afterwards to the blood of the sacred animal, the Llama. And as
to Mexico, Sahagun, the great Spanish missionary, tells us that
it was a custom of the people there to "smear the outside of
their houses and doors with blood drawn from their own ears and
ankles, in order to propitiate the god of Harvest"
(Kingsborough's Mexican Antiquities, vol. vi, p. 235).


In order fully to understand this extraordinary expression
and its origin we must turn for a moment to the worship
both of Mithra, the Persian Sungod, and of Attis the Syrian
god, as throwing great light on the Christian cult and
ceremonies. It must be remembered that in the early centuries
of our era the Mithra-cult was spread over the whole Western
world. It has left many monuments of itself here
in Britain. At Rome the worship was extremely popular,
and it may almost be said to have been a matter
of chance whether Mithraism should overwhelm Christianity,
or whether the younger religion by adopting many of the
rites of the older one should establish itself (as it did) in
the face of the latter.

Now we have already mentioned that in the Mithra
cult the slaying of a Bull by the Sungod occupies the same
sort of place as the slaving of the Lamb in the Christian
cult. It took place at the Vernal Equinox and the blood
of the Bull acquired in men's minds a magic virtue.
Mithraism was a greatly older religion than Christianity;
but its genesis was similar. In fact, owing to the Precession
of the Equinoxes, the crossing-place of the Ecliptic and