AUSTRALIAN MYTHOLOGY

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The traditions and lore of Australia's indigenous peoples belong to what may be the oldest continuous culture on Earth (about 50,000 years). Indigenous Australians can be classified into about 400 separate language groups, each of which has a distinct culture. For this reason it is incorrect to classify any attribute as universal to them as a whole. However, almost all the belief systems found seem to be what can be considered a polytheistic religion. It is quite incorrect to refer to the mythological beings as Gods, as they are not Gods in the European sense. Instead, words like Creator Spirits, Culture Heroes, or Aboriginal Ancestral Spirit are more often used. 

DREAMTIME

One of the most important aspect of Australian mythology is the so-called "Dreamtime". It is often thought of as the time in which the world was created, but correctly describes the process of the world being called into being. The Indigenous Australian "Dreamtime" is the ability to 'see with eternal vision', and it is more commonly referred to as the Dreaming. In the dreaming, there is no clear distinction between humans and animals, and several of the spirits are able to change from human form to animal form at will.

Ok, let’s try to explain better: Aboriginals believe in two forms of time. Two parallel streams of activity. One is the daily objective activity. The other is an infinite spiritual cycle called the "dreamtime," more real than reality itself. Whatever happens in the dreamtime establishes the values, symbols, and laws of Aboriginal society. Some people of unusual spiritual powers have contact with the dreamtime.

Indigenous Australian peoples conceive of all things beginning with The Dreaming or Altjeringa (also called the Dreamtime), a sacred 'once upon a time' time out of time when everything has been created by the shapeshifting ancestral Spirit Beings. The great ancestral beings were vast, unbounded, intangible, vibratory bodies, similar to fields of energy. They created by drawing vibratory energy out of themselves and stabilizing this energy and by specifying or naming - the inner name is the potency of the form or creature. The comparable image is the creation of sounds, words, or songs from the vibration of breath. Aborigines refer to the Dreamtime creation as the world being "sung" into existence. Each human being may be considered an emanation of the primordial Spirit Beings and at death the spirit returns to The Dreaming.

The Dreaming and the Law

The Dreaming establishes the structures of society, the rules for social behaviour and the ceremonies performed in order to ensure continuity of life and land. The Dreaming governs the laws of community, cultural lore and how peoples are required to behave in community. The condition that is The Dreaming is met when peoples live according to law, and live the lore: perpetuating initiations and Dreaming transmissions or lineages, singing the songs, dancing the dances, telling the stories, painting the Songlines and Dreamings.

THE SONGLINES

The dreaming and journeying trails of the Spirit Beings are the songlines.

Dreaming paths or songlines describe the path taken by the Ancestral Spirits during the Dreaming. As they walked these paths, they sang the rocks, plants, and animals into existence. These paths are sacred, and there are songs and ceremonies that describe the journeys along these paths. Particular places along the path are especially sacred, and sometimes dangerous.

Songlines are, in practical, an intricate series of song cycles that identify landmarks and subtle tracking mechanisms for navigation. These songs often evoke how the features of the land were created and named during the Dreaming.

By singing the songs in the appropriate sequence, indigenous peoples could navigate vast distances (often travelling through the deserts of Australia's interiority). The continent of Australia is a system-reticulum of songlines, some of which are of a few kilometres, whilst others traverse hundreds of kilometres through disparate terrain and lands of many different indigenous peoples who may speak markedly different languages and champion significantly different cultural traditions.An interesting feature of the paths is that, as they span the lands of several different language groups, different parts of the song are said to be in those different languages. Thus the whole song can only be fully understood by a person speaking all the relevant languages.

In the Sydney region, because of the soft Sydney sandstone, valleys often end in a canyon or cliff, and so travelling along the ridge lines was much easier than travelling in the valleys. Thus the songliness tend to follow the ridge lines, and this is also where much the sacred art, such as the Sydney Rock Engravings (consisting of carefully drawn images of people, animals, or symbols, in the sandstone), are located. In contrast, in many other parts of Australia, the songlines tend to follow valleys, where water may be more easily found.

DEITIES

Here we will have a closer look on some important figures in Australian mythology.

The Rainbow Serpent (also known as the Rainbow Snake) is a major mythological being for Aboriginal people across Australia, although the creation stories associated with it are best known from northern Australia. The Rainbow Serpent is seen as the inhabitant of permanent waterholes and is in control of life's most precious resource, water.

Anjea is a fertility goddess or spirit. People's souls reside within her in between their incarnations. She picks them up at their resting places in the sand, which are marked with twigs. The twigs are arranged in the ground so as to form a circle, and they are tied together at their tops, so that the resulting structure resembles a cone. The spirits are taken away for several years, but Anjea eventually creates new children from mud, and places them in the wombs of future mothers.

Jar'Edo Wens is a god of earthly knowledge and physical might, created  to ensure that people did not get too arrogant or self-conceited. He is associated with victory and intelligence.

Mamaragan or Namarrkun is a lightning god who speaks with thunder as his voice. He rides a storm-cloud and throws lightning bolts to humans and trees. He lives in a puddle.

The Minka Bird is a creature featured in Aboriginal dreamtime stories. According to the Aboriginals, the sighting of the Minka Bird foretells certain death

Wurugag and Waramurungundi are the first man and woman, respectively. Waramurungundi gave birth to all living things and taught language to the people of Australia.

 

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