At this point, sacrifice to the dead undergoes further modifications, as a consequence of which there are also changes in the accompanying cult acts. The sacrifice of food dedicated to the use of the deceased and the bloody sacrifice designed to equip him with magical power, are no longer offered merely to the departed. As soon as god-ideas begin to emerge, the sacrifice is brought, in first instance, to these higher beings, who are implored to furnish protection to the deceased. As this latter motive gains the ascendancy, the slaughtered animals are no longer placed in the grave along with the deceased, but their blood is poured out upon it; of their flesh, moreover, only a part is thrown upon the grave as the portion of the dead, while the rest is consumed by the mourners. The feelings of reverence, thus expressed, issue, in the later development of these cults to the dead, in general ancestor worship. Not only the deceased himself and those who have assembled, but particularly the gods under whose protection the deceased is placed, receive a portion of the sacrifice. When this occurs, the offering, which had been devoted to the deceased, becomes sacrifice proper. The offering was given solely to the one who had died; at first, its purpose was to keep him in his grave, later, to afford him aid in his further life. Real sacrifice to the dead involves _three_ parties--the deceased person, the deity, and the survivors. The deceased gains new life from the blood and flesh of the sacrificial animal; the deity is subjected to a magical influence which is to incline him favourably toward the departed; those who bring the sacrifices participate in this favour, since they enter into a magical union both with the deceased and with the protecting deity. In part, these developments extend on beyond the totemic age; their beginnings, however, are already everywhere present. True, in this early sacrifice to the dead the attempt to exercise a magical influence upon the deity--later, as we shall see, the essential feature of the sacrificial idea--is still in the background. Nevertheless, this magical feature, which characterizes sacrifice at the height of its development, has already made its appearance. Because of it, the original sacrifice to the dead possesses a significance intermediate between the two distinct concepts of a gift which sacrifice has been held to embody. Though originally a gift to the deceased, an offering laid beside him, sacrifice became a means of protective magic for him and for the survivors. When the deity came to constitute a third member of this magical group, and as he gradually gained the dominant place, the idea of a gift again began to displace the purely magical idea. The gift, however, was now a gift to the deity. This was the final stage in the development of sacrifice and represents the basis of the ordinary rationalistic interpretation. Originally, however, sacrifice possessed a different significance.