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hierophant
(redirected from hierophantic)

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hierophant

Chief priest of the Eleusinian Mysteries in ancient Greece. His main task was to display the sacred objects during the celebration of the mysteries and explain their secret meaning to initiates. The priest was usually an old, celibate man with a forceful voice, chosen from the Eumolpids, one of the original clans of Eleusis. Upon election, he cast aside his former name and was called only hierophantes.



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The notion of Ficino as a self-styled prophetic, hierophantic figure fits not only within the world of active intellectuals in early modern Europe (Giovanni Mercurio da Correggio and Savonarola come to mind as do transalpine figures like Jan of Leiden), but more specifically in the context of millenarian Florence at the at the end of the Quattrocento.
Pythagoras in The Renaissance: The Case of Marsilio Ficino by Celenza, Christopher S. / Renaissance Quarterly
Able to dispense mercy, presidents can bring down the apocalypse; at bottom, the presidency is hierophantic and tinted with regality, a truth partly captured in FDR's hyperbolic likening of his administration to Christ's driving the moneychangers from the temple.
The presidency at risk: we need a grown-up by McWilliams, Wilson Carey / Commonweal
But, from Bert Lahr and Ed Wynn through Bob Hope and Jack Benny to Robin Williams and Bob "The Bobcat" Goldthwaite, the art has a secret, hierophantic lineage.
Perfect fools by McConnell, Frank / Commonweal
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