Before all are the interdictions of contact; these are the original taboos, of which the others are scarcely more than particular varieties. They rest upon the principle that the profane should never touch the sacred. We have seen already that the uninitiated may not touch the churinga or the bull-roarers under any circumstances. If adults are allowed the free use of them, it is because initiation has conferred a sacred character upon them. Blood, and especially that which flows during the initiation, has a religious virtue;[1006] it is under the same interdict.[1007] It is the same with the hair.[1008] A dead man is sacred because the soul which animated the body stays with the corpse; for this reason it is sometimes forbidden to carry the bones of a dead man about unless they are wrapped up in a piece of bark.[1009] Even the place where the death took place should be avoided, for they believe that the soul of the dead man continues to haunt the spot. That is why they break camp and move some distance away;[1010] in certain cases they destroy it along with everything it contains,[1011] and a certain time must elapse before they can come back to the same place.[1012] Thus it comes about that a dying man creates an empty space about him; they abandon him after they have installed him as comfortably as possible.[1013] An exceptionally intimate contact is the one resulting from the absorption of food. Hence comes the interdiction against eating the sacred animals or vegetables, and especially those serving as totems.[1014] Such an act appears so very sacrilegious that the prohibition covers even adults, or at least, the majority of them; only the old men attain a sufficient religious dignity to escape this interdict sometimes. This prohibition has sometimes been explained by the mythical kinship uniting the man to the animals whose name he bears; they are protected by the sentiment of sympathy which they inspire by their position as kin.[1015] But the fact that the consumption of the forbidden flesh is believed to cause sickness or death automatically shows that this interdiction does not have its origin in the simple revolt of the feeling of domestic relationship. Forces of another sort are in action which are analogous to those in all religions and which are believed to react against sacrileges.