e, as a vial, is filled to the brim. And in many cases
apparently the insulation of the tabooed person is recommended as a
precaution not merely for his own sake but for the sake of others; for
since the virtue of holiness or taboo is, so to say, a powerful
explosive which the smallest touch may detonate, it is necessary in the
interest of the general safety to keep it within narrow bounds, lest
breaking out it should blast, blight, and destroy whatever it comes into
contact with.

[Things as well as persons can be charged with the mysterious quality of
holiness or taboo; and when so charged they must be kept from contact
with the ground.]

But things as well as persons are often charged with the mysterious
quality of holiness or taboo; hence it frequently becomes necessary for
similar reasons to guard them also from coming into contact with the
ground, lest they should in like manner be drained of their valuable
properties and be reduced to mere commonplace material objects, empty
husks from which the good grain has been eliminated. Thus, for example,
the most sacred object of the Arunta tribe in Central Australia is, or
rather used to be, a pole about twenty feet high, which is completely
smeared with human blood, crowned with an imitation of a human head, and
set up on the ground where the final initiatory ceremonies of young men
are performed. A young gum-tree is chosen to form the pole, and it must
be cut down and transported in such a way that it does not touch the
earth till it is erected in its place on the holy ground. Apparently the
pole represents some famous ancestor of the olden time.[21]

[Festival of the wild manog tree in British New Guinea.]

Again, at a great dancing festival celebrated by the natives of Bartle
Bay, in British New Guinea, a wild mango tree plays a prominent part.
The tree must be self-sown, that is, really wild and so young that it
has never flowered. It is chosen in the jungle some five or six weeks
before the festival, and a circle is cleared round its trunk. From that
time the master of the ceremonies and some eight to twenty other men,
who have aided him in choosing the tree and in clearing the jungle,
become strictly holy or tabooed. They sleep by themselves in a house
into which no one else may intrude: they may not wash or drink water,
nor even allow it accidentally to touch their bodies: they are forbidden
to eat boiled food and the fruit of mango trees: they may drink only