Reserved to sacred uses and preserved from the contaminating influence of evil spirits.
The men who manipulate the stirring bars are therefore changed at short intervals, while the bars themselves have also to be changed at somewhat longer intervals, as they rapidly become oxidized, and accumulated scale would tend to fall off them, thus contaminating the glass below.
It was rather of the nature of the savagetaboo, the outcome of totemistic beliefs or a mode of averting the contaminating presence of djinns and demons.
