Monday, March 05, 2007

Ali the hierophant

I learned a new word today. Hierophant.

The role of the hierophant in religion is to bring the congregants into the presence of that which is deemed holy. The word comes from Ancient Greece, where it was constructed from the combination of ta hiera, "the holy," and phainein, "to show." In Attica it was the title of the chief priest at the Eleusinian Mysteries.

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