One might here suppose he read of the rites of St. Patrick’s Purgatory. The water of the lake there is usually called wine, and it may be that on minds and bodies "which have attained to the needful congruity," it has operated as wonderful effects as the Colophonian fount itself. The proceedings of the priestess at Brancidæ, who also, from amongst other sources, derived the afflatus, or _Waren_, from a fountain, are to the same purpose. "The prophetic priestess at Brancidæ either sits on an axis [exposing herself to the influence, as the Pythoness on her Tripod], or holds a wand in her hand, given by some god, or dips the hem of her garment, in water, or inhales a certain vapor of water, and by these methods is filled with the divine illumination, receives the god, and prophesies. But, that the prophetic faculty comes from no corporeal or animal source, and from no local or material instrumentality, but solely and extrinsically from the presence of the incoming deity, appears from this, that the priestess, before she gives her oracle, performs many ceremonious rites, observes strict purity, bathes, abstains for three days from food, dwells apart, and so, by little and little, begins to be illuminated and enraptured." What the exact meaning of sitting on an axis may be, it is difficult to divine; but those who allege that a patient may be thrown into the mesmeric trance by holding a magnetized branch—and those also who have read of all the phenomena of exorcism being as fully elicited by a satchel of feathers as by a bag of reliques—will readily apply the wand "presented by some deity," and placed in the hand of the priestess at the moment when she should receive the final cataleptic impulse. If there be truth in the alleged modern cases of _clairvoyance_, we need not be surprised at the singular coincidences which have sustained the credit of Colophon and Delphi.