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moved the separate definitions of holy & marriage in Greek to the beginning of the paragraph Tags: Mobile edit Mobile web edit |
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[[File:Hieros gamos Pompeii.png|thumb|Hieros gamos of [[Hera]] (shown with [[Iris (mythology)|Iris]]) and [[Zeus]], 1900 drawing of a fresco at [[Pompeii]].]]
'''''Hieros gamos''''', hieros (ἱερός) meaning "holy" or "sacred" and gamos (γάμος) meaning marriage, or '''Hierogamy''' ([[Ancient Greek|Greek]] {{lang|grc|ἱερὸς γάμος}}, {{lang|grc|ἱερογαμία}} "holy marriage"), is a sacred marriage that plays out between a [[god (male deity)|god]] and a [[goddess]], especially when enacted in a symbolic [[ritual]] where human participants represent the deities.
The notion of ''hieros gamos'' does not always presuppose literal sexual intercourse in ritual, but is also used in purely symbolic or [[mythology|mythological]] context, notably in [[alchemy]] and hence in [[Jungian psychology]]. ''Hieros gamos'' is described as the prototype of [[Fertility rite|fertility rituals]].<ref>{{cite journal| title= Hierogamy versus Wedlock: Types of Marriage Plots and Their Relationship to Genres of Prose Fiction. |journal = PMLA| first= Evelyn J.| last= Hinz| publisher= Modern Language Association | volume= 91| number=5| page= 909|jstor = 461564|year = 1976|doi = 10.2307/461564}}</ref>
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