Noun

(en-noun)

An image or representation of an idea; a representation of an ideal form; an apparition of some actual or imaginary entity, or of some aspect of reality.

* 1936 , (Henry Miller), Black Spring :

As a species it is extinct; as an eidolon it retains its corporeality – but only if maintained in a state of equipoise.

*1974 , (Lawrence Durrell), Monsieur , Faber & Faber 1992, p. 21:

*:It was not hard to forge her image, her "eidolon ", in the grey gloom of the little church.

* 2006 , (Thomas Pynchon), Against the Day , Vintage 2007, p. 697:

Kit was sitting up staring into the dark at this eidolon , inelegantly turned out contrary to a whole raft of public-decency statutes, which had come monitory and breathing in to violate Kit's insomnia.

A phantom, a ghost or elusive entity.

Noun

(en noun)

A graven image or representation of anything that is revered, or believed to convey spiritual power.

*

, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=2 , passage=Sunning himself on the board steps, I saw for the first time Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke. He was dressed out in broad gaiters and bright tweeds, like an English tourist, and his face might have belonged to Dagon, idol of the Philistines.}}

* 1911 (The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God) , :

There's a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Kathmandu, There's a little marble cross below the town; There's a broken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew, And the Yellow God forever gazes down.

A cultural icon, or especially popular person.