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In two previous papers, the writer has endeavored to show that when the womb is symbolized as a house, and the house as a womb, the house is staunch or safe only provided that there is an inhabitant within. When this inhabitant, who is the fetus, issues from the doorway for a freer life, the roof of the house, which is the elevated abdomen, falls down, as it were, upon the floor, and the house is then in ruins, so to speak.
But the inhabitant as a fetus entered that house in form of a discarnate spirit, who was buried under the point or base of the mainpost, at the time the work of raising the roof was undertaken. It would follow then, in logic, if there is any logic in myth and superstition, and in ritual too, that a belief should obtain in the minds of rather primitive men, urging them to provide a new house with an indwelling spirit, who will guard the family and will keep the house from falling down in ruins.
Since it would tax the powers of mankind to capture a wandering spirit in the atmosphere, in order to confine it in the newly built house, it would be likely that man would take some already incarnated spirit and kill the body so as to release the spirit within the house. Such a killing should be done in the very house itself, and not outside; and when killed ceremoniously, the house as a womb will be “tied” shut so that the spirit will be unable to escape all the while the house is occupied by anyone alive. We may look then, for ceremonial slaughters or for sacrifices to make a house substantial, and to safeguard the lives of the inmates.
But all people who may subscribe to the notion that a house is unsafe unless there is a spirit gestating in it to hold it up, will not be willing to make human sacrifices, hence one will find that animals will be substituted for men, and even in some instances, valuables, such as money, jewels, feathers, hair, bones, etc., will take the place of a man. Money and jewels, as previously shown, are frequent symbols of the soul a