Magocracy

Magocracy (Phoenician: 法領制度, Fǎlǐng Zhìdù, : Hourjou seido) is a form of government, and more extensively a key arrangement in Infernalist politics wherein the clergy of Infernalism hold the paramount position in the politics and societal governance of a polity, ultimately answerable to no secular or temporal power apart from their superiors in the clerical hierarchy. Thus, a polity in the Infernalist sense is formed through and defined by the jurisdiction of a Sanctuary, the highest jurisdictional and clerical unit in the Infernalist hierarchy - subordinate only to the Sanctuary of the Most Eternal. Derived from this, a common synonym of "magocracy" is the Sanctuary-State: a state formed and defined by the territorial extent of a Sanctuary's ecclesiastical jurisdiction, even if the equivalence between magocracy and nation-state is not strictly speaking accurate.

The paramount position of the clergy is derived from the raison d'être of Infernalism, that being the maximization of Erudition in a society and by extension, humanity and all sapientkind. In the Infernalist understanding, as the Infernalist clergy - symbolically ordained through the gnostic and ultrascient authority of the Prophetess and her Scions - holds an inherently greater erudite understanding of the universe, and thereby possesses an unassailable obligation and privilege to bestow gnostic knowledge to those less erudite. Through this principle of the Mandate of Erudition, it is logically surmised that the clergy must hold the pre-eminent position in governance of both polity and society, as the ignorant can never presume to rule over the erudite, and in its vice versa, the erudite must always rule over the ignorant.