Hmm, you know, I've often heard that 'hamartia' is a term from archery, but as I look it up just now I'm not sure if that was more Christian blather. It appears the original concept was any miscalculation by a warrior in battle. It's a "mistake"—but with metaphysical consequences, with life & death & the fate of the world at stake, with the gods looking on.

William Irwin Thompson writes: "The missing of the mark of hamartia comes from crossing over the limit, the boundary, the edge that defines the normal world."