Now too we can fully understand the meaning of the bloody ritual in the ceremonies for the multiplication of the totem animals and plants. We have seen that a strengthening and fertilising virtue is attributed to human blood. What {p106} more natural than that it should be poured out by the men of the totem on the spot in which the disembodied spirits of the totem animals or plants are waiting for reincarnation? Clearly the rite seems intended to enable these spirits to take bodily shape and be born again, in order that they may again serve as food, if not to the men of the totem clan, at least to all the other numbers of the tribe. Later on we shall find that the attempt to reincarnate the souls of dead animals, in order that their bodies may be eaten over again, is not peculiar to the Australian savages, but is practised with many curious rites by peoples in other parts of the world. [Sidenote: General theory of _intichiuma_ and initiatory rites in Australia. Cannibalism in Australia. Australian totemism not a religion. Present function of totemism in Central Australia.] To sum up briefly the general theory to which the foregoing facts have thus far led us, I would say that just as the _intichiuma_ rites of the Australians are, for the most part, magical ceremonies intended to secure the reimbodiment of the spirits of edible animals and plants, so their initiatory rites may perhaps be regarded as magical ceremonies designed mainly to ensure the reincarnation of human souls. Now the motive for procuring the rebirth of animals and plants is simply the desire to eat them. May not this have been one motive for attempting to resuscitate the human dead? It would seem so, for all the tribes on the Gulf of Carpentaria who have been examined by Spencer and Gillen eat their dead,​[360] and the ceremonies and traditions of the Arunta indicate that their ancestors also ate the bodies of their fellow tribesmen.​[361] In this respect the practice of the Binbinga tribe is particularly instructive. For among them the bodies of the dead are cut up and eaten, not by men of the same tribal subclass as the deceased, but by men belonging to the subclasses which compose the other intermarrying half of the tribe.​[362] This is exactly analogous to the practice which at present prevails as to the eating of the totem animal or plant among all these central and northern tribes. Among them each clan that has an edible animal or plant for its totem is supposed to provide that animal or {p107} plant for all the other clans to eat; and similarly among the Binbinga the men of any particular subclass do actually provide their own bodies for the members of the other intermarrying half of the tribe to devour. And just as in the far past the members of a totem clan appear to have subsisted regularly (though not exclusively, and perhaps not even mainly) on their totem animal or plant,​[363] so at a remote time they seem regularly to have eaten each other.