About Us

Purist version of the term “hierophany” (from the Greek hieros (ἱερός) = sacred and pháneia (φαίνειν) = to reveal, to bring to light); is the act of manifestation of the sacred, also known among Hindus and Buddhists with the word of the Sanskrit darśana, and, in the most concrete form of the manifestation of a god, deity or numen, is called theophany.

A hierophany is a manifestation of sacred forces in which what is shown is not God in a personal sense, but rather the sacred sense of the Cosmos, the profound value of the spirit of divinity that fills everything.

The term was coined by Mircea Eliade, in his work “Treatise on the History of Religions”, to refer to an awareness of the existence of the sacred, when it manifests itself through the objects of our usual Cosmos as something completely opposed to the unholy world. In order to translate the act of manifestation of the sacred, Eliade proposes the term “hierophany”, which is very concrete, since it refers only to that which corresponds to the sacred that is shown to us.

Hierophanies can be simple or complex. Simple ones are when manifested through objects, such as a stone, ring, sword, or river. Complex ones occur when they manifest themselves through a complex and long process, for example, the emergence of a religion. For Mircea Eliade every hierophany, from the simplest, it’s a paradox because when this manifestation happens through a sacred object it does not lose its unholy nature. Hierophanies are experiences of people full of faith, accompanied by admiration, stupor, or terror that borders on the ineffable.

Hierospháneia are Xavier de Palau and Rafael Balaguer, who have been collaborating on several multidisciplinary projects since 2011.