empyrean
- noun
- /ɛmˈpɪrɪən/
- Archaic
- More than the empty tracts of space between Earth and Sun, it is the ground beneath our feet, its "caverns measureless to man," that invokes an alien sublimity: wider than the Empyrean are the uncanny depths and stranger its wisdom.
Examples
-
The beginning of all things is the knowledge of God, and the end of all things is strict observance of whatsoever hath been sent down from the empyrean of the Divine Will that pervadeth all.
Blog text (13) -
Maria Luigia, our unlamented duchess, will live on, whether in Parma or Vienna, until the day when she joins Professor Hegel in some unspecified empyrean that can only be conceived as a further synthesis.
Fiction book (2000) -
"Where in God's blue empyrean did you find carriage horses in this day?
Fiction book (1991) -
The golden man faded into view, in the center of our empyrean of several hundred souls.
Fiction book (1993) -
"But while our young millionaire dwelt, as it were, in the Empyrean, something new occurred.
Blog text (14) -
Day encourages his followers to explore dream manipulation with the goal of discovering a strange hidden world, a place he calls the Empyrean.
Blog text (34) -
Both could be called avatars of Circe herself, intermediate figures in the pantheon, divine, but not Olympians, and neither of the underworld nor the empyrean, neither good nor bad, but supernaturally adept, powerful, and dangerous.
Academic text (1997) -
As opposed to the perfect stillness, the Empyrean ordering of Bradley's absolute, atomism is pure vitality—filled with accident, spontaneity, randomness.
Academic text (2017) -
It was for the others as well—even for those advancing to higher and higher positions as if they were climbing Jacob's ladder and heading for the empyrean—the only difference was that they didn't realize it.
Fiction book (1996) -
In ancient mythology, the empyrean was envisioned as the dwelling place of the gods and the ultimate paradise.
Synonyms
The sky above the earth that people imagine as a wide dome with stars
The sky seen as a wide space with the sun, moon, and stars
The sky above the earth where clouds and stars appear
An imaginary ball around the Earth in the sky where stars and planets appear to be
The sky that looks like a big bowl holding the sun, moon, and stars
A beautiful city in Heaven that good people go to after they die
A perfect, peaceful place often shown as a beautiful city in religious writing
How High
Surface Forms
Etymology
Empyrean comes from a Greek phrase meaning 'in fire', where the root pyr means 'fire' and appears in the English word pyre. People thought the topmost heaven was a place of bright fire, so the empyrean as a noun is the highest, heavenly part of the sky.