the corn a human
victim would often be slaughtered. The corn-spirit clearly approved of
this, for wherever the blood and remains of the victim were strewn the
corn always sprang up more plentifully. The tribe or human group made
reparation thus to the corn; the corn-spirit signified approval. The
'sin' was expiated and harmony restored. Sometimes the sacrifice was
voluntarily offered by a tribesman; sometimes it was enforced, by lot
or otherwise; sometimes the victim was a slave, or a captive enemy;
sometimes even an animal. All that did not so much matter. The main
thing was that the formal expiation had been carried out, and the wrath
of the spirits averted.

It is known that tribes whose chief food-animal was the bear felt it
necessary to kill and cat a bear occasionally; but they could not do
this without a sense of guilt, and some fear of vengeance from the great
Bear-spirit. So they ate the slain bear at a communal feast in which
the tribesmen shared the guilt and celebrated their community with their
totem and with each other. And since they could not make any reparation
directly to the slain animal itself AFTER its death, they made their
reparation BEFORE, bringing all sorts of presents and food to it for a
long anterior period, and paying every kind of worship and respect to
it. The same with the bull and the ox. At the festival of the Bouphonia,
in some of the cities of Greece as I have already mentioned, the actual
bull sacrificed was the handsomest and most carefully nurtured that
could be obtained; it was crowned with flowers and led in procession
with every mark of reverence and worship. And when--as I have already
pointed out--at the great Spring festival, instead of a bull or a goat
or a ram, a HUMAN victim was immolated, it was a custom (which can be
traced very widely over the world) to feed and indulge and honor the
victim to the last degree for a WHOLE YEAR before the final ceremony,
arraying him often as a king and placing a crown upon his head, by way
of acknowledgment of the noble and necessary work he was doing for the
general good.

What a touching and beautiful ceremony was that--belonging especially
to the North of Syria, and lands where the pine is so beneficent and
beloved a tree--the mourning ceremony of the death and burial of Attis!
when a pine-tree, felled by the axe, was hollowed out, and in the hollow
an image (often itself carved out of pinewood) of the young Attis was
placed. Could