Add that the two rites—dismemberment and boiling or passing through fire—are characteristic of shamanic initiations. So we can recognize in the “crime of the Titans” an ancient initiatory scenario whose original meaning had been forgotten. For the Titans behave like Masters of Initiation, that is to say, they “kill” the novice in order to cause him to be “reborn” to a higher mode of existence (in our example, we could say that they confer divinity and immortality on the infant Dionysus).
