The holy is the essential space of the divine, the dimension in which the gods appear (GA9:258/169).

Heidegger adopted the word “the holy” in the 1930s from Hölderlin. The word had a special importance for Heidegger because of the insights Hölderlin had given him into the proximity of thinking and poetizing (see also Poetry). Heidegger understood from Hölderlin that the poet’s task was that of naming the gods, but that in Hölderlin’s time “holy names are lacking” (GA4:27/45). The gods had fled. Nevertheless, in consequence the poet learned and was able instead to name the realm to which the gods belonged: the holy. It is with the default of Goo that the holy emerges and the naming was, in Hölderlin’s phrase, “compelled by the holy” (GA4:187/214). (CHL)