but the spirits of their
ancestors come to life again, and destined themselves to be reborn
in the persons of their descendants. During the interval between
two re-incarnations the souls live in their nanja spots, or local
totem-centres, which are always natural objects such as trees or rocks.
Each totem-clan has a number of such totem-centres scattered over the
country. There the souls of the dead men and women of the totem, but no
others, congregate, and are born again in human form when a favorable
opportunity presents itself." (2)

(1) Myth, Ritual and Religion, vol. i, p. 113.

(2) The Golden Bough, vol. i, p. 96.

And what the early people believed of the human spirit, they believed of
the corn-spirits and the tree and vegetation spirits also. At the great
Spring-ritual among the primitive Greeks "the tribe and the growing
earth were renovated together: the earth arises afresh from her dead
seeds, the tribe from its dead ancestors." And the whole process
projects itself in the idea of a spirit of the year, who "in the first
stage is living, then dies with each year, and thirdly rises again from
the dead, raising the whole dead world with him. The Greeks called him
in this stage 'The Third One' (Tritos Soter) or 'the Saviour'; and the
renovation ceremonies were accompanied by a casting-off of the old year,
the old garments, and everything that is polluted by the infection of
death." (1) Thus the multiplication of the crops and the renovation of
the tribe, and at the same time the evasion and placation of death, were
all assured by similar rites and befitting ceremonial magic. (2)

(1) Gilbert Murray, Four Stages, p. 46.

(2) It is interesting to find, with regard to the renovation of
the tribe, that among the Central Australians the foreskins or male
members of those who died were deposited in the above-mentioned nanja
spots--the idea evidently being that like the seeds of the corn the
seeds of the human crop must be carefully and ceremonially preserved for
their re-incarnation.

In all these cases, and many others that I have not mentioned--of
the magical worship of Bulls and Bears and Rams and Cats and Emus and
Kangaroos, of Trees and Snakes, of Sun and Moon and Stars, and the
spirit of the Corn in its yearly and miraculous resurrection out of the
ground--there is still the same idea or moving inspiration, the sense
mentioned in the foregoing chapter, the feeling (hardly yet conscious of
its own m