hierophany

Definition

A physical manifestation of the holy or sacred, serving as a spiritual eidolon for emulation or worship.

Etymology

Borrowed from French hiérophanie, as used by Romanian religious historian and philosopher Mircea Eliade (1907–1986) in his book The Sacred and the Profane (1959; translated into English from an unpublished French original), from Ancient Greek ἱερός (hierós, “sacred, holy sign”) + φαίνω (phaínō, “show, appear”).

Example Sentences

• "Man becomes aware of the sacred, because it manifests itself, shows itself, as something wholly different from the profane. To designate the act of manifestation of the sacred, we have proposed the term hierophany. It is a fitting term, because it does not imply anything further; it expresses no more than is implicit in its etymological content, i.e., that something sacred shows itself to us. It could be said that the history of religions—from the most primitive to the most highly developed—is constituted by a great number of hierophanies, by manifestations of sacred realities. From the most elementary hierophany—e.g., manifestation of the sacred in some ordinary object, a stone or a tree—to the supreme hierophany (which, for a Christian, is the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ) there is no solution of continuity."
• "The technical meaning of symbolism is more extensive than the mere assertion that a particular stone or a specific tree is a hierophany. […] Water symbolism involves the common element of water, but lacks a central hierophany such as unites lunar symbolism. […] But there is, for [Mircea] Eliade, an overarching system which implies a meaning which is more comprehensive than any hierophany standing alone, and this system is implied in each particular hierophany."
• "Hierophany: We have now reached the culminating point of the rite. When the fire bursts forth, the adhvaryu rises, takes away the golden lid and announces: “the gharma is aglow” (rucito gharma). This is one of the key-moments of the whole rite, if not its culminating point. The heat has now reached its Zenith, as also the light which is emitted from the fire. It is in fact the heat which guarantees the hierophany which at this moment takes place in the mahāvira – in the ‘Great Hero’ – which becomes divine. And it is in this highest degree of incandescence that the Sacred appears with all its force and power, assuring its actual divine presence which the sacrifice – sacrum facere – intends to effect and make manifest."

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