centres
(_oknanikilla_) where the souls of the dead are supposed to assemble.
The sacred sticks or stones (_churinga_) which the totemic ancestors
carried about with them.]

The way in which these spiritual preserves originated is supposed to be
as follows. In the earliest days of which the aborigines retain a
tradition, and to which they give the name of the _alcheringa_ or dream
times, their remote ancestors roamed about the country in bands, each
band composed of people of the same totem. Thus one band would consist
of frog people only, another of witchetty grub people only, another of
Hakea flower people only, and so on. Now in regard to the nature of
these remote totemic ancestors of the _alcheringa_ or dream times, the
ideas of the natives are very hazy; they do not in fact clearly
distinguish their human from their totemic nature; in speaking, for
example, of a man of the kangaroo totem they seem unable to discriminate
sharply between the man and the animal: perhaps we may say that what is
before their mind is a blurred image, a sort of composite photograph, of
a man and a kangaroo in one: the man is semi-bestial, the kangaroo is
semi-human. And similarly with their ancestors of all other totems: if
the particular ancestors, for example, had the bean-tree for their
totem, then their descendants in thinking of them might, like the blind
man in the Gospel, see in their mind's eye men walking like trees and
trees perambulating like men. Now each of these semi-human ancestors is
thought to have carried about with him on his peregrinations one or more
sacred sticks or stones of a peculiar pattern, to which the Arunta give
the name of _churinga_: they are for the most part oval or elongated and
flattened stones or slabs of wood, varying in length from a few inches
to over five feet, and inscribed with a variety of patterns which
represent or have reference to the totems. But the patterns are purely
conventional, consisting of circles, curved lines, spirals, and dots
with no attempt to represent natural objects pictorially. Each of these
sacred stones or sticks was intimately associated with the spirit part
of the man or woman who carried it; for women as well as men had their
_churinga_. When these semi-human ancestors died, they went into the
ground, leaving their sacred stones or sticks behind them on the spot,
and in every case some natural feature arose to mark the place, it might
be a tree, a rock, a pool of water