The term "high priest" (or, less frequently, high priestess) usually refers either to an individual who holds the office of ruler-priest, or to one who is the head of a religious caste.
Read more about High Priest: Ancient Egypt, Ancient Israel, Ancient World, India, Christianity, Other Religions, Non-religious Usages
Famous quotes containing the words high and/or priest:
“Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?
For these red lips, with all their mournful pride,
Mournful that no new wonder may betide,
Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam,
And Usna’s children died.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Our art is the finest, the noblest, the most suggestive, for it is the synthesis of all the arts. Sculpture, painting, literature, elocution, architecture, and music are its natural tools. But while it needs all of those artistic manifestations in order to be its whole self, it asks of its priest or priestess one indispensable virtue: “faith.””
—Sarah Bernhardt (1845–1923)