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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: noticed the belief that the spirits of dead ancestors, borne
along in the night-wind, have taken on the semblance of
howling dogs or wolves. "Consistent with these quaint ideas
are ceremonies in vogue in China of bringing home in a cock
(live or artificial) the spirit of a man deceased in a distant
place, and of enticing into a sick man's coat the departing
spirit which has already left his body and so conveying it
back."[167] In Castren's great work on Finnish mythology, we
find the story of the giant who could not be killed because he
kept his soul hidden in a twelve-headed snake which he carried
in a bag as he rode on horseback; only when the secret was
 Myths and Myth-Makers |