connected with it? Our answer to
this question must lead us back to the Temple of Ceres and Proserpine
which originally stood on the site of the church of Sta. Maria in
Cosmedin, and of the materials of which the Christian edifice was
largely built.

In primitive times the worship of clefts in rocks, holes in the earth,
or stones having a natural or artificial perforation, appears to have
been almost universal. We find traces of it in almost every country,
and amongst almost every people. These sacred chasms or holes were
regarded as emblems of the celestial mother, and persons went into
them and came out again, so as to be born anew, or squeezed themselves
through the holes in order to obtain the remission of their sins. In
ancient Palestine this form of idolatry was known as the worship of
Baal-perazim, or Baal of the clefts or breaches. David obtained a
signal victory over the Philistines at one of the shrines of this god,
and burnt there the images peculiar to this mode of worship which the
enemy had left behind in its flight. About two miles from Bombay there
is a rock on the promontory of the Malabar Hill, which has a natural
crevice, communicating with a cavity below, and opening upon the sea.
This crevice is too narrow for corpulent persons to squeeze through,
but it is constantly resorted to for purposes of moral purification.
Through natural or artificial caverns in India pilgrims enter at the
south side, and make their exit at the northern, as was anciently the
custom in the Mithraic mysteries. Those who pass through such caves
are considered to receive by this action a new birth of the soul.
According to the same idea the rulers of Travancore, who are Nairs by
caste, are made into Brahmins when they ascend the throne by passing
through a hole in a large golden image of a cow or lotus flower, which
then becomes the property of the Brahmin priests. It is possible that
there may be an allusion to this primitive custom in the rule of the
Jewish Temple, mentioned by Ezekiel,--"He that entereth in by the way
of the north gate to worship shall go out by the way of the south
gate; and he that entereth by the way of the south gate shall go forth
by the way of the north gate: he shall not return by the way of the
gate whereby he came in, but shall go forth over against it." This
arrangement may have been made not as a mere matter of convenience,
but as a survival of the old practice of "passing through" a sacred
cave