Press Kit
Heathen
Secular meditation. Mindfulness without mythology.
Fact sheet
Everything you need to write about Heathen without emailing first.
| App name | Heathen — Secular Meditation |
|---|---|
| Subtitle | Mindfulness Without Religion |
| Developer | Adam Rowe (independent, solo) |
| Platform | iOS 16.0 or later — iPhone, iPad, Apple Vision Pro |
| Released | 24 April 2026 |
| Current version | 1.2.5 (August 2026) |
| Price | Free to download, with an optional subscription. No account required. |
| Category | Lifestyle · Health & Fitness |
| Age rating | 4+ |
| Size | 78 MB |
| Bundle ID | app.airowe.clarity |
| App Store | apps.apple.com/app/id6759360137 |
| Website | heathenapp.com |
| Press contact | hello@heathenapp.com |
What's inside
- 366 daily quotes and 365 daily readings — Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, Kierkegaard, Camus, Carl Sagan, Shunryu Suzuki
- 100 affirmations written for people who don't want divine validation
- 28 guided meditations across seven intentions: Focus, Calm, Sleep, Gratitude, Stoicism, Meaning, Wonder
- Multi-day programs — Stoic Week, Existential Foundations, Mindfulness Foundations, 21-Day Gratitude
- 12 ambient soundscapes — rain, thunderstorm, ocean, waterfall, forest, birdsong, fireplace
- Journal and mood tracking with exportable entries
Description
Copy freely. No approval needed, no attribution required beyond a link.
Heathen is a secular meditation app for people who want stillness without the spiritual packaging.
Heathen is a meditation app for atheists, agnostics, and freethinkers. It draws on Stoicism, existentialism, and scientific humanism instead of mysticism — 365 daily readings, 28 guided sessions, and a mood journal. No chakras, no auras, no vague talk of energy. Free on iOS.
Most meditation apps assume you're on a spiritual journey. Heathen assumes you're a thinking person who wants to live well.
Built by independent developer Adam Rowe and released in April 2026, Heathen offers the depth of apps like Calm and Hallow while grounding every session in philosophy and science rather than faith. Its 365 daily readings come from Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, Kierkegaard, Camus, and Carl Sagan — texts you could find in any library. Its 28 guided meditations span seven intentions, from Focus to Wonder, and multi-day programs like Stoic Week give the practice structure.
The name is deliberate. Heathen is aimed squarely at the people that mainstream wellness quietly excludes: the deconverted, the skeptics, the "spiritual but not religious" who find the mysticism harder to sit with than the silence. It's free on iOS, and it doesn't ask you to make an account.
Why this exists
In the developer's words. Quote any of this directly.
Every meditation app I tried asked me to believe something. Not always outright — it was in the vocabulary. Energy that needed balancing. A universe with intentions. A version of stillness that came bundled with a worldview I'd already thought carefully about and set down.
I didn't want to argue with it. I just wanted the practice without the premise.
What struck me was that the tradition was already there. Marcus Aurelius wrote about attention and mortality with more rigour than any wellness copywriter. Seneca on anger is better than most modern advice on anger. Sagan could induce genuine awe without invoking anything supernatural. None of it requires faith — it only requires paying attention. But almost none of it had been turned into something you could open at 7am and actually use.
So Heathen is the app I wanted and couldn't find. It's built for people who aren't looking for a belief system — the deconverted, the lifelong skeptics, anyone who has read enough philosophy to find "the universe has a plan for you" harder to sit with than silence.
The name is the filter. If it puts you off, this was never for you, and that's fine. For everyone else it's meant to read as a badge.
— Adam Rowe, developer
How Heathen compares
These apps are references, not enemies — most are better funded and more polished. The difference is what they assume about you.
| App | Framing | Ratings | Where it differs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Calm | Broadly spiritual, celebrity-narrated | 4.8★ · 1.97M | Owns the generic term meditation. Enormous library, but the language assumes a spiritual journey. |
| Headspace | Secular-leaning, clinical | 4.8★ · 974K | The closest in tone — it avoids mysticism. But its grounding is psychology and neuroscience, not philosophy; there's no reading tradition behind it. |
| Hallow | Explicitly Catholic | 4.9★ · 372K | Proof the model works when it commits to an audience. Heathen is the same structural idea aimed at the opposite belief. |
| Heathen | Explicitly secular | New — no ratings yet | Stoic, existentialist, and scientific-humanist source texts. Assumes you've already decided what you believe and aren't looking to be sold a worldview. |
Competitor figures from the US App Store, 7 August 2026. Heathen launched in April 2026 and has no public rating yet — we'd rather say so than omit the column.
Story angles
Where Heathen is genuinely different, rather than merely new.
- The lane the wellness giants ignore. Calm and Headspace own the generic term meditation; Hallow owns religious. Nobody had built seriously for the secular audience — Heathen ranks for high-intent terms like agnostic and aurelius that its far larger rivals don't compete on.
- Mindfulness has a belief problem. A large share of people who'd benefit from a meditation practice bounce off the vocabulary — energy, chakras, the universe wanting things. Heathen is a test of whether the practice survives without the packaging.
- Ancient philosophy as a modern wellness product. Stoicism has had a decade-long popular revival through Ryan Holiday and the Modern Stoicism community, but almost none of it has become software. Heathen turns premeditatio malorum and amor fati into a daily practice.
- Streaks without the guilt trip. Engagement mechanics usually work by making you feel bad for stopping. Heathen sells a five-token Freeze Pack — a one-off purchase, no subscription — that repairs a broken streak, and says plainly that missing a day was never a moral failing. A small test of whether a habit product can drop the shame and keep the habit.
- Solo-built, no venture funding. One developer, no team, no investors — shipped April 2026 and at version 1.2.5 by August. A counterpoint to the venture-backed wellness category.
- Naming as positioning. "Heathen" is a slur reclaimed as a badge. It's a deliberate filter: the people it puts off were never the audience.
Screenshots
Seven screens at 1320 × 2868 (iPhone 6.9"), captured from the current build. Clean UI — no device frames, watermarks, or marketing overlays. Click any image for the full-resolution PNG. Free to use in coverage.
Onboarding — mindfulness without mythology
Today — quote, affirmation, daily reading
Meditate — timer, breathing, full library
Session detail — duration, sound, narration
Journal — entries with mood tracking
History — weekly insights and activity
Your Journey — streaks and progress
Logos & media
All assets may be used in editorial coverage of Heathen without further permission.
Breathing loop (video)
Short silent loop of the breathing exercise — usable as b-roll.
MP4 · also WebM
Icon variants
The mark is a seated figure, eyes closed. Four versions for different backgrounds — all 1024 × 1024 PNG.
NativeThe App Store icon
BadgeCircular, for dark layouts
SolidSage fill, transparent bg
LineOutline only, transparent bg
Brand colours
Click any swatch to copy its hex value.
Style notes
- The app is Heathen; its full App Store name is Heathen — Secular Meditation. Not "the Heathen app."
- Please don't recolour the icon or place it on a light background.
- The developer is Adam Rowe — an independent developer, not a company.
Press contact
Adam Rowe, developer. Happy to answer questions, provide additional screenshots or assets, or arrange a promo code for review. Working on a deadline? Say so in the subject line.