Certain persons, again, are born from the womb as incarnations of a god or an ancestral spirit. “Incarnate gods,” {230}says Mr. Frazer, “are common in rude society. The incarnation may be temporary or permanent.... When the divine spirit has taken up its abode in a human body, the god-man is usually expected to vindicate his character by working miracles.” Mr. Frazer gives several excellent examples of both these classes. I extract a few almost verbatim. Certain persons are possessed from time to time by a spirit or deity; while possession lasts, their own personality lies in abeyance, and the presence of the spirit is revealed by convulsive shakings and quiverings of the body. In this abnormal state, the man’s utterances are accepted as the voice of the god or spirit dwelling in him and speaking through him. In Mangaia, for instance, the priests in whom the gods took up their abode were called god-boxes or gods. Before giving oracles, they drank an intoxicating liquor, and the words they spoke in their frenzy were then regarded as divine. In other cases, the inspired person produces the desired condition of intoxication by drinking the fresh blood of a victim, human or animal, which, as we shall see hereafter, is probably itself an avatar of the inspiring god. In the temple of Apollo Diradiotes at Argos, a lamb was sacrificed by night once a month; a woman, who had to observe the rule of chastity, tasted its blood, and then gave oracles. At Ægira in Achæa the priestess of the Earth drank the fresh blood of a bull before she descended into her cave to prophesy. (Note in passing that caves, the places of antique burial, are also the usual places for prophetic inspiration.) In southern India, the so-called devil-dancer drinks the blood of a goat, and then becomes seized with the divine afflatus. He is worshipped as a deity, and bystanders ask him questions requiring superhuman knowledge to answer. Mr. Frazer extends this list of oracular practices by many other striking instances, for which I would refer the reader to the original volume.