three, or in
pairs, or operated as single individuals.

Although certain spirits might confer gifts upon mankind, they were at
certain seasons and in certain localities hostile and vengeful, like
the grass-green fairies in winter, or the earth-black elves when their
gold was sought for in forbidden and secret places. These spirits were
the artisans of creation and vegetation, like the Egyptian Khnumu and
the Indian Rhibus; they fashioned the grass blades and the stalks of
corn, but at times of seasonal change they might ride on their tempest
steeds, or issue forth from flooding rivers and lakes. Man was greatly
concerned about striking bargains with them to secure their services,
and about propitiating them, or warding off their attacks with
protective charms, and by performing "ceremonies of riddance". The
ghosts of the dead, being spirits, were similarly propitious or
harmful on occasion; as emissaries of Fate they could injure the
living.

Ancestor worship, the worship of ghosts, had origin in the stage of
Animism. But ancestor worship was not developed in Babylonia as in
China, for instance, although traces of it survived in the worship of
stars as ghosts, in the deification of kings, and the worship of
patriarchs, who might be exalted as gods or identified with a supreme
god. The Egyptian Pharaoh Unas became the sun god and the
constellation of Orion by devouring his predecessors[308]. He ate his
god as a tribe ate its animal totem; he became the "bull of heaven".

There were star totems as well as mountain totems. A St. Andrew's
cross sign, on one of the Egyptian ship standards referred to, may
represent a star. The Babylonian goddess Ishtar was symbolized as a
star, and she was the "world mother". Many primitive currents of
thought shaped the fretted rocks of ancient mythologies.

In various countries all round the globe the belief prevailed that the
stars were ghosts of the mighty dead--of giants, kings, or princes, or
princesses, or of pious people whom the gods loved, or of animals
which were worshipped. A few instances may be selected at random. When
the Teutonic gods slew the giant Thjasse, he appeared in the heavens
as Sirius. In India the ghosts of the "seven Rishis", who were
semi-divine Patriarchs, formed the constellation of the Great Bear,
which in Vedic times was called the "seven bears". The wives of the
seven Rishis were the stars of the Pleiades. In Greece the Pleiades
were the ghosts of the