The First Attempt was the Herd's initial effort to wake The Calf, conducted as a traveling revival. Duncan Horst worked the revival circuit as a preacher, drawing crowds and attempting to "charge" the sleeping god with the energy siphoned from ecstatic worship. The Calf remained inert. After a long plateau, Horst abandoned the method, concluding — through a second transmission received during a dark night of the soul — that mass enthusiasm was the wrong instrument: the god could be woken only by a disciplined ascent through cosmic territory, undertaken by those trained to make it. The second attempt followed.