Hair has similar properties. The natives of the centre wear belts made of human hair, whose religious functions we have already pointed out: they are also used to wrap up certain instruments of the cult.[409] Does one man loan another one of his churinga? As a sign of acknowledgment, the second makes a present of hair to the first; these two sorts of things are therefore thought to be of the same order and of equivalent value.[410] So the operation of cutting the hair is a ritual act, accompanied by definite ceremonies: the individual operated upon must squat on the ground, with his face turned in the direction of the place where the fabulous ancestors from which the clan of his mother is believed to be descended, are thought to have camped.[411] For the same reason, as soon as a man is dead, they cut his hair off and put it away in some distant place, for neither women nor the non-initiated have the right of seeing it: it is here, far from profane eyes, that the belts are made.[412]
Other organic tissues might be mentioned which have similar properties, in varying degrees: such are the whiskers, the foreskin, the fat of the liver, etc.[413] But it is useless to multiply examples. Those already given are enough to prove that there is something in man which holds profane things at a distance and which possesses a religious power; in other words, the human organism conceals within its depths a sacred principle, which visibly comes to the surface in certain determined cases. This principle does not differ materially from that which causes the religious character of the totem. In fact, we have just seen that the different substances in which it incarnates itself especially enter into the ritual composition of the objects of the cult (nurtunja, totemic designs), or else are used in the anointings whose object is to renew the virtues either of the churinga or of the sacred rocks; they are things of the same species.
Sometimes the religious dignity which is inherent in each member of the clan on this account is not equal for all. Men possess it to a higher degree than women; in relation to them, women are like profane beings.[414] Thus, every time that there is an assembly, either of the totemic group or of the tribe, the men have a separate camp, distinct from that of the women, and into which these latter may not enter: they are separated off.[415] But there are also differences in the way in which men are marked with a religious character. The young men not yet initiated are wholly deprived of it, since they are not admitted to the ceremonies. It is among the old men that it reaches its greatest intensity. They are so very sacred that certain things forbidden to ordinary people are permissible for them: they may eat the totemic animal more freely and, as we have seen, there are even some tribes where they are freed from all dietetic restrictions.