Word: priestess
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...smaller band of Nietzscheans led by Novelist Thomas Mann acclaimed the Nietzsche of Thus Spake Zarathustra, the prophet-poet who looked piercingly about his Victorian world and pronounced all its accepted truths a sham. But his sister zealously vaunted her status as the Nietzsche Archive's high priestess, fostered the myth she had largely created, lived to transmit her priestess' blessing to Mussolini and Hitler. Nietzsche, Hitler proclaimed, was "the pioneer of National Socialism...
...prepare the quadruped idols for the worshiping throng, handlers laved them in exotic ceremonies. They rubbed chalk into the hides of sheep dogs and collies to stiffen and brighten the white areas. Some anointed the beasts with such hair beautifiers as Helene Curtis Spray Net and Adorn. One high priestess to an Airedale basted her dog with beer and brilliantine to stiffen and shine its coat. Terrier handlers carefully plucked hair from their dogs' legs and chests, leaving a pile of red fuzz on the floor. Rumors flew that some of the competitors even had eye drops to enhance...
...Delphi he finds a creature like himself-a being cursed by the old gods as he has been cursed by the new. She is an aged Pythian priestess who lives on a mountainside with only goats and her idiot son for company. The Wanderer asks the priestess for guidance, and her narrative is the main part of the book. Like most allegories, the story suffers from the sometimes near-ludicrous clash of the concrete and the symbolic. It is a measure of Novelist Lagerkvist's great narrative powers that he manages to keep his story alive in the strange...
...only for his temple. These are, for good or ill, like unto other men. But the Pythia and the Wanderer are set apart because they have been touched by God; he works on them not merely "signs and wonders" but the miracle of possession. To the priestess and the Wanderer (and this is the book's message), God is not peace or security; he is agony, conflict-and yet ineffable sweetness as well. "The divine is not human," says the priestess. "It is something quite different. And it is not noble or sublime or spiritualized, as one likes...
What of the Wanderer and the advice he seeks? Perhaps despair might be the beginning of his salvation, suggests the old priestess. "God is your destiny. Your soul is filled with him; through his curse you live a life with god . . . Perhaps one day he will bless you instead of cursing you. I don't know. Perhaps one day you will let him lean his head against your house. Perhaps you won't. But whatever you may do, your fate will be forever bound up with god, your soul forever filled with...