[1] See Adonis, Attis and Osiris, Part IV of The Golden Bough, by
J. G. Frazer, p. 229.


"In the baptism the devotee, crowned with gold and
wreathed with fillets, descended into a pit, the mouth of
which was covered with a wooden grating. A bull, adorned
with garlands of flowers, its forehead glittering with gold
leaf, was then driven on to the grating and there stabbed
to death with a consecrated spear. Its hot reeking blood
poured in torrents through the apertures, and was received
with devout eagerness by the worshiper on every part of
his person and garments, till he emerged from the pit,
drenched, dripping, and scarlet from head to foot, to
receive the homage, nay the adoration, of his fellows--as
one who had been born again to eternal life and had washed
away his sins in the blood of the bull."[1] And Frazer continuing
says: "That the bath of blood derived from slaughter
of the bull (tauro-bolium) was believed to regenerate
the devotee for eternity is proved by an inscription
found at Rome, which records that a certain Sextilius
Agesilaus Aedesius, who dedicated an altar to Attis and
the mother of the gods (Cybele) was taurobolio criobolio que
in aeternum renatus."[2] "In the procedure of the Taurobolia
and Criobolia," says Mr. J. M. Robertson,[3] "which
grew very popular in the Roman world, we have the literal
and original meaning of the phrase 'washed in the blood of
the lamb'[4]; the doctrine being that resurrection and eternal
life were secured by drenching or sprinkling with the