The Tubuan is the female masked spirit at the heart of the Tolai men's ceremonial complex, an ancestral mother-being embodied in a tall conical mask of dyed fibre and cassia leaves crowned with a solemn painted face. Conceived as immortal, she is said to be repeatedly reborn and to give birth to the ephemeral male dukduk spirits who accompany her. Her appearances from the sacred enclosure govern mortuary feasts, the raising and payment of tabu shell-money, the punishment of offences, and the passage of men through initiation; to look improperly on her secrets is a grave transgression, and her nature is concealed from the uninitiated and from women. Though the term also denotes the whole class of such masks, in ritual and myth the Tubuan is treated as a single continuing spirit-mother. Her institution is credited by some accounts to the creator To Kabinana.