A wirreenun can gradually shrink the shadow's size, the owner sickens and dies.

'May your shadow never be less!' The shadow of a wirreenun is, like his head, always mahgarl, or taboo; any one touching either will be made to suffer for such sacrilege.
A man's Minggah is generally a tree from amongst his multiplex totems,' as having greater reason to help him, being of the same family.
In his Minggah a wirreenun will probably keep some Wundah, or white devil spirits, with which to work evil.

There, too, he often keeps his yunbeai, or animal spirit--that is, his individual totem, not hereditary one.

All wirreenuns have a yunbeai, and sometimes a special favourite of the wirreenuns is given a yunbeai too--or in the event of any one being very ill, he is given a yunbeai, and the strength of that animal goes into the patient, making him strong again, or a dying wirreenun leaves his yunbeai to some one else.

Though this spirit gives extra strength it likewise gives an extra danger, for any injury to the animal hurts the man too; thus even wirreenuns are exposed to danger.
No one, as we have said, must eat the flesh of his yunbeai animal; he may of his family totem, inherited from his mother, but of his yunbeai or individual familiar, never.
A wirreenun can assume the shape of his yunbeai; so if his yunbeai were, for example, a bird, and the wirreenun were in danger of being wounded or killed, he would change himself into that bird and fly away.
A great wirreenun can substitute one yunbeai for another, as was done when the opossum disappeared from our district, and the wirreenun, whose yunbeai it was, sickened and lay ill for months.