Sacrifice was offered to rivers, lakes, and fountains, the victim being brought near to them and then slain, while great care was taken that no drop of their blood should touch the water and pollute it.

No refuse was allowed to be cast into a river, nor was it even lawful to wash one's hands in one.

Reverence for earth was shown by sacrifice, and by abstention from the usual mode of burying the dead.
[Illustration: PLATE VI.] The Magian religion was of a highly sacerdotal type.

No worshipper could perform any religious act except by the intervention of a priest, or Magus, who stood between him and the divinity as a Mediator.

The Magus prepared the victim and slew it, chanted the mystic strain which gave the sacrifice all its force, poured on the ground the propitiatory libation of oil, milk, and honey, held the bundle of thin tamarisk twigs--the Zendic barsom (baregma)--the employment of which was essential to every sacrificial ceremony.