hierophants

Noun

hierophant (plural hierophants or hierophantes)

1. (Ancient Greece) 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.1837, Edward Lytton Bulwer [i.e., Edward Bulwer-Lytton], Athens: Its Rise and Fall: […], volume I, London: Saunders and Otley, […], →OCLC, book I, page 59
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....1840, Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of Poetry
3. One who explains or makes a commentary.