN_SEMEN_EUCHARIST_AMONG_THE_MANICHAEANS_The_Testimony_of_Augustine_Reconsidered_in_Context_CHAPTER_SIX_IN_FORTHCOMING_BOOK_AUGUSTINE_and_MANI_COLLECTED_ESSAYS_ON_MANI_MANICHAEISM_AND_AUGUSTINE_LEIDEN_BOSTON_BRILL_2019_

"Symeon's teachings on the hearing of confession and the absolution of sins brought him into regular conflict with church authorities, particularly Archbishop Stephen. According to Symeon, only one who had the grace and direct experience of God was empowered by God to preach and absolve the sins of others. Stephen held the view that only ordained priests had that authority. Symeon's views were colored by his own spiritual father, Symeon the Studite, who was a simple monk, unordained, and yet who preached and gave absolution. In one of his Ethical Discourses Symeon went further and wrote that one should not give absolution without having first received the experience of God's grace:

Be careful, I beg you, never to assume the debts of others when you are a debtor yourself; do not dare give absolution without having received in your heart the One who takes away the sin of the world." (Eth. 6')"

Two articles on Symeon The "New Theologian"s innovative trinitarianism" (even by Byzantine standards). EOs would re-interpret it by saying that proceeding from the essence, means proceeding by means of natural energy which would equate to the ever vague "Energetic Procession".

https://www.academia.edu/34952708/_The_Procession_of_the_Holy_Spirit_from_the_Divine_Substance_Observations_about_the_Trinitarian_Theology_of_Symeon_the_New_Theologian_and_Nicetas_Stethatos_Greek_Orthodox_Theological_Review_60_2015_75_91

- https://www.academia.edu/10614527/_Reconfiguring_the_Trinity_Symeon_the_New_Theologian_the_Holy_Spirit_and_the_Imago_Trinitatis_Byzantion_81_2011_212_236

Gershom Sholem suggested that the gazing at the navel as a means to concentrate attested to by Abulafia may reflect a similar technique in Christian Hesychasm. Scholem referred to Gregory Palamas as “the Christian Abulafia”

Most Russian Rosicrucians & “theoretic” masons were true Orthodox Christians well-read in patristic literature. Byzantine & Russian Orthodox spiritual traditions (Dyonisius, Maximus, Simeon, Palamas) define the originality of their masonic views.

"From what Palamas says at the very beginning of the Triads, Barlaam had claimed that there are logoi of creation, grounded in the divine mind, which have corresponding images in the human soul. Palamas took this to mean that knowledge of these images, attained apart from grace, could lead to knowledge of God. Whatever Barlaam meant, it looks as if he was invoking Maximos’ doctrine of the logoi. Palamas seems not to have recognized this and thus lost the possibility of thinking through a more considered view of the relationship between God and his Creation: the possibility had probably already been lost to the Byzantine world by the blanket condemnation of Platonism in the anathemas added to the Synodikon of Orthodoxy in 1082."


The Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium, Platonism from Maximos the Confessor to the Palaiologan Period, by Andrew Louth

"Barlaam was prepared to concede that divine illumination could be a source of knowledge about God, for when he sees how the ancient philosophers construct their arguments – we should note, as Palamas did, that for him they are “ancient” rather than “outer” thinkers – he is “unable to accept that these too have not been illuminated by God and so risen above the multitude.” In his response to this passage, Palamas asks incredulously whether Barlaam is claiming that the pagan philosophers had come to participate in the divine light. Taking his cue from St. Gregory of Nazianzos, he quotes Plato back at him: “To know God is difficult, but to speak of him is impossible.” The Church Fathers reveal an incomparably richer experience of God. Through love, the Christian cleaves to God with an erotic intensity, the union of God with the worthy transcending all other kinds of union. The illumination attained by the pagan philosophers, even by Plotinos, was merely demonic. In the Christian version, the light granted to a purified soul is divine and permeates it fully, even irradiating the body."


The Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium, The Hesychast Controversy, by Norman Russell