exaltation

Noun

exaltation (countable and uncountable, plural exaltations)

1. The act of exalting or raising high; also, the state of being exalted; elevation.
   • The irregular and undisciplined wars which it was her business to describe were naturally far more prolific of extraordinary incidents, unexpected turns of fortune, and striking displays of individual talent, and vice and virtue, than the more solemn movements of national hostility, where...2023, The Most Influential Women in History
2. A feeling of happiness so intense as to be carried away by it; joyful pride bordering on ecstasy, often resulting from acclaim or triumph.
3. The refinement or subtilization of a body, or the increasing of its virtue or principal property.
4. That placement of a planet in the zodiac in which it is deemed to exert its strongest influence.
   • He often stood there in a muse until dusk fell, and then darkness, while once in a while the moon, ‘in her exaltation’ as the astrologers say, rose to remind him that such worldly musings meant nothing to the hostile universe without.1978, Lawrence Durrell, Livia (Avignon Quintet), Faber & Faber, published 1992, page 483
5. (Mormonism) Apotheosis; becoming a god in the highest degree of glory after death.
   • Those who obtain exaltation will gain all power and thus themselves be omnipotent […]1958, Bruce R. McConkie, “Omnipotence”, in Mormon Doctrine, 1st edition, page 492
   • Mormon commentators have taken various position about whether people who have died could move from a lower degree of glory—what non-Mormons might call salvation—to a higher one and eventually reach exaltation and become gods.2019, Thomas G. Alexander, Brigham Young and the Expansion of the Mormon Faith, →ISBN, page 209
6. (collective, uncommon) A flock of doves, larks or skylarks.
   • An 'exaltation' of skylarks, who will always sing you wet through, as the Watcher says, were warbling against the storm in an upper air and gave me a sudden illusion of sunshine.1931, William Makepeace Thackeray, editor, The Cornhill Magazine, Smith, Elder and Company, page 332
   • Wood Larks are never seen in anything like such large flocks as Sky - Larks. Now and then, however, a few of the former mingle with an "exaltation of the latter."1914, John Walpole-Bond, Field-studies of Some Rarer British Birds, Witherby & Company, page 10

   Synonyms:

   exultation

7. (archaic) An abnormal sense of personal well-being, power, or importance, observed as a symptom in various forms of insanity.