Australian shamanism
The Australian Aboriginal tradition is a shamanic tradition that has survived to the present day. Aboriginal Australians arrived in Australia at least 70,000 years ago, and potentially 120,000 years ago. Sacred sites going back 40,000 years exist in the landscape.
Key concepts of the Australian Aboriginal worldview are The Dreaming (and how it affects views on death), sacred sites, songlines, stories, and bush medicine. Key spirits in this tradition are the Rainbow Serpent and Baiame. Ritual tools include the Bullroarer and Didgeridoo. we will look at all of these in this post.
The Dreaming (Dreamtime) refers to a complex of ideas (a lived reality):
Creation (or the world dawn), or the eternal, the uncreated. A continuous process and sacred narrative that links Aboriginals to their origins and land.
Everywhen (land inhabited by supernatural heroic beings and ancestors).
A world view comprising knowledge of relationships between all things and rules for living and interacting with the environment, a moral code, the law.
A system of totemic symbols, like Kangaroo Dreaming.
The meaning and significance of places, people, and creatures are related to their origin in The Dreaming; certain places have a particular potency.
Dreaming existed before life begins and continues when life ends. Before and after life spirit exists in the Dreaming, in contact with ancestors. On birth, the child is a custodian of that part of their country and is taught the songlines and stories of that place.
For Aboriginals, the future is less uncertain because an individual feels their life is a continuum linking past and future in unbroken connection.
It is believed a person leaves their body during sleep, and temporarily enters the Dreamtime.
For Aboriginals, dead relatives are part of ongoing life. Dead relatives communicate in dreams and may heal a dreamer. Death is seen as part of a cycle of life in which you emerge from and return to Dreamtime.
Aboriginals believe in the Land of the Dead (Sky World). If certain rituals are conducted during their life and at their death, the deceased is allowed to enter the Sky World.
Ancestor or spirit beings inhabiting the Dreamtime can become one with parts of the landscape, such as rocks or trees.
The dead are also linked to the land, a part of their spirit and their bones going back to the country they were born in. Sometimes a place where a spirit of the dead lives becomes a sacred site.
When an Aboriginal dies the family have death ceremonies called Sorry Business. The family and whole community mourns the person.
Rituals performed enable an Aboriginal to return to the Dreamtime, where their spirit is connected to all nature, all their ancestors, and to their personal meaning and their place in the scheme of things.
There is policy of protecting Aboriginal sites, although a few sites are publicised. However, most sites are not publicised, and restricted sites (sacred sites) will never be public. Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park is in the Northern Territory of Australia. The park is home to Uluru and Kata Tjuta. It is 1,943 km south of Darwin. Uluru has become a focal point for Australian Indigenous culture. There are different landmarks where ancestral beings interact with the landscape. Kata Tjuta is a sacred place relating to knowledge that is considered powerful and dangerous, only suitable for initiated men.
Art is part of daily life and has a purpose, such as sympathetic magic where creating the magical work is thought to bring about the event depicted. Many artworks were created for specific ceremonies and were not intended to last after the ceremony. Other art was created for instruction of children.
A songline (dreaming track) is a path across the land or sky that marks the route followed by a creator being or ancestor in The Dreaming. The paths of creator-beings are evident from marks/petroglyphs on the land.
Songlines connect places and creation events, ceremonies associated with those places, Aboriginal people and land, and neighbouring groups. Paths of songlines are recorded in song cycles, stories, dance, and art, and are the basis of ceremonies. Songs are sung to keep the land alive.
A knowledgeable person can navigate land by repeating words of songs, which describe landmarks such as rocks, waterholes, and trees. By singing the songs in the appropriate sequence, Aboriginal people can navigate vast distances, often through the desert. A songline may have a direction; walking it the wrong way is a sacrilege.
Ceremonies at sacred sites helps the life force at the site remain active and keep creating new life. Songs and dances performed as rituals typically express themes related to death and regeneration. Ceremonies performed at sacred sites are a re-creation of the events which created the site during The Dreaming.
Stories, set in the Dreamtime, are particularly key to the teaching and transmission of Aboriginal mythology and lore. Stories and their hidden meanings constituted Aboriginal people’s framework for generating and maintaining the knowledge base of the people. The ‘keys’ to this knowledge base were only held by those who went through the traditional education. Therefore, most stories that were collected by white people were never understood beyond a superficial level. A story has four levels of meaning.
The meaning of the first level is readily apparent from the text and typically explains natural features and animal behaviours.
The second level of meaning concerns the relationships between the people within the community. The second level meaning does not come straight from the story and was not told explicitly. You had to extract the meaning as part of your education, and you had to have pre-knowledge about the law to be able to do this. This level therefore remained hidden for non-initiated people.
The meaning of the third level concerns the relationship between your own community and the larger environment – that is, the earth and other Aboriginal communities. Again, the third level does not come straight from the story and is not explicit. You must hold pre-knowledge about the law.
Stories also had a fourth level. The fourth level taught spiritual action and psychic skills (such as travel in spirit); it was more doing than talking and listening. The fourth level included practice, ceremonies, and experiences, which gave access to the special esoteric knowledge hidden in the story. The fourth level of the stories could only be gained through hard training and experience. Story symbols are interpreted to help interpret the dreams that he and others in the community experienced.
Bush medicine includes traditional medicines used by Indigenous Australians, comprising native Australian flora and fauna. Herbal medicine is a major part of traditional medicine. Causes of illness include social and spiritual dysfunction, supernatural intervention, and damage to sacred sites. Healers give medications that supply physical and spiritual healing. A traditional healer, believed to have special powers bestowed on them by spirit ancestors, heals physical, mental, and supernatural illness.
Traditional healers cure illnesses through healing rituals that may involve magic. Rituals include singing, massaging, and sucking to remove a foreign object from the body and invoking the power of the gods or ancestors.
The Aboriginal view on health considers not just the well-being of the individual, but the well-being of the whole community. Traditional healers must assess the impact of sickness on the community and try to resolve conflicts within the community.
The Rainbow Serpent is an Australian Aboriginal creator being, an archetypal mother goddess that creates land. It does not have a human form but is an animal. The serpent is significant in Aboriginal mythology and the Dreaming. It is a common motif in Aboriginal art and religion.
The serpent is a giver of life through its association with water (or rain) but can be a destructive force if angry. It appears as a rainbow as it moves through water and rain, shaping landscapes, swallowing, and sometimes drowning people. It teaches rainmaking and healing and causes illness and death. Thunder and lightning are when the serpent is angry, causing powerful storms that will drown those who have upset her. Without the Serpent, no rain would fall, and the Earth would dry up. The serpent though can also stop rain. It is also associated with blood and hence healing and fertility. Women are associated with the serpent, and male initiation rites involving blood and cutting of their penis are related to this.
Baiame is the Creator God and Sky Father in the dreaming of several Aboriginal language groups. Baiame came down from the sky to the land and created rivers, lakes, mountains, forests, and caves. He gave the people laws of life, traditions, songs, and culture. He also created the first initiation site. When he had finished, he returned to the sky. He has a son Dharramalan. In rock paintings Baiame is a human figure with a large head-dress or hairstyle, internal decorations such as waistbands, vertical lines running down the body, bands, dots, and lines of footsteps nearby.
The bullroarer is an ancient ritual instrument and device for communicating over great distances. It consists of a piece of wood on a string, which when swung in a large circle produces a roaring sound (represents the sound of the Rainbow Serpent). The bullroarer is used in men’s initiation ceremonies and in burials to ward off evil spirits.
The Didgeridoo is a wind instrument played with circular breathing to produce a continuous drone. A Didgeridoo is usually cylindrical and measures from 1 to 3 m (3 to 10 ft) long. Traditional didgeridoos are made from hardwoods, especially the eucalyptus. It is part of the physical and cultural landscape and environment, comprising people and spirit beings which belong to their country, kinship system, law, and language. It is played as an accompaniment to ceremonial dancing and singing. Traditionally only men play the didgeridoo.
Books that I would recommend on the Australian Aboriginal tradition are Aboriginal Men of High Degree by A.P. Elkin, Treading Lightly by Karl-Erik Sveibyand and Tex Skuthorpe, and Wise Women of the Dreamtime (tales collected by K. Langloh Parker and edited by Johanna Lambert).
The header image is by By Sardaka and is on Wikimedia Commons, link