Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/209

Rh the nature of this bliss we shall have to inquire in somewhat more detail, for sex plays an important part in it. Here we are concerned with one of its features only: perpetual youth, preserved by the power of rejuvenation. Whenever the spirit {baloma) sees that bodily hair is covering his skin, that the skin itself is getting loose and wrinkled, and that his head is turning grey, he simply sloughs his covering and appears fresh and young, with black locks and smooth hairless skin.

But when a spirit becomes tired of constant rejuvenation, when he has led a long existence "underneath" as the natives call it, he may want to return to earth again; and then he leaps back in age and becomes a small pre-born infant. Some of my informants pointed out that in Tuma, as on earth, there are plenty of sorcerers. Black magic is frequently practised, and can reach a spirit and make him weak, sick and tired of life; then, and then only, will he go back to the beginnings of his existence and change into a spirit-child. To kill a spirit by black magic or accident is quite impossible; his end will always mean merely a new beginning.

These rejuvenated spirits, these little pre-incarnated babies or spirit-children, are the only source from which humanity draws its new supplies of life. A pre-born infant finds its way back to the Trobriands and into the womb of some woman, but always of a woman who belongs to the same clan and sub-clan as the spirit child itself. Exactly how it travels from Tuma to Boyowa, how it enters the body of its mother, and how there the Rh