and are now so familiar through books on ethnology, that it is needless to cite illustrations of the general principle.[1] It may be well, however, to refer to two particular modes of producing temporary inspiration, because they are perhaps less known than some others, and because we shall have occasion to refer to them later on. One of these modes of producing inspiration is by sucking the fresh blood of a sacrificed victim. In the temple of Apollo Diradiotes at Argos, a lamb was sacrificed by night once a month; a woman, who had to observe a rule of chastity, tasted the blood of the lamb, and thus being inspired by the god she prophesied or divined.[2] At Aegira in Achaea the priestess of Earth drank the fresh blood of a bull before she descended into the cave to prophesy.[3] In Southern India a devil-dancer “drinks the blood of the sacrifice, putting the throat of the decapitated goat to his mouth. Then, as if he had acquired new life, he begins to brandish his staff of bells, and to dance with a quick but wild unsteady step. Suddenly the afflatus descends. There is no mistaking that glare, or those frantic leaps. He snorts, he stares, he gyrates. The demon has now taken bodily possession of him; and, though he retains the power of utterance and of motion, both are under the demon’s control, and his separate consciousness is in abeyance. . . . The devil-dancer is now worshipped as a present deity, and every bystander consults him respecting his disease, his wants, the welfare of his absent relatives, the offerings to be made for the accomplishment of his
- ↑ See for examples E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture,2 ii. 131 sqq.
- ↑ Pausanias, ii. 24, I. κάτοχος ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ γινεται is the expression.
- ↑ Pliny, Nat. Hist., xxviii. 147. Pausanias (vii. 25, 13) mentions the draught of bull’s blood as an ordeal to test the chastity of the priestess. Doubtless it was thought to serve both purposes.
