The role of Hierophant is used nearly across the board when it comes to the Circle of the Crone. Democracy is of little interest to most Acolytes, for the gods and goddesses do not grant all Kindred an equal vote by dint of them being vampires. For this covenant, power lies in the hands of the capable, the faithful and the blessed. The Hierophant, acting as both spiritual and political leader within most domains where Acolytes are present, is considered to be all three of those things. She must be capable, for without ability another would take her place (much as a beta wolf can depose a weak alpha). She must appear to be faithful, for the powers and sorceries of the Circle demand reverence. And, in some fashion, she must be blessed.
Some interpret a “blessing” as nothing more than natural ability, whereas others see a “blessing” as a literal, even superstitious “approval” by the gods or spirits. Such divine consent may come in the form of ravens alighting upon her shoulders, or maybe on the night of the Acolyte’s Embrace, the city featured an abnormally high occurrence of miscarriages and suicides. Every cult will interpret omens and portents differently from the next.
The Hierophant, above all, is a spiritual leader. She invokes ritual. She determines which holy days are appropriate, and which are to be disavowed (or even labeled “blasphemous”). She helps set the precedent for what counts as proper worship in the domain. Her job is not, however, to make all the city’s Acolytes happy.
Certainly, some Hierophants attempt to do that, but doing so is at odds with genuine belief. If the Hierophant believes unequivocally that one must worship Cailleach the Crone with ceremonies of starvation, but a smaller cult within the city offers worship to Xipe Totec (an Aztec god of rebirth), then she is shortchanging her own goddess in letting these others throw their reverence toward this alternate entity.
Of course, therein lurks imbalance. The Hierophant is also a political leader. She helps set the course of what the Acolytes will try to accomplish within the mad waltz of the Danse Macabre. She determines whether they will seek power by covert or overt means, or whether they will eschew temporal power in favor of divine puissance. She helps to decide which other covenants will make strong allies and which must remain adversaries. Can members of the Invictus also offer worship to the Crone? The Hierophant decides such things.
