Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Pertaining to the final end or purpose; tending or serving to end or finish.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective rare Tending or relating to a purpose or an end.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Pertaining to religious mysteries.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek τελεστικός (telestikos), from τέλος (telos, "mystery religion").

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Examples

  • Dodds does distinguish between mantic and telestic (Dionysiac) mania, but the possession that he posits for the Pythia is Dionysiac; it is not the mantic manikê of Plato, which is not so described and is largely a play on words.

    An Exchange on the Oracle Fontenrose, Joseph 1979

  • "Plato expresses four kinds of Mania -- Firstly, the musical; secondly, the telestic or mystic; thirdly, the prophetic; and fourthly, that which belongs to Love."

    The Thing from the Lake 1903

  • It preserves the acrostic and mesostic, though not the telestic, form of the original:

    Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc Various 1852

  • "Plato here expresses four kinds of mania, by which I desire to understand enthusiasm and the inspiration of the gods: Firstly, the musical; secondly, the telestic or mystic; thirdly, the prophetic; and fourthly, that which belongs to love."

    Zanoni Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton 1838

  • The author, then pursuing his comment upon Plato, observes, that "one of these manias may suffice (especially that which belongs to love) to lead back the soul to its first divinity and happiness; but that there is an intimate union with them all; and that the ordinary progress through which the soul ascends is, primarily, through the musical; next, through the telestic or mystic; thirdly, through the prophetic; and lastly, through the enthusiasm of love."

    Zanoni Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton 1838

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