"A young baby is covered over with flour, the object being to deceive the
unwary. It is then served before the person to be admitted into the rites.
The recruit is urged to inflict blows onto it -- they appear to be harmless
because of the covering of flour. Thus the baby is killed with wounds that
remain unseen and concealed. It is the blood of this infant -- I shudder to
mention it -- it is this blood that they lick with thirsty lips; these are
the limbs they distribute eagerly; this is the victim by which they seal
their covenant...
"On a special day they father in a feast with all their children, sisters,
mothers -- all sexes, all ages. There, flushed with the banquet after such
feasting and drinking, they begin to burn with incestuous passions. They
provoke a dog tied to the lampstand to leap and bound towards a scrap of
food which they have tossed outside the reach of his chain. By this means
the light is overturned and extinguished, and with it common knowledge of
their actions; in the shameless dark with unspeakable lust they copulate in
random unions, all equally being guilty of incest, some by deed, but
everyone by complicity..."
"Octavius" 9.5-6, tr. G.W. Clarke, "The Octavius of Marcus Minucius Felix",
Ancient Christian Writers, no.39 (New York, 1974).
(Viler rituals of the Phibionite Christian heretics, involving devouring an *unborn* child, are described in the "Panarion" of Saint Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, but I won't go into them while Loren's on his lunch break).
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