forth from the
city and consigned to the keeping of hostile persons;[289] in the
second, young men ran about the streets beating the women with strips of
goatskin, the skin being that of a sacred animal--a proceeding that was
regarded as purificatory, and seems to be naturally explicable as an
expulsion of evil spirits or injurious mana.[290]

+144+. In another direction expulsion of evil, or protection against it,
is effected by the blood of a sacrificed (and therefore sacred) animal.
A well-known example of this sort of ceremony is the Hebrew _pesah_ (the
old lamb ceremony, later combined with the agricultural festival of
unleavened bread, at the time of the first harvest, the two together
then constituting the passover); here the doorposts and lintel of every
house were sprinkled with the blood of a slain lamb by the master of the
house,[291] and the hostile spirits hovering in the air were thus
prevented from entering. The sacred blood seems to have been conceived
of as carrying with it the power of the family god (who was also the
clan god), which overbore that of the demons (in the earliest period,
however, the efficacy was doubtless held to reside simply in the blood
itself). The ceremony belonged to each family, but it belonged also to
the clan since it was performed by every family, and ultimately it
became a national usage.

+145+. Apotropaic ceremonies appear to have been performed originally
at various times during the year as occasions arose; the increasing
pressure of occupations,[292] the necessity of consulting people's
convenience, and the demand for order and precision led here (as in
other cases) to the massing of the observances. When so massed they
begin to lose their original significance, to yield to the knowledge of
natural law, to be reinterpreted from time to time, and finally to
become mere social events or to be dropped altogether. Apotropaism has
hardly survived at all in the higher religions.[293] In popular customs
it appears in the reliance placed on horseshoes and other objects as
means of keeping witches and similar demonic things out of houses.[294]

CEREMONIES OF PUBERTY AND INITIATION

+146+. Ceremonies in connection with the arrival of young persons, male
and female, at the age of maturity appear to be universal, and they
yield in importance to no other class of social procedures. The basis of
most of these is civil; their object is to prepare young persons for
entering on the