That the true character of the effigy as a
representative of the beneficent spirit of vegetation should
sometimes be forgotten, is natural. The custom of burning a
beneficent god is too foreign to later modes of thought to escape
misinterpretation. Naturally enough the people who continued to burn
his image came in time to identify it as the effigy of persons,
whom, on various grounds, they regarded with aversion, such as Judas
Iscariot, Luther, and a witch.
The general reasons for killing a god or his representative have
been examined in a preceding chapter. But when the god happens to be
a deity of vegetation, there are special reasons why he should die
by fire. For light and heat are necessary to vegetable growth; and,
on the principle of sympathetic magic, by subjecting the personal
representative of vegetation to their influence, you secure a supply
of these necessaries for trees and crops. In other words, by burning
the spirit of vegetation in a fire which represents the sun, you
make sure that, for a time at least, vegetation shall have plenty of
sun.
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