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HOWEVER we may explain it, the fact remains that in peasant folk-lore the corn-spirit is very commonly conceived and represented in animal form. May not this fact explain the relation in which certain animals stood to the ancient deities of vegetation, Dionysus, Demeter, Adonis, Attis, and Osiris? To begin with Dionysus.
It is hard to imagine how the conception of a tree as tenanted by a personal being could be more plainly expressed. The image of Osiris thus made was kept for a year and then burned, exactly as was done with the image of Attis which was attached to the pine-tree. The ceremony of cutting the tree, as described by Firmicus Maternus, appears to be alluded to by Plutarch.
Indeed, Edward Carpenter comments, "One has only, instead of the word 'Jesus' to read Dionysis or Krishna or Hercules or Osiris or Attis, and instead of 'Mary' to insert Semele or Devaki or Alcmene or Neith or Nona, and for Pontius Pilate to use the name of any terrestrial tyrant who comes into the corresponding story, and lo! the creed fits in all particulars into the rites and worship of a pagan God."
John's Day is a cure for diseases of the skin in Normandy, Périgord, and the Abruzzi, as well as in Spain. M. Longworth Dames and Mrs. See below, pp. 234 sqq. Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second Edition, pp. 202 sq. G. Finamore, Credenze, Usi e Costumi Abruzzesi, pp. 158-160. We may compare the Provençal and Spanish customs of bathing and splashing water at Midsummer. See above, pp. 193 sq., 208.
In the second place, the examples of Dionysus and Demeter, if not of Attis and Adonis, have taught us that the animal which is sacrificed to a god on the ground that he is the god's enemy may have been, and probably was, originally the god himself.
Writers upon the subject are of one accord in considering the usual account to be but a euphemistic veiling of the truth, while the close relation between the stories of Adonis and Attis, and the practices associated with the cult, place beyond any shadow of a doubt the fact that the true reason for this universal mourning was the cessation, or suspension, by injury or death, of the reproductive energy of the god upon whose virile activity vegetable life directly, and human life indirectly, depended.
Some confirmation of this conjecture is furnished by the savage story that the mother of Attis conceived by putting in her bosom a pomegranate sprung from the severed genitals of a man-monster named Agdestis, a sort of double of Attis.
In the Attis initiation the proof that the candidate has successfully passed the test is afforded by the revival of the god in the Grail romances the proof lies in the healing of the Fisher King.
Frazer tells us of this worship which was introduced from Assyria into Rome about two hundred years before Christ. It was the worship of Cybele and Attis. These deities were attended by emasculated priests and the priests in oriental costume paraded Rome in religious ceremony. On one occasion, namely, "the day of blood" in the Spring, the chief ceremony was held.
Later in the day tents are set up, in which they pass the night, and in the early morning Charlemagne, after hearing mass, again sits under the pine-tree to take counsel of his barons. J. G. Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, 1906.
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