certain magic practices, in order to be efficacious, have to be performed before breakfast. The Masai use strong purges before they venture to eat holy meat.[1] The Caribs purified their bodies by purging, bloodletting, and fasting;[2] and the natives of the Antilles, at certain religious festivals, cleansed themselves by vomiting before they approached the sanctuary.[3] The true object of fasting often appears from the fact that it is practised hand in hand with other ceremonies of a purificatory character. A Lappish noaide, or wizard, prepares himself for the offering of a sacrifice by abstinence from food and ablutions.[4] Herodotus tells us that the ancient Egyptians fasted before making a sacrifice to Isis, and beat their bodies while the victims were burnt.[5] When a Hindu resolves to visit a sacred place, he has his head shaved two days preceding the commencement of his journey, and fasts the next day; on the last day of his journey he fasts again, and on his arrival at the sacred spot he has his whole body shaved, after which he bathes.[6] In Christianity we likewise meet with fasting as a rite of purification. At least as early as the time of Tertullian it was usual for communicants to prepare themselves by fasting for receiving the Eucharist;[7] and to this day Roman Catholicism regards it as unlawful to consecrate or partake of it after food or drink.[8] The Lent fast itself was partly interpreted as a purifying preparation for the holy table.[9] And in the early
- ↑ Thomson, Through Masai Land (1887), p. 430.
- ↑ Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, iv. 330.
- ↑ Ibid. iii. 384.
- ↑ von Düben, Lappland, p. 256. Friis, Lappish Mythologi, p. 145 sq.
- ↑ Herodotus, ii. 40.
- ↑ Ward, op. cit. ii. 130 sq. Cf. Institutes of Vishnu, xlvi. 17, 24 sq.
- ↑ Tertullian, De oratione, 19 (Migne, op. cit. i. 1182).
- ↑ Catechism of the Council of Trent, ii. 4. 6.
- ↑ St. Jerome, In Jonam, 3 (Migne, op. cit. xxv. 1 140).
