We return to Jean-Christophe Valtat‘s exotic and enchanting vocabulary in his novel Aurorarama, a vocabulary that often led our copy-editor to reach for her dictionary in confusion.

theophany: a visible manifestation of God or a god.

We asked Valtat to explain where he encountered this word and why he choose to use it in his novel:

Like many people, I am a devotee of Julian Jayne‘s wonderful book The Origin of Consciousness where he explains that theophanies were actually hallucinations and the normal state of mind in the Homeric times. In the Arctic, an area known for its hallucinations, and in New-Venice especially, where people cultivate hallucinations as a sport and a pastime, theophanies are rather common fare. More [appear as] godesses than gods, for some reasons.