Roman custom which entitled the nearest relative of a dying person to inhale the final breath.

Pregnant by the Wind

Since air was life - men and animals cannot live without it any more than without blood - it was thought possible that a woman might be impregnated by it. In Egypt, the vulture. Maut. was supposed to reproduce her species by the intervention of the wind; the Virgin Mary was also said to have conceived at the impulse of a breath. Some Arabic legends relate that Mary conceived by the angel Gabriel; in another Arabic account of the Immaculate Conception, a dove descends upon her, inspiring her with the word or breath, and the word is made flesh. The angel, like the dove associated with Mary, is a winged creature whose natural element is air_ The dove was the bird of breath, air or soul. It belonged to the Egyptian goddess of love, Hathor, and to other love goddesses, and mother goddesses. A dove - like bird is shown enveloping a statue of Juno, the Roman queen of the sky or air, at Hierapolis in Syria: it appears in the shape of a pigeon carved in gold The dove, as the bird of the air and the spirit of God, also stood for the Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit In the New Testament - in the gospels of St Matthew and St Luke - it is the Holy Ghost who impregnates the Virgin Mary. St Mark and St John describe how the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove descended into Jesus when he was baptized in the river Jordan.

Air was not only the substance of the divine Spirit but also the home of the spirits in the plural_ Angels, demons, ghosts and the fairies called "sylphs" inhabited the air. The word ^-sylph^- was used for the winged air-sprites which belonged to air as one of the four elements, the basic materials of which everything in the world was thought to be made. These conceptions grew out of the earliest embodiments of storm hurricane, wind, rain, night and day, which man's early reasoning likened to the various animals that surrounded him, and which he thought of in animal form. As time went by. he conceived of weird imaginary combinations of animal and bird forms which he thought peopled the storm, the darkness and the kingdoms of the four elements.

In ancient Egypt, breath or air was typified by a human - headed bird which accompanied the deceased in the underworld called Amenta. Its winged form relates it to the air, and shows its kingship with angels and other aerial beings which assumed important roles in later beliefs and customs.

Spirits Proud and Wrathful

Incense, representing the breath of life, is another aspect of this symbolism. It was presented to the dead together with an offering of blood, the mystical `water of life'. The incense or breath was thought to pervade the blood, which stood for the red clay, the earth from which plants grow or the body of the first man brought to life by the breath of God. And so the double offering stood for the instilling of life into matter. The dead man could use the offered blood to make a material clothing for his spirit, so that he was able to appear visibly on earth as a ghost -

According to some Jewish magicians. the phantoms of the dead or dying clothe themselves in a subtle aerial vapour in order to become visible to the eyes of the living_ This applies to every sort of apparition, whether angels, spirits or demons. It is not therefore. the phantom itself which is seen. but merely the subtle vapour or ghostly air which it has concentrated about itself It may be that the fragrance of flowers and oils was used in earlier civilizations to make ^{communication} with