The religious calendar of Numa is based upon that of the Magi; it is a sequence of feasts and mysteries, recalling throughout the secret doctrine of initiates and perfectly adapting the public enactments of the _cultus_ to the universal laws of Nature. Its arrangement of months and days has been preserved by the conservative influence of Christian regeneration. Even as the Romans under Numa, we still hallow by abstinence the days consecrated to the commemoration of birth and death; but for us the day of Venus is sanctified by the expiations of Calvary. The gloomy day of Saturn is that during which our incarnate God sleeps in His tomb, but He will rise up, and the life which He promises will blunt the scythe of Kronos. That month which Romans dedicated to Maia, the nymph of youth and flowers, the young mother who smiles upon the year’s first-fruits, is consecrated by us to Mary, the mystical rose, the lily of purity, the heavenly mother of the Saviour. So are our religious observances ancient as the world, our feasts are like those of our forefathers, for the Redeemer of Christendom came to suppress none of the symbolic and sacred beauties of old initiation. He came, as He said Himself, in reference to the figurative Law of Israel, to realise and fulfil all things. CHAPTER VI SUPERSTITIONS Superstitions are religious forms surviving the loss of ideas. Some truth no longer known or a truth which has changed its aspect is the origin and explanation of all. Their name, from the Latin _superstes_, signifies that which survives; they are the dead remanents of old knowledge or opinion. Ever governed by instinct rather than by thought, the common people cleave to ideas through the mediation of forms, and it is with difficulty that they modify their habits. The attempt to destroy superstitions impresses them always as an attack on religion itself, and hence St. Gregory, one of the greatest popes in Christendom, did not seek to suppress the old practices. He recommended his missionaries to purify and not destroy the temples, saying that “so long as a people have their old places of worship they will frequent them by force of habit and will thus be led more easily to the worship of the true God.” He said also: “The Bretons have fixed days for feasts and sacrifices; leave them their feasts and do not restrain their sacrifices; leave them the joy of their festivals, but from the state of paganism draw them gently and progressively into the estate of Christ.”