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If the building is a lobo or spirit-house, a fowl or a dog is killed on the ridge of the roof, and its blood allowed to flow down on both sides. The ruder Tonapoo in such a case sacrifice a human being on the roof. This sacrifice on the roof of a lobo or temple serves the same purpose as the smearing of blood on the woodwork of an ordinary house.
To-day, when a person is afflicted, he summons a medium, the spirit-house is built, and then the following diam is recited over a rooster: When the recital is finished, the fowl is killed, and its blood mixed with rice is placed in nine dishes and one polished coconut shell. From these it is transferred to nine other dishes and one bamboo basket.
Later, all these things are returned to a single receptacle, except those in the shell cups and basket, which are placed in the spirit-house.
Some of these spirits we can appease or coax into becoming guardian-angels by housing them in handsome cenotaphs; others we can lodge in the horse-shoe or in that great spirit-house, the tiger, letting them sport for a day or two in the bodies of our men and youths, who are adorned with yellow stripes symbolical of their rôle; while other more malevolent spirits can only be driven away by shouting, buffeting and drumming, such as characterize the Mohurrum season in Bombay.
During the preliminary days, the men have been bringing materials for use in constructing the great spirit-house called balaua, and on this morning the actual work is started. After the framework is complete, one side of the roof is covered with cogon grass, but the other is left incomplete.
To primitive Shinto conception the universe was filled with ghosts; to later Shinto conception the ghostly condition was not limited by place or time, even in the case of individual spirits. "Although," wrote Hirata, "the home of the spirits is in the Spirit-house, they are equally present wherever they are worshipped, being gods, and therefore ubiquitous."
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