What makes these precautions necessary is the extraordinary contagiousness of a sacred character. Far from being attached to the things which are marked with it, it is endowed with a sort of elusiveness. Even the most superficial or roundabout contact is sufficient to enable it to spread from one object to another. Religious forces are represented in the mind in such a way that they always seem ready to escape from the points where they reside and to enter everything passing within their range. The nanja tree where the spirit of an ancestor lives is sacred for the individual who considers himself the reincarnation of this ancestor. But every bird which alights upon this tree participates in this same nature: it is also forbidden to touch it.[1082] We have already had occasion to show how simple contact with a churinga is enough to sanctify men and things;[1083] it is also upon this principle of the contagiousness of sacredness that all the rites of consecration repose. The sanctity of the churinga is so great that its action is even felt at a distance. It will be remembered how this extends not only to the cave where they are kept, but also to the whole surrounding district, to the animals who take refuge there, whom it is forbidden to kill, and to the plants which grow there, which must not be touched.[1084] A snake totem has its centre at a place where there is a water-hole. The sacred character of the totem is communicated to this place, to the water-hole and even to the water itself, which is forbidden to all the members of the totemic group.[1085] The initiate lives in an atmosphere charged with religiousness, and it is as though he were impregnated with it himself.[1086] Consequently all that he possesses and all that he touches is forbidden to the women, and withdrawn from their contact, even down to the bird he has struck with his stick, the kangaroo he has pierced with his lance or the fish which has bit on his hook.[1087] But, on the other hand, the rites to which he is submitted and the things which have a part in them have a sanctity superior to his own: this sanctity is contagiously transmitted to everything which evokes the idea of one or the other. The tooth which has been knocked out of him is considered very holy.[1088] For this reason, he may not eat animals with prominent teeth, because they make him think of his own lost tooth. The ceremonies of the Kuringal terminate with a ritual washing;[1089] acquatic birds are forbidden to the neophyte because they make him think of this rite. Animals that climb to the tops of trees are equally sacred for him, because they are too near to Daramulun, the god of the initiation, who lives in heaven.[1090] The soul of a dead man is a sacred thing: we have already seen how this same property passes to the corpse in which the soul resided, to the spot where this is buried, to the camp in which he lived when alive, and which is either destroyed or