316 - PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 
and Gillen have discovered is not to attain to a mystical com- 
munion with a deity, but simply to ensure a plentiful supply of 
food for the rest of the community by means of sorcery. In 
short, what we have found is not religion, but that which was 
first the predecessor, and afterwards the hated rival of religion ; 
I mean magic. 
Next I venture to offer a suggestion as to the meaning of 
another remarkable and mysterious ceremony witnessed by 
Messrs. Spencer and Gillen. Near the end of the final initiation 
ceremony of young men a special sacred object was formed of 
two large wooden churinga, or bull-roarers, each 3 ft. long. 
These were tied together with human hair-string, ornamented 
with rings of white down, and surmounted with a tuft of owl 
feathers. The object thus fashioned was called the <Azmbil- 
yerikirra, and all night long it was lifted up and down without 
cessation, save for a few seconds at a time, by the master of the 
ceremonies, whose arms were supported in the discharge of this 
laborious and exhausting task by two other old men, seated one 
on either side of him. Meantime the men who were being 
initiated had to lie still and silent on the ground the whole 
night long without being allowed to move on any pretext; and 
it was believed that if the streneth of the men who were lifting 
the Ambilyerikirra up and down were to fail, the young men 
would die. Next morning the master of the ceremonies and his 
two colleagues, bearing the Ambilyerikirra and accompanied by 
the novices, marched from the ground where the ceremonies 
were being performed to the spot where the women were grouped 
together to receive them. When they were within a few yards 
of the women, the men who bore the am/ilyerikirra threw them- 
selves headlong on the ground, so that only the heads of the 
three old men could be seen projecting beyond the pile of bodies. 
After remaining thus for two minutes, they all got up and re- 
turned to the ground set apart for the performance of the 
initiatory rites (d). 
What is the meaning of these ceremonies? Any explanation 
of them, as Messrs. Spencer and Gillen observe, can amount to 
no more than a conjecture, but I may be allowed to add my 
conjecture to theirs. The key to the mystery, I would suggest, 
is perhaps furnished by the name Ambilyerikirra, which, as 
Messrs. Spencer and Gillen inform us elsewhere, means “a 
newly born child” (e). Taken in connection with the belief that 
the life of the novices depends on keeping the sacred object 
in uninterrupted motion for a certain time, may not the name 
imply that at this period of their initiation the novices are 
undergoing a new birth? There would be nothing unusual in 
(d) Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 363-369. 
(e) Op. cit., p. 561. 
