Totem is to be identified with the sacred being who watches over your tribe, who has given his life for your tribe; it is to be born again, to be washed not only with water but with the Holy Spirit of all your fellows. To be baptized into Christ ought to mean to be regenerated in the Holy Spirit of all humanity; and no doubt in cases it does mean this, but too often unfortunately it has only amounted to a pretence of religious sanction given to the meanest and bitterest quarrels of the Churches and the States. (1) Golden Bough, Section 2, III, p. 438. This idea of a New Birth at initiation explains the prevalent pagan custom of subjecting the initiates to serious ordeals, often painful and even dangerous. If one is to be born again, obviously one must be ready to face death; the one thing cannot be without the other. One must be able to endure pain, like the Red Indian braves; to go long periods fasting and without food or drink, like the choupan among the Western Inoits--who, wanders for whole nights over the ice-fields under the moon, scantily clothed and braving the intense cold; to overcome the very fear of death and danger, like the Australian novices who, at first terrified by the sound of the bull-roarer and threats of fire and the knife, learn finally to cast their fears away. (1) By so doing one puts off the old childish things, and qualifies oneself by firmness and courage to become a worthy member of the society into which one is called. (2) The rules of social life are taught--the duty to one's tribe, and to oneself, truth-speaking, defence of women and children, the care of cattle, the meaning of sex and marriage, and even the mysteries of such religious ideas and rudimentary science as the tribe possesses. And by so doing one really enters into a new life. Things of the spiritual world begin to dawn. Julius Firmicus, in describing the mysteries of the resurrection of Osiris, (3) says that when the worshipers had satiated themselves with lamentations over the death of the god then the priest would go round anointing them with oil and whispering, "Be of good cheer, O Neophytes of the new-arisen God, for to us too from our pains shall come salvation." (4) (1) According to accounts of the Wiradthuri tribe of Western Australia, in their initiations, the lads were frightened by a large fire being lighted near them, and hearing the awful sound of the bull-roarers, while they were told that Dhuramoolan was about to burn them; the legend being that Dhuramoolan, a powerful being, whose voice sounded like thunder, would take the boys into the bush and instruct them in all the laws, traditions and customs of the community. So he pretended that he always killed the boys, cut them up, and burnt them to ashes, after which he moulded the ashes into human shape, and restored them to life as new beings. (See R. H. Matthews, "The Wiradthuri tribes," Journal Anthrop. Inst., vol. xxv, 1896, pp. 297 sq.)