mystagogue

plural mystagogues · alternative mystagog · alternative mystagogus

1. A person who prepares an initiate for entry into a mystery cult, or who teaches mystical doctrines.

   Philosophers themselves, the mystagogues in the temple of decorum, must approach it with reverence, and after all are allowed only to turn it aside a very little.

   1838, Robert Sandeman, Letters on Theron and Aspasio: Addressed to the Author, page 162

   4 more examples

   There is an overruling destiny above us, though not in the sense in which it was viewed by that wretched man, who, beguiled by some foreign mystagogue, used the awful word as the ready apology for whatever he chose to do—we must examine the packet.

   1820, [Walter Scott], The Abbot. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne & Co.] for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and for Archibald Constable and Company, and John Ballantyne, […], →OCLC

   It is simply common sense, combined with uncommon courage, which includes uncommon honesty and uncommon patience; and if you will be brave, honest, patient, and rational, you will need no mystagogues to tell you what in science to believe and what not to believe; for you will be just as good judges of scientific facts and theories as those who assume the right of guiding your convictions.

   1874, Charles Kingsley, Health and Education

   Yet again the thought of Death as the deliverer, the revealer, and the mystagogue, through whom the soul of man is reunited to the spirit of the universe, returns; and on this solemn note the poem closes.

   1878, John Addington Symonds, Percy Bysshe Shelley

   It's just because I have picked up a little about mystics that I have no use for mystagogues. Real mystics don't hide mysteries, they reveal them. They set a thing up in broad daylight, and when you've seen it it's still a mystery. But the mystagogues hide a thing in darkness and secrecy, and when you find it, it's a platitude.

   1926, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, “The Arrow of Heaven”, in The Incredulity of Father Brown

   Synonyms: hierophant