Cincem is the spirit-guide of the flowering and fruiting season, one of the principal sources of the dream-songs on which Temiar and Semai mediumship depends. In the theory of the self the detachable head-soul (ruwaay) wanders in sleep and meets such beings; the fruit-blossom spirit approaches the dreaming adept as an attractive person and teaches a song. On waking the singer carries the melody into the nightlong ceremony, where it is raised to draw the cool, fragrant vitality of the forest into the sick. The name attaches at once to the season, to the spirit that personifies it, and to the genre of songs it gives, so that the singing of cincem is understood as the very presence of the spirit in the ceremonial house.