Note 654 — Chapter VI · ORIGINS OF THESE BELIEFS—continued The Notion of the Totemic Principle, or Mana, and the Idea of Force

There is even ground for asking whether an analogous notion is completely lacking in Australia. The word churinga, or tjurunga as Strehlow writes, has a very great similarity, with the Arunta. Spencer and Gillen say that it designates "all that is secret or sacred. It is applied both to the object and to the quality it possesses" (Nat. Tr., p. 648, s.v. churinga). This is almost a definition of mana. Sometimes Spencer and Gillen even use this word to designate religious power or force in a general way. While describing a ceremony among the Kaitish, they say that the officiant is "full of churinga," that is to say, they continue, of the "magic power emanating from the objects called churinga." Yet it does not seem that the notion of churinga has the same clarity and precision as that of the mana in Melanesia or of the wakan among the Sioux.