+202+. Ceremonies of _consecration_ are similar to those of purification, only usually more formal and solemn. Entrance on a sacred function, which involves special direct contact with a deity, requires special preparation. Even before a simple act of prayer it was felt to be proper to cleanse one's person;[380] how much more important was bodily cleansing and other preparation for one who was chosen by the community to represent it in its relations with the supernatural Powers! The preparation for such an office is in earlier times ritual and external, and becomes gradually moralized. Magicians must submit to purificatory restrictions, and prove their fitness by various deeds.[381] Initiation into secret societies (whose members had a certain official character) was, and is, often elaborate.[382] Priests in Egypt, Babylonia and Assyria, Canaan, India, Greece and Rome, were subject to conditions of purity, always physical and sometimes moral, that secured a daily consecration. +203+. Methods of initial consecration were, probably, of the general character of those prescribed in the Hebrew ritual law.[383] Authority is often conferred by a high official, whose consecrating act is then generally regarded as essential.[384] The priest becomes invested with a quasi-divine authority. The consecration of kings follows the same general lines as that of priests. In both cases the desire is to have some visible form of the deity whose relations with men may be felt to be direct. +204+. No purificatory and consecrative usage has been more widespread than fasting.[385] It is found throughout religious history in the lowest tribes and in the most highly civilized peoples, has been practiced in a great variety of circumstances, and has been invested with a special sanctity and efficacy. It has been regarded as necessary before partaking of sacred food, before the performance of a sacred ceremony, after a death, in the presence of a great occurrence (as an eclipse or a thunderstorm, regarded as supernatural), as a part of the training of magicians, as a preparation for the search after a guardian spirit, as a part of ceremonies in honor of gods, as an act of abstinence in connection with a calamity (or in general as a self-denial proper to sinful man and pleasing to the deity as an act of humility), and, finally, as a retirement from fleshly conditions in preparation for spiritual exercises.