— The Hunt · Nº 02
Ten Wednesdays. Eight thoughts. One Hunt.
Twelve men. Wednesday evenings at 7 PM in Wylie, Texas. One logismos a week for eight weeks, bookended by a Frame to open and a Long Walk to send the men out. The same enemies the desert fathers named sixteen centuries ago — named and hunted again in the same order.
What is a logismos?
Logismos (Greek: λογισμός, pl. λογισμοί) means simply a thought. But in the desert father tradition, it names a very specific kind of thought: the intrusive one. The suggestion that arrives uninvited, lingers a moment, and waits to be agreed with. Until a man notices it, it is wind in the sail of a ship he does not know he is steering.
In the fourth century, a monk named Evagrius of Pontus mapped eight of these recurring intrusions in a small book called the Praktikos. A generation later, John Cassian carried the map west and translated it for Latin Christianity; two centuries after that, John Climacus refined it in his Ladder of Divine Ascent. The list has been quietly kept ever since — in monasteries, in confessionals, in the spiritual handbooks of every century until ours. We are pulling it back out into the light because the eight have not changed, and neither have the men they hunt.
They are not demons external to a man. They are not behaviors, though they cause them. They are thoughts— and unnamed thoughts run a man like wind runs a sail. Named, they bow. Hunted, they break. This is what we do for ten weeks together.
— Week by Week · Nº 02a
The curriculum.
Ten weeks in teaching order. We open with the Frame, hunt the eight enemies in the sequence Evagrius would have recognized as the most pastorally useful, and close with the Long Walk — the send-off that makes the work portable after the room goes quiet.
- FR
Opening · The Setup
Frame.
— What we set up
Before we hunt anything, we agree on the field. Week one sets the four premises every man in the room has to operate from: that a thought arriving is not yet sin — it is a probe; that the Church is a hospital and not a courtroom, so bring your wounds; that the enemy has tactics, and there are eight known patterns we'll learn to recognize; and that we fight with weapons — prayer, fasting, silence, accountability, scripture, the body itself — not with willpower. This is the only week without a logismos. Everything that follows leans on it.
— What you walk away with
The vocabulary you'll use for the next nine weeks, your Battle Bro pairing, and a clear answer to the question, what am I actually doing here?
“You can't steer a parked car.”
- I
Sloth · I
The Noonday.
ἀκηδίαpron. ah-KAY-dee-ah— What we hunt
The desert fathers called this the noonday demon — the heaviness that lands in the middle of the day, the middle of the work, the middle of a man's life. Evagrius spent more ink on this one logismos than on any other, because he believed it was the most ruinous to men in their posts. It is not depression and it is not laziness. It is the flat, gray suggestion that your cell does not matter, your work is empty, and you would be more yourself somewhere else. We open the Hunt here, second only to the Frame, because once you can spot akēdia you can spot everything. The cure is not motivation; the cure is staying. We learn from Evagrius and Cassian what staying — physically, vocationally, spiritually — actually looks like in your week.
— What you walk away with
A rule of life small enough to keep and big enough to matter, and a name for the flatness when it next arrives at noon.
— The Antidote
Watchfulness nēpsis — the virtue we’re training toward.
— Source
Evagrius, Praktikos §12 · St. John Cassian, Institutes X
“You don't dig up seed worrying.”
- II
Gluttony · II
The Belly.
γαστριμαργίαpron. gas-tree-mar-GHEE-ah— What we hunt
The first thought in the Praktikos, the foundational appetite. Gastrimargia is rarely about food — it is about the moment a hunger arrives and a man quietly hands the steering wheel over to it. The fridge at 11 PM. The bottle after a hard call. The fourth scroll through the same five apps. We name the appetites you have outsourced your peace to, learn the exact second the thought lands, and rehearse the single moment of clarity that separates being run by it from running it. The desert fathers were specific: this one is the gate. Master nothing else until you can sit with a hunger for one minute longer than usual.
— What you walk away with
A working definition of your own gluttony, and one fast you will actually keep — small, specific, repeatable, witnessed.
— The Antidote
Temperance enkrateia — the virtue we’re training toward.
— Source
Evagrius, Praktikos §7 · St. John Cassian, Institutes V
“Indulgence draws the weak to an early grave.”
- III
Lust · III
The Fire.
πορνείαpron. por-NEE-ah— What we hunt
This is where most curricula get squeamish and most men get lonely. We do neither. Porneia is a chain of micro-decisions, never a single moment, and the chain is breakable at any link if a man can see it in time. We talk honestly about what you actually do — not what you would like the room to think you do — and we map your particular chain end to end. Then we put a Battle Bro on the line who will pick up at 2 AM, and we name the rule, the practice, and the body of Christ as the three real weapons the tradition has always handed men. You do not beat this by trying harder. The desert is unanimous on that point.
— What you walk away with
A pattern named without flinching, a partner who knows it by name, and a tactical 72-hour plan that does not depend on willpower.
— The Antidote
Chastity sōphrosynē — the virtue we’re training toward.
— Source
Evagrius, Praktikos §8 · St. John Climacus, Ladder Step 15
“Settling for the right-now woman instead of the right woman.”
- IV
Greed · IV
The Coin.
φιλαργυρίαpron. fee-lar-ghee-REE-ah— What we hunt
Money keeps moving the goalposts. Every man we have sat with says the next number will finally make him safe, and every man we have sat with is wrong. Philargyria is not about wealth — Abraham was wealthy. It is about the interior posture that treats the next dollar as the thing that will finally settle you. We do the honest math: what is enough, what your account says you actually worship, where security ends and accumulation begins. Then we practice the one move the desert fathers said breaks the spell, the one Christ said breaks it too — and we do it small enough that you cannot talk yourself out of it.
— What you walk away with
One concrete act of generosity you will commit to this week. Specific recipient. Specific amount. Witnessed by your Battle Bro.
— The Antidote
Non-possessiveness aktēmosynē — the virtue we’re training toward.
— Source
Evagrius, Praktikos §9 · 1 Timothy 6:10
“Money talks. Wealth whispers.”
- V
Dejection · V
The Weight.
λύπηpron. LEE-pee— What we hunt
The grief you have not grieved. The disappointment that froze into identity. Lypē is one of the more delicate thoughts on the list because sorrow itself is not sin — sorrow is holy when it leads a man to God. But the desert fathers warned that sorrow turned inward, sorrow that refuses to be named, becomes a slow killing. The loss that runs your week because it was never spoken aloud. We separate godly sorrow from despair, and we let you grieve in the room. Then we find the first sentence of the prayer you have been avoiding since the thing happened. The weight comes off when the name comes out.
— What you walk away with
A name for the loss that is running you, spoken aloud, and the first line of a prayer your spirit has been holding for a long time.
— The Antidote
Spiritual joy chara — the virtue we’re training toward.
— Source
Evagrius, Praktikos §10 · St. Isaac the Syrian
“Your past should be a place of reference, not a place of residence.”
- VI
Wrath · VI
The Match.
ὀργήpron. or-GHEE— What we hunt
Who you are actually angry at, and what they would need to do to give it back. There is a righteous anger — the kind that sees an injustice and moves toward it — and there is the kind eating you alive, the resentment fused to your bones, the score you keep without knowing you are keeping it. We learn the difference. We do the work the Lord's Prayer asks of every man who prays it. And we practice forgiveness not as a feeling but as a tactical move, an act of obedience that comes before the heart catches up. The match goes out when you stop feeding it.
— What you walk away with
One person you will forgive this week — out loud, to your Battle Bro or to God in the presence of one. The act, not the emotion.
— The Antidote
Meekness prautēs — the virtue we’re training toward.
— Source
Evagrius, Praktikos §11 · Ephesians 4:26 · Matthew 6:14-15
“Forgiveness isn't God being lenient — it's God being loyal to His Son.”
- VII
Vainglory · VII
The Audience.
κενοδοξίαpron. ken-oh-dok-SEE-ah— What we hunt
The audience in your head. The small camera you carry into your prayer, your work, your fast, your grief. Kenodoxia is the most respectable of the eight because it looks like excellence. The men most owned by this one are usually the most spiritually impressive on the outside — and Evagrius says they are the hardest to reach, because the disease imitates the cure. We learn to spot the performance of your own life, name the audience for whom you are performing, and dismantle it where no one is watching. This is the week most men do not see coming.
— What you walk away with
One good thing you will do this week that no one will know about — by design, planned in advance, witnessed only by the Father who sees in secret.
— The Antidote
Humility tapeinophrosynē — the virtue we’re training toward.
— Source
Evagrius, Praktikos §13 · Matthew 6:1-6
“If you live for the praise of men, you will die from the criticism of men.”
- VIII
Pride · VIII
The Last Lie.
ὑπερηφανίαpron. ee-pair-ee-fa-NEE-ah— What we hunt
The root the others grow from. Hyperēphania is the thought that you do not need God because, on some level, you are one. It is the only logismos that scripture says God Himself opposes. It masquerades as confidence, as competence, as leadership; it is the fall, every time, in every story the tradition tells. We name how it sounds in your interior monologue — the small, certain voice that says I have got this — and we practice what humility actually is, which is not weakness but weight. The kind of presence that does not need an audience because it already knows whose room it is in.
— What you walk away with
A confession spoken aloud to your Battle Bro, and a habit of asking for help — beginning at the door, before you walk into the next thing.
— The Antidote
Love agapē — the virtue we’re training toward.
— Source
Evagrius, Praktikos §14 · St. John Climacus, Ladder Step 23 · James 4:6
“The more you trust in the arm of the flesh, the less you'll see of God.”
- LW
Closing · The Send-off
The Long Walk.
— What we send you out with
The Hunt does not end when the ten weeks do. The Long Walk is what we send you out with — a structured rhythm of weekly Battle Bro calls, a monthly Hunt check-in, and the slow lifelong practice of carrying the weapons home. We close the pilot here, but the men who stay walk forever. Week ten is part liturgy, part field debrief: we name what each man hunted hardest, formalize the partnerships, and hand you a 90-day plan that does not require us to be in the room.
— What you walk away with
A 90-day field plan, a formalized Battle Bro covenant, and a way to keep fighting after the room goes quiet.
“It is not he that begins, but he that continues, who is the true Christian.”
— The Ask · Nº 02b
What we ask of you.
Every Hunting Party is a closed pilot of twelve men. Once it starts, the door is locked from the inside. Here is what you agree to before it does.
- Ten Wednesdays in person, 7:00–9:00 PM, Church of God, Wylie. No remote, no make-ups.
- Thirty minutes of pre-work each week. Read, mark, bring it.
- One Battle Bro pairing. A man you call when the thought lands — before you act on it, not after.
- Honest conversation about what’s actually hunting you. We’ll meet you there. We won’t flinch.
- Show up — or tell us why not, the same week. Same standard.
Free pilot · Rolling admissions · Application + Interview
Start your application— Apply · Nº 03
Twelve men. One Hunt.
Applications open. Hunting Party 01 launches when twelve are vetted — not on a calendar. We’re looking for men who already know they need to fight, and would rather fight together than alone.
“Live a life by design, not by default.”