ABSTRACT
B. H. Purcell, writing of the initiation ceremonies of the Workii (or Worgaia) tribe, makes the following statements of interest in connection with the procreative beliefs of the natives: 1
The Bora Ceremony. After the third initiation into this remarkable ceremony the youth is made to drink semen that is taken from 6 or as many young clean gins and blacks, as may be in the camp at the Bora ground. No gins are admitted to the ceremony other than these. When an old man is dying, they do exactly the same. They hold that as semen brought them into the world, it should keep them alive and from dying; and when a man dies they think that the semen germinates and even comes through the earth again and appears in the form of a white man or something else, often a star.
