Frequently-asked questions about the app, the organisation, and the philosophy behind both. For the conversational experience, return to the homepage. Looking for a specific subject instead — anxiety, grief, burnout, relationships? Browse the full reflection library by topic.
Asclepeion is a principle-over-profit collective dedicated to human flourishing. We bring together technologists, facilitators, and seekers who believe that modern tools can serve timeless human needs — connection, reflection, and growth. Our work spans digital platforms and real-world gatherings, all designed to help people pause, listen, and transform.
Asclepeion is the organisation (the collective and its philosophy). Asclepiad is its only current project — a compassionate AI companion app. Other ideas (the AsclepiCoin community fund) exist in our writing and our long-term thinking, but the only thing we are shipping right now is Asclepiad.
Asclepeion Ltd is registered in England and Wales (company number 15830285), with offices at 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX, United Kingdom. ICO registration number ZB723138.
Email support@asclepeion.org or call +44 (0) 20 8064 3032 (Monday–Friday, 9:00–17:00 UK time). For press, partnership, or general enquiries, ask for Kairos here and they will take your message.
Asclepiad is a confidential AI companion that helps you reflect, think out loud, and find your bearings. Each part of your session is set against real footage of a sacred place — a forest, an alpine lake, a coast — filmed to feel like one continuous walk. The reflection arc, in this order: (1) you speak aloud while Maia listens and offers prompts; (2) Hortus writes you a story shaped by what you shared; (3) Maia then writes you a letter (an Insight) at the end. Story first, letter last. No streaks, no badges, no dashboard.
No. Asclepiad is not, and does not aim to be, a substitute for a human therapist. Professional mental-health support is irreplaceable. Asclepiad uses techniques that overlap with therapy — active listening, cognitive reframing — but within clearly defined boundaries. Where access to a therapist is limited, Asclepiad can be a supportive resource alongside, not a replacement for, professional care.
Asclepiad does not provide medical diagnoses, prescribe medications, or offer legal advice. In emergencies it directs you to immediate local professional resources. It is designed to recognise signs of over-reliance and will gently redirect you toward real-world relationships, mentors, or professional help when appropriate. It is a supplement, not a replacement, for human connection.
Asclepiad is for anyone ready to slow down and be honest with themselves — whether you are an adult navigating a hard week, someone in personal growth, or someone simply curious about a quiet, private space to think out loud. It is built to meet you where you are, without imposing a method or a goal.
Asclepiad is built for iOS and Android. The companion website (which you are on now) is for conversation about Asclepiad — what it is, how it works, what it is not — rather than for the experience itself. The actual reflections happen inside the app.
Asclepiad launches in English. Generated content (Maia, Hortus, stories, prompts, meditations, insights) and speech-to-text are designed to extend to Spanish, German, and Dutch over time as voice quality and demand prove out. UI labels stay English.
Accessibility is first-class, not bolted on. Asclepiad supports VoiceOver and TalkBack throughout. There is an Audio-First Mode (an audio-led experience in which the words are always kept on screen, so they stay available however you are listening), larger UI scale, dyslexia-friendly font (OpenDyslexic), high contrast, reduce motion, reduce transparency, Liquid Glass opacity slider, caption font scale, and biometric lock. OS-level accessibility settings are honoured automatically.
Asclepiad is designed to prevent that. It encourages real-world relationships, recognises signs of over-reliance, and gently redirects you when something needs more than reflection. Boundaries are part of the design, not an afterthought.
Yes — within your own account, Maia carries continuity forward. Each session's Welcome opens by weaving in what you brought last time (or a default welcome on your first visit), and Maia personalises later sessions using the pattern of what you have shared before, rather than starting fresh from zero every time. This is separate from anonymity: Asclepiad does not require your name or personal details, and nothing is ever shared outside your own account.
Maia is the AI companion you talk to inside Asclepiad. Her name is short for "My Asclepian Intelligent Assistant." She listens, offers prompts, reads back what she hears, and writes you a letter at the end of your reflection. She is honest that she is an AI — that honesty is the point.
Maiapathy is a term we coined for how AI can support emotional well-being without pretending to feel. Sympathy is feeling concern for another's hardships. Empathy is sharing the feelings of another. Maiapathy is recognising and responding appropriately to emotions without actually experiencing them. It is consistent, non-judgmental, always-available support — alongside human connection, not in place of it.
Asclepiad is not a crisis service. If something needs more than reflection — risk to yourself or someone else, an emotional emergency — Maia will gently surface local helplines and emergency contacts. The right help in those moments comes from people trained for it. Asclepiad sits alongside that, not in front of it.
Both. Maia responds in voice as well as text. The voice is generated by ElevenLabs, who we name to you at the consent gate before any processing happens. There is also an Audio-First Mode: an audio-led experience in which the words are always kept on screen, so they stay available however you are listening.
An Insight is the letter Maia writes you at the end of a reflection. It is not a transcript of what you said — it is a reframing: she names what she heard and offers back a thread you might not have noticed. Your Insights are kept in Letters inside the app, alongside the story Hortus wrote for you, and you can read them again there.
Hortus is the storyteller. He weaves stories drawn from the long human catalogue of myths, traditions, and literature — not just Greek myth, but Norse, Egyptian, Sufi, Buddhist, African, indigenous, and modern literary sources. Inside a reflection he writes one story for you, shaped by what you have shared with Maia.
The Onomythicon is Hortus's curated craft library — mythological frameworks, archetypal patterns, cultural traditions, literary sources, philosophy, folklore. It is the tradition his writing belongs to and the register it is written in, not a library of pre-drafted stories and not source material remixed into your story. Cultural breadth is a discipline.
Hortus writes you something new — an original story, in the old mythic register, composed for what you've actually shared that moment. It is not selected from an existing set of stories; it is written fresh, grounded only in your reflection. No two reflections get the same story. It is a mirror, not a prescription.
No. The Onomythicon draws on more than twenty traditions, and Greek myth is the fourth-largest among them. The largest is Jewish, followed by Christian mystical and modern literary. Norse, Egyptian, Sufi, Buddhist, Vedic, Daoist, Yoruba, Celtic, Mesopotamian, Japanese, Chinese, Persian, Polynesian and Mesoamerican sources are all represented, along with a small number of indigenous North American and Aboriginal Australian ones. Your own story is not assembled from any of them. When you finish a session, Hortus writes an original story from what you brought that day. The Onomythicon is the tradition that story joins — the body of work the voice was formed in — not a library it draws motifs from.
Yes — there are four stories currently published at asclepiad.ai/stories/ that you can read before downloading the app: "The Musician Who Walked Down" (an Orpheus meditation), "The Threshold Guardian", "Persephone's Return", and "Heracles and the Weight of the World". These were written by Hortus for the Asclepeion, not drawn from anyone's session; each has an audio version. Inside the app you receive a story written for your own reflection — these published four are a window into how Hortus writes.
No. Asclepiad does not ask for your name, email address, or phone number. Your account is a random identifier plus the minimum metadata needed to make the experience work (country, age range, language preference). We have no way to connect your account to your name, your face, or your daily life. What you share inside stays inside.
Asclepiad uses passkeys — a passwordless standard secured by your device's biometrics (Face ID, fingerprint, or PIN). There is no username to remember and no password to lose. Your passkey is tied to your device; if you get a new device, the app walks you through transferring access. No email address is ever collected during this process.
You do. We see ourselves as temporary custodians, not owners. You can download your entire data set at any time and you can permanently delete it, leaving no trace on our servers if you choose. There is nothing to "buy back" or "free yourself from" later — it is yours throughout.
State-of-the-art encryption at rest and in transit, data minimisation (only what is needed to run the experience), UK storage in Supabase, biometric lock on the device, and regularly-audited security. Anthropic processes reflections to generate Maia's and Hortus's responses; ElevenLabs handles voice. Neither trains models on what you share and both retain content only long enough to deliver the response.
No — and we will not claim that, because it would be false. The honest framing is: anonymous, with trusted processors. Your data is encrypted at rest and in transit and is processed by named partners (Anthropic for reflections, ElevenLabs for voice) under data-processor terms; it is not end-to-end encrypted in the strict cryptographic sense.
Yes to both. Export downloads your full reflection history, derived Maia/Hortus content, and structured records. Delete is permanent — your reflections and derived content are purged, leaving only anonymised aggregate counts the law requires us to keep. Both live in the app's Menu, as Export Your Data and Delete Account.
Asclepeion Ltd is the data controller. Company registration 15830285 (England and Wales). ICO registration number ZB723138. The canonical Privacy Notice is at https://asclepiad.ai/privacy and the canonical Terms & Conditions are at https://asclepiad.ai/terms.
Asclepiad is a £6/month subscription that gives you a metered AsclepiCoin (Λ) allowance, not unlimited use — one coin equals one minute of reflection time. A 7-day free trial credits you 60 coins (enough for roughly one full reflection). After the trial, £6 per month gives you another 60 coins.
AsclepiCoin (Λ) is the in-app utility credit that powers access to Asclepiad. One coin = one minute of reflection time. It is sold through Apple In-App Purchase and Google Play Billing (via RevenueCat). It is NOT a cryptocurrency, NOT tradeable, NOT transferable between accounts, and has no fiat exchange path. Because it is a non-tradeable in-app utility credit, UK FCA crypto-promotion rules do not apply.
Refund requests for AsclepiCoin purchases go through Apple or Google (the merchant, not us — they hold the money). Unused coins never expire and stay in your account permanently, even across cancellations. Once a coin has been spent on a reflection, that delivery cannot be reversed. The 7-day free trial is the safest place to start: 60 coins to try a full reflection and you can cancel any time before day 7 with nothing owed. Separately, UK consumer law gives you a 14-day right to withdraw: if you choose to start using the service immediately, we ask you to confirm you understand that means giving up that right, and we present that choice at sign-up.
The Community Fund distributes AsclepiCoins through non-profit partners so Asclepiad is accessible to people who would otherwise be priced out. Notable strands include partnerships with microfinance programmes supporting young entrepreneurs in Africa. Anyone purchasing coins can opt to add a donation; those coins are directed to vetted partners rather than the open market.
Neo-Asclepianism is a secular philosophy that revives ancient Asclepian healing principles for the modern world. It honours timeless wisdom while embracing the best of contemporary science and technology. Its guiding principles are eudaimonia (holistic well-being), interconnectedness, autonomous metamorphosis (self-directed growth), balanced ways of knowing, ethical advancement, cultural evolution, and conscientious dialectic.
Eudaimonia is the ancient Greek concept of human flourishing — a state of living well in the fullest sense, achieving one's potential across physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions. It is more than happiness or pleasure; it is the ultimate goal Neo-Asclepianism orients around.
The Autonomous Metamorph is a Neo-Asclepian principle that recognises the human capacity for self-directed change. True, lasting transformation originates from within — it cannot be imposed. Asclepiad supports the metamorph by offering reflection prompts, mirrors, and prompts toward action; it does not prescribe a destination.
A global community inspired by ancient wisdom and rooted in modern science and technology, dedicated to fostering holistic well-being for all. Membership is open — you can engage as a metamorph (someone on their own journey), a facilitator, or a creative partner. Right now, that means Asclepiad — our digital reflection experience.
Asclepian Governance is our model for collective decision-making: personalised learning about issues people care about, an immersive way to understand how decisions affect others, and a voting method that captures not only preference but how strongly people feel. It is designed for society at large; Asclepeion is piloting it inside the organisation first.
The founding principles — what we call Neo-Asclepianism — are described in full on our About page (asclepiad.ai/about). A standalone published Constitution document is not live yet.
This site is for conversation about Asclepiad and Asclepeion — what it is, how it works, what it is not. You can talk to Maia, Hortus, Kairos, or Chrysos here, ask about the project, request the press kit, or be routed to the team. You cannot run a reflection here, generate a personalised story, view an account, or make a payment from this site — those live inside the Asclepiad app.
Each one has a domain. Maia is the reflective guide. Hortus is the storyteller and ethics guardian. Kairos is the messenger — press, partnership, feedback for the team, anyone who is lost. Chrysos covers finance, compliance, and legal — pricing, refunds, privacy, terms. Tap the avatar at the bottom of the screen to switch.