In the Aboriginal Australian traditions where the bullroarer is most thoroughly documented, its sound, meaning and correct ceremonial use are restricted knowledge, generally reserved to initiated men and withheld from women, children and the uninitiated, a restriction that is itself part of the object's significance rather than an incidental social rule layered on top of an otherwise open practice.
Scholars including Berndt and Berndt, whose research was conducted with the knowledge and cooperation of Aboriginal communities, are consistently careful in published work to describe the instrument's general character and distribution while declining to publish restricted ceremonial detail that community custodians have not authorised for outside circulation, a scholarly practice this entry follows deliberately.
Outside Australia, the instrument's other documented traditions, ancient Greek mystery cult use among them, are known today mainly through archaeological and textual fragments rather than through any living, continuously practised ceremonial tradition, which is part of why the Australian material remains the most extensively studied living context for the instrument, and the one where the ethical obligation to respect restricted knowledge is most directly active today.