Where this is the case the institution of the priesthood has broken down in the transition, at least partially.

The spokesman of such an organization is at the outset a servant and representative of the organization, rather than a member of a special priestly class and the spokesman of a divine master.

And it is only by a process of gradual specialization that, in succeeding generations, this spokesman regains the position of priest, with a full investiture of sacerdotal authority, and with its accompanying austere, archaic and vicarious manner of life.

The like is true of the breakdown and redintegration of devout ritual after such a revulsion.

The priestly office, the scheme of sacerdotal life, and the schedule of devout observances are rehabilitated only gradually, insensibly, and with more or less variation in details, as a persistent human sense of devout propriety reasserts its primacy in questions touching the interest in the preternatural--and it may be added, as the organization increases in wealth, and so acquires more of the point of view and the habits of thought of a leisure class.
Beyond the priestly class, and ranged in an ascending hierarchy, ordinarily comes a superhuman vicarious leisure class of saints, angels, etc .-- or their equivalents in the ethnic cults.