The Vampire Lestat (The Vampire Chronicles, #2)

by Anne Rice

“This god took blood sacrifice at every full moon. But on Samhain (the first of November in our present Christian calendar—the day that has become the Feast of All Saints or the Day of the Dead) this god would accept the greatest number of human sacrifices before the whole tribe for the increase of the crops, as well as speak all manner of predictions and judgments. “It was the Great Mother he served, she who is without visible form, but nevertheless present in all things, and the Mother of all things, of the earth, of the trees, of the sky overhead, of all men, of the Drinker of the Blood himself who walks in her garden. “My interest deepened but so did my apprehension. The worship of the Great Mother was certainly not unknown to me. The Mother Earth and the Mother of All Things was worshiped under a dozen names from one end of the Empire to the other, and so was her lover and son, her Dying God, the one who grew to manhood as the crops grow, only to be cut down as the crops are cut down, while the Mother remains eternal. It was the ancient and gentle myth of the seasons. But the celebration anywhere and at any time was hardly ever gentle. “For the Divine Mother was also Death, the earth that swallows the remains of that young lover, the earth that swallows all of us. And in consonance with this ancient truth—old as the sowing of seed itself—there came a thousand bloody rituals. “The goddess was worshiped under the name of Cybele in Rome, and I had seen her mad priests ca...