+theos+, tremendous, infallible, is somewhere far away, hidden in clouds
perhaps, on the summit of some inaccessible mountain. If the mountain is
once climbed the god will move to the upper sky. The medicine-chief
meanwhile stays on earth, still influential. He has some connexion with
the great god more intimate than that of other men; at worst he
possesses the god's sacred instruments, his +hiera+ or +orgia+; he knows
the rules for approaching him and making prayers to him.

There is therefore a path open from the divine beast to the
anthropomorphic god. From beings like Thesmophoros and Meilichios the
road is of course much easier. They are already more than half
anthropomorphic; they only lack the concreteness, the lucid shape and
the detailed personal history of the Olympians. In this connexion we
must not forget the power of hallucination, still fairly strong, as the
history of religious revivals in America will bear witness,[26:1] but
far stronger, of course, among the impressionable hordes of early men.
'The god', says M. Doutte in his profound study of Algerian magic,
'c'est le desir collectif personnifie', the collective desire projected,
as it were, or personified.[27:1] Think of the gods who have appeared
in great crises of battle, created sometimes by the desperate desire of
men who have for years prayed to them, and who are now at the last
extremity for lack of their aid, sometimes by the confused and excited
remembrances of the survivors after the victory. The gods who led the
Roman charge at Lake Regillus,[27:2] the gigantic figures that were seen
fighting before the Greeks at Marathon,[27:3] even the celestial signs
that promised Constantine victory for the cross:[27:4]--these are the
effects of great emotion: we can all understand them. But even in daily
life primitive men seem to have dealt more freely than we generally do
with apparitions and voices and daemons of every kind. One of the most
remarkable and noteworthy sources for this kind of hallucinatory god in
early societies is a social custom that we have almost forgotten, the
religious Dance. When the initiated young men of Crete or elsewhere
danced at night over the mountains in the Oreibasia or Mountain Walk
they not only did things that seemed beyond their ordinary workaday
strength; they also felt themselves led on and on by some power which
guided and sustained them. This daemon has no necessary name: a man may
be named after him 'Oreibasius'