This discursive formation is part of a symbolic code or structure of religious thought that is manifested, created, and manipulated in ritual contexts as well as in nor mal daily life, where "purity" and "pollution" describe states, both animate and inanimate, that can be generated at times of connection and disjunction in the network of relationships between persons and persons and the things in the cosmos by certain states or conditions and actions of the objects and the participants involved, actions both external and internal, such as thoughts or moral predispositions.