Note 3 — III. THE SYMBOLISM OF THE ZODIAC

(3) It is even said (see The Golden Bough, vol. iii, 185) that the doorways of houses and temples in Peru were at the Spring festival daubed with blood of the first-born children—commuted afterwards to the blood of the sacred animal, the Llama. And as to Mexico, Sahagun, the great Spanish missionary, tells us that it was a custom of the people there to “smear the outside of their houses and doors with blood drawn from their own ears and ankles, in order to propitiate the god of Harvest” (Kingsborough’s Mexican Antiquities, vol. vi, p. 235).