The main role in the birth of the aborigines of Australia is assigned to the spirit of the child, which revives the flesh, "breathes" life into the embryo.
Often this spirit is not seen as one and indivisible, but capable of simultaneously incarnating into several creatures or objects that are associated with totemic myths and rituals.
Thus, in the Great Victoria Desert, as in other parts of Australia, there are special centers in which, according to the ideas of the aborigines, spirit children live; usually these are sources and reservoirs. Spirit children can be seen from afar when they stand around, but they disappear immediately if approached.
A woman who wants to have children goes to such a place, sits there and waits for the child-spirit to penetrate her body. It is also believed that the spirit of a child can follow a woman to the parking lot. As the natives say, the places where spirit children live were created by mythical ancestors, and in many tribes, spirit children are represented as incarnations of powerful creatures from the World of Dreams.
Children-spirits can "inhabit" animals, birds, fish, plants and so on and "penetrate" women along with the food that their husbands bring them.
According to beliefs, such food causes nausea in women, and later the husband sees in a dream a spirit-child along with some animal. This animal is considered the totem of the conception of the unborn child. In East and South Kimberley, the conception totem manifests itself through some signs on the body of the child.
For example, one of the men, Birrundudu, said that he had four nipples, because his father gave his mother two accrete lily roots, which caused her to vomit.
Another man, who killed a kangaroo with a blow to the neck from the left side, gave a piece of animal meat to his wife, which made her vomit. Then in a dream he saw a kangaroo, and the baby, who was born some time later, had a mark on the left side of the neck.
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In Northeastern Arnhem Land, spirit children are associated with sacred bodies of water and springs and are considered to be directly associated with mythical creatures. According to legends, the child spirit takes the form of an animal, fish or other living creatures that are hunted.
Sometimes he lets himself be caught, sometimes he disappears in some unusual way. And then a man sees this spirit in a dream in a human form. The spirit of the unborn child addresses the man as a father and asks who will be his mother. The man points to his wife, and the spirit child enters her.
Sometimes children-spirits, in order to attract hunters - future fathers, send them large quantities of fish or climb on the back of a kangaroo or buffalo. After killing such animals, the hunter sees his unborn child.
These ideas about "spiritual conception" were important, since they largely determined the place that a person occupied in the system of social relations.