pted!--(for was it not well known that where
blood had been spilt on the ground the future crop was so much more
generous?)--what readiness to adopt some magic ritual likely to
propitiate the unseen power--even though the outline and form of the
latter were vague and uncertain in the extreme! Dr. Frazer, speaking of
the Egyptian Osiris as one out of many corn-gods of the above character,
says (1): "The primitive conception of him as the corn-god comes clearly
out in the festival of his death and resurrection, which was celebrated
the month of Athyr. That festival appears to have been essentially a
festival of sowing, which properly fell at the time when the husbandman
actually committed the seed to the earth. On that occasion an effigy of
the corn-god, moulded of earth and corn, was buried with funeral rites
in the ground in order that, dying there, he might come to life again
with the new crops. The ceremony was in fact a charm to ensure the
growth of the corn by sympathetic magic, and we may conjecture that as
such it was practised in a simple form by every Egyptian farmer on his
fields long before it was adopted and transfigured by the priests in the
stately ritual of the temple." (2)

(1) The Golden Bough, iv, p. 330.

(2) See ch. xv.

The magic in this case was of a gentle description; the clay image of
Osiris sprouting all over with the young green blade was pathetically
poetic; but, as has been suggested, bloodthirsty ceremonies were also
common enough. Human sacrifices, it is said, had at one time been
offered at the grave of Osiris. We bear that the Indians in Ecuador used
to sacrifice men's hearts and pour out human blood on their fields
when they sowed them; the Pawnee Indians used a human victim the same,
allowing his blood to drop on the seed-corn. It is said that in Mexico
girls were sacrificed, and that the Mexicans would sometimes GRIND their
(male) victim, like corn, between two stones. ("I'll grind his bones to
make me bread.") Among the Khonds of East India--who were particularly
given to this kind of ritual--the very TEARS of the sufferer were an
incitement to more cruelties, for tears of course were magic for Rain.
(1)

(1) The Golden Bough, vol. vii, "The Corn-Spirit," pp. 236 sq.

And so on. We have referred to the Bull many times, both in his
astronomical aspect as pioneer of the Spring-Sun, and in his more direct
role as plougher of the fields, and provider of food from his own body.