In all religions that have risen above the rudest stage, those who desire to become priests are initiated by certain fixed ceremonies. Thus is the consecration given which fits them to convey to God the wishes of mortals, and to mortals the will of God. To take an example from a very primitive form of faith, the "Angekoks," or priests of the Greenlanders, receive their commission only after long and exhausting rites, in which a familiar spirit is supposed to appear to them, and to accompany them to heaven and hell. Should they fail ten times in obtaining the assistance of such a spirit, they are compelled to lay down their offices. The spirit, when he comes, holds a conversation with the Angekok, who is thus installed in his profession by supernatural means (H. G., p. 253-256). So also, among the American tribes in New France, we are told that the "Jongleurs" by profession never obtained this character till after they had been prepared for it by fasts, which they carried to a great extent, and during which they beat the drum, cried, shouted, sung and smoked. Their installation was subsequently accomplished in a sort of Bacchanalia, with ceremonies of a highly extravagant nature (N. F., vol. iii. p. 363). Among a certain tribe of negroes, the priests are taken from a class of men termed "living sacrifices" (G. d. M., p. 328), who live at the expense of others, taking whatever they require, and who wear their hair, like the Nazarites, unshorn. Here their consecration is marked by these peculiar characteristics, and appears to be impressed upon them by some dedication made without their own consent. In another negro nation, there is a priestess of a certain snake, who is marked in a peculiar way over the whole body, and held in great esteem. Every year some young girls are seized by force and taken to this priestess, who marks them artistically, initiates them in religious songs and dances, marries them in a manner to the snake, and consecrates them as priestesses of that divinity. With others again the priesthood is hereditary, the consecration in this case being imprinted once for all on certain families, and not imparted, as in the instances given above, by rites affecting only the individual who undergoes them. A peculiar modification of the hereditary principle is where the preference is given to him, among several sons, who dares to pull certain grains (which have been previously put in) out of the teeth of his deceased father, and place them in the mouth of the corpse. Here the consecration is partly inherited, partly personal. Elsewhere a priest or fetich-maker is made "by all sorts of silly ceremonies at a meal," and a string with consecrated objects is hung round his neck in token of his condition (G. d. M., p. 328).