hierophant

noun

1. An ancient Greek priest who interpreted sacred mysteries, especially the priest of the Eleusinian Mysteries.

   “The exhibition of ancient statues, relics, and symbols, concealed from daily adoration (as in the Catholic festivals of this day), probably, made a main duty of the Hierophant.”

   “If books are as provocative as you suggest, one would expect every librarian to utter the shrill screams of a hierophant, to clash ecstatic castanets in his silent alcoves!”

   “Most scholars name the rectangular enclosure anaktoron, locate in it the throne of the hierophant, and suppose that from it emanated the central revelation which occurred, in Plutarch's phrase, ‘when the anaktora were opened’.”

2. An interpreter of sacred mysteries or arcane knowledge.

   “Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”

   “Thus I became the hierophant of those three worthy and talented men, who, in spite of their literary accomplishments, were not wise, since they were infatuated with occult and fabulous sciences, and believed in the existence of phenomena impossible in the moral as well as in the physical order of things.”

   “What did even the hierophants of science know of the potencies of, for them, unvintageable evil?”

   “Ambassadors of northern countries stand / Impassive while our hierophants intone / Long canticles of Christ the Contraband: / Our grandees' hearts are shrunk to kidney stones.”

   “No, I must play creator / And make them up, these hierophants.”

3. One who explains or makes a commentary.