The removal of the disqualification
constitutes purification; the positive preparation for the performance
of a sacred act constitutes consecration; the two procedures represent
two sides of the same idea, and they are related in a general way to
ceremonies of initiation and atonement.

+195+. The occasions for purification are numerous, including all
contacts or possibilities of contact with dangerous (sacred) things, and
thus often coinciding with taboo conceptions.[360] All acts connected
with procreation and birth; contact with a corpse, or with a sacred
person or thing, or with an object belonging to a sacred person; return
from a journey (in the course of which the traveler may have been
exposed to some injurious supernatural influence)[361]--such things as
these call for cleansing. Inanimate objects also, especially such as are
connected with religious worship (altars, vessels, and instruments),
require purification; these are thought of originally as having souls,
and as incurring defilement by the transmission of neighboring
impurities. A moral conception may seem to be involved in the
requirement of purification after the committal of a murder; certainly,
in the more advanced stages of society, the feeling in this case is
moral, but it is doubtful whether in earlier stages anything more is
involved than the recognition of ritual defilement by contact with
blood; homicide, as a social crime, is dealt with by the civil law, and
is generally excluded from the benefits of acts of ritual
atonement,[362] and so also all violations of tribal law.

+196+. The religious preparation for the performance of a sacred act
usually concerns official persons (see below, under _consecration_,
Sec. 202), but sometimes involves the purification of others. The largest
act of purification is that which includes a whole community or
people;[363] the social mass is then regarded as a unit, and there is no
reason, according to early thought, why such a mass should not, by a
ceremony, be freed from all ritual disabilities, the idea of moral
purification being, of course, absent or latent. Finally, ritual
purification is sometimes a preliminary to pleasing and influencing the
deity, who, as the most sacred and most dangerous object, must be
approached with the greatest precautions.[364]

+197+. The various methods of purification may be included under a few
heads, the principal of which are: the application of water (bathing,
sprinkl