While we at S.T.A.R. regularly speak about individuals who fill the roles of religious leaders, we haven’t given much consideration to these roles themselves and their impact on those following their spiritual paths. Prophets channel Divine thoughts and feelings, moving others to God’s will. Priests lead while preserving the sacred traditions and rituals of their followers. Mystics, seek direct, personal experience of the numinous. Poets are those who give such experience a voice.

People in these roles have been essential in the spiritual lives of humans through the ages, but—if false or misguided or dated—they have also been serious impediments to the quest for the holy.