_this_ good office?--the amusing of Demeter by an obscene gesture? If he
did, such gestures as Baubo's are as widely diffused as any other piece
of folk-lore. In the centre of the Australian desert Mr. Carnegie saw a
native make a derisive gesture which he thought had only been known to
English schoolboys. {88a} Again, indecent pantomimic dances, said to be
intended to act as "object lessons" in things _not_ to be done, are
common in Australian Mysteries. Further, we do not know Baubo, or a
counterpart of her, in the ritual of Isis, and the clay figurines of such
a figure, in Egypt, are of the Greek, the Ptolemaic period. Thus the
evidence comes to this: an indecent gesture of contempt, known in Egypt,
is, at Eleusis, attributed to Baubo. This does not prove that Baubo was
originally Egyptian. {88b} Certain traditions make Demeter the mistress
of Celeus. {88c} Traces of a "mystic marriage," which also occur, are
not necessarily Egyptian: the idea and rite are common.

There remains the question of the sacred objects displayed (possibly
statues, probably very ancient "medicine" things, as among the Pawnees)
and sacred words spoken. These are said by many authors to confirm the
initiate in their security of hope as to a future life. Now similar
instruction, as to the details of the soul's voyage, the dangers to
avoid, the precautions to be taken, notoriously occur in the Egyptian
"Book of the Dead." But very similar fancies are reported from the
Ojibbeways (Kohl), the Polynesians and Maoris (Taylor, Turner, Gill,
Thomson), the early peoples of Virginia, {89a} the modern Arapaho and
Sioux of the Ghost Dance rite, the Aztecs, and so forth. In all
countries these details are said to have been revealed by men or women
who died, but did not (like Persephone) taste the food of the dead; and
so were enabled to return to earth. The initiate, at Eleusis, were
guided along a theatrically arranged pathway of the dead, into a
theatrical Elysium. {89b} Now as such ideas as these occur among races