[2] Compare the Aztec ceremonial of lighting a holy fire and
communicating it to the multitude from the wounded breast of a
human victim, celebrated every 52 years at the end of one cycle
and the beginning of another--the constellation of the Pleiades
being in the Zenith (Prescott's Conquest of Mexico, Bk. I, ch.
4).


Think for a moment of a time far back when there were
absolutely NO Almanacs or Calendars, either nicely printed
or otherwise, when all that timid mortals could see was that
their great source of Light and Warmth was daily failing,
daily sinking lower in the sky. As everyone now knows
there are about three weeks at the fag end of the
year when the days are at their shortest and there is very
little change. What was happening? Evidently the god
had fallen upon evil times. Typhon, the prince of darkness,
had betrayed him; Delilah, the queen of Night, had
shorn his hair; the dreadful Boar had wounded him;
Hercules was struggling with Death itself; he had fallen
under the influence of those malign constellations--the
Serpent and the Scorpion. Would the god grow weaker
and weaker, and finally succumb, or would he conquer after
all? We can imagine the anxiety with which those early
men and women watched for the first indication of a lengthening
day; and the universal joy when the Priest (the representative
of primitive science) having made some simple
observations, announced from the Temple steps that the
day WAS lengthening--that the Sun was really born again