The fifth ordeal was not less terrible. It consisted in passing a night in company with wild tigers, in the "Tiger house," exposed to be torn to pieces, or devoured alive, by the ferocious animals. Emerging safe from the den, they had to submit to their sixth trial in the "Fiery house." This was a burning furnace where they had to remain from sunset to sunrise. Coming out unscorched, they were ready for the seventh trial, said to be the most severe of all, in the "House of the bats." The sacred book tells us it was the house of _Camazotz_, the "God of the bats," full of death-dealing weapons, where the God himself, coming from on high, appeared to the candidates and beheaded them, if off their guard. Do not these initiations vividly recall to mind what Henoch said he saw in his visions? That blazing house of crystal, burning hot and icy cold—that place where were the bow of fire, the quiver of arrows, the sword of fire—that other where he had to cross the babbling stream, and the river of fire—and those extremities of the Earth full of all kinds of huge beasts and birds—or the habitation where appeared one of great glory sitting upon the orb of the sun—and, lastly, does not the tamarind tree in the midst of the earth, that he was told was the Tree of Knowledge, find its simile in the calabash tree, in the middle of the road where those of Xibalba placed the head of Hunhun Ahpu, after sacrificing him for having failed to support the first trial of the initiation? Even the title [Symbol: 6 letter-like signs] _Hach-mac_, "the true, the very man," of the high priest in Mayax, that we see over the bust of High Pontiff, prince _Cay Canchi_, son of King _Can_ at Uxmal, recalls that of the chief of the Magi at Babylon. [Illustration]