The work surveys folk beliefs and rituals that personify crop and wild spirits as animals, tracing associations between vegetation deities (such as Dionysus, Demeter, Attis, Adonis, and Osiris) and forms like goats, bulls, pigs, horses, and birds. It examines sacramental practices—eating the god, first-fruit offerings, and animal-killing rites—alongside propitiation of predators and pests, beliefs in human souls transmigrating into animals, and homoeopathic magic tied to flesh diets. Comparative chapters classify types of animal sacraments and processionary and harvest rites, combining ethnographic examples with interpretive discussion of religious symbolism and agricultural ritual.