FAN is also an instrument to winnow corn. The machine used for this purpose by the ancients seems to have been of a form similar to ours. The fan, which Virgil calls mystica vannus lacchi, was used at initiations into the mysteries of the ancients: For as the persons who were initiated into any of the mysteries, were to be particularly good, this instrument, which separates the wheat from the chaff, was the fittest emblem that could be of setting apart the good and virtuous from the vicious and useless part of mankind. It is figuratively applied in a similar manner in Luke iii. 17.