Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/210

Rh physiological processes of gestation combine with the spirit activity, are questions on which native belief is not altogether consistent. But that all spirits have ultimately to end their life in Tuma and turn into unborn infants; that every child born in this world has first come into existence (ibubuli) in Tuma through the metamorphosis of a spirit; that the only reason and real cause of every birth is spirit activity, are facts known to everybody and firmly believed by all.

Owing to its importance, I collected details and variants of this system of beliefs with special care. The rejuvenation process is associated in a general way with sea water. In the myth which describes how humanity lost the privilege of regaining youth at will, the scene of the last rejuvenation is laid on the seashore in one of the lagoon inlets. In the first account of rejuvenation which I obtained in Omarakana, I was told that the spirit "goes to the beach and bathes in the salt water." Tomwaya Lakwabulo the Seer (pl. 37), who in his trances often goes to Tuma and has frequent intercourse with the spirits, told me: "The baloma go to a spring called sopiwina (literally washing water'); it lies on the beach. There they wash their skin with brackish water. They become to'ulatile (young men)." Likewise in the final rejuvenation, which makes them return to the infant state, the spirits have to bathe in salt water, and, when they become babies again, they go into the sea and drift. They are always spoken Rh