"Each 'river' is a multivocal symbol with a fan of referents ranging from life values, ethical ideas, and social norms, to grossly physiological processes and phenomena... nowhere else is such a close analogy drawn, even identity made, between these rivers and bodily fluids and emissions...This use of an aspect of human physiology as a model for social, cosmic, and religious ideas and processes is a variant of a widely distributed initiation theme: that the human body is a microcosm of the universe..."–Victor Turner, The Forest of Symbols, 1967