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it revisits the contention that biological evolution can account for both the origin and continuity of cultural elements in general, specifically, in this study, the origins of religion.

McClendon claims that shamanism is the first religious form, theorizing that ritual healing "has had evolutionary impact, shaping the biological propensity for religious belief and ritual"

those who were most susceptible to hypnotism would likely be cured by placebo and hypnotic suggestion offered by shamans.

Now it will not be very difficult to prove, that it is again the worship of Nature and of the Sun, her first and most brilliant agent; that the hero of the legends known by the name of the Gospel, is the same hero, who has been sung, only with far more genius, in the poems on Bacchus, on Osyris, on Hercules, on Adonis, &c.

In the Hebrew Genesis the millesimal expression, which is employed in that of the Persians, is not used; but the Genesis of the ancient Tuscans, conceived for the remainder in the same terms, as that of the Hebrews, has preserved this allegorical denomination of the divisions of time, during which the all-powerful action of the Sun, the soul of Nature is exercised. Its expressions on this point, are as follows: “The God architect of the Universe has employed and consecrated twelve thousand years to the works, which he has produced, and he has divided them into twelve times, distributed in the twelve signs, or houses of the Sun. “At the first thousand, he made Heaven and Earth. “At the second, the Firmament, which he called Heaven. “At the third, he made the Sea and the waters which flow upon the Earth (dans la terre). “At the fourth, he made the two great flambeaux of Nature. “At the fifth, he made the spirit (âme) of the birds, of the reptiles, of the animals, which live in the air, on land and in the waters. “At the sixth thousand, he made man.”

After having demonstrated, on what astronomical foundation was reposing the fable of the incarnation of the Sun, under the name of Christ, in the womb of a virgin, we shall now examine the origin of that, which makes him die and afterwards resuscitate at the vernal equinox under the form of the Paschal Lamb.