Aboriginal Spirituality
Australian Aboriginal people speak and teach their beliefs through sacred oral texts or stories, body art, ceremonial dances and art at sacred sites. Aboriginal Australians spiritual beliefs and traditions enshrined a way of life and laws that allowed Aboriginal people to live on one of the most isolated and harsh continents in the world.
Myths and Other Stories
Aboriginal Australian myths are expressions of beliefs about how the world came into being, how it came to be how it is, how people came into existence and relate to their land, and the Law they must follow. All these myths come from the ancestral spirit beings of the Dreaming. Many of these spirits are in animal or other form, and so give rise to totemic connections with the human beings who descend from them. Sometimes myths are told as stories, sometime they are pictures in paintings on bark or rock-faces, but more usually they are sung and danced, acted out in rituals. Sacred Texts and Other Religious Writings The Rainbow Serpent Another belief among Aboriginal Australian people, particulary those who priginated from Arnhem Land (north-eastern corner of the Northern Territory) is that the world was created by Dreaming speirit called the Rainbow Serpent. The Rainbow Serpent is a unifying myth in the Dreaming stories of many different people groups, and according to some archaeologists relates to the shifting sea levels that wiped out significant amoounts of land as different Ice Ages began and ended. Rituals There are many kinds of Aboriginal rituals. They each follow a set pattern of celebration. These rituals include: Initiation: This ritual is when children finally move into the world of adulthood. Girls coming to adulthood is more a personal and family matter, where as boys have to be made into men bu rituals that are prolonged and painful. Mortuary Rites: Death rituals are not mattes of a single event. They are often prolonged over months and even years, until the person's passage into the next life is complete and the living have had time to adjust. Cultic Rituals: Many aboriginal rituals relate to spirit beings but are not associated with a life crisis. They might celebrate the actions of the creator spirits of a clan or group of clans. Rituals of Reconciliation: These are designed to reduce inter- and intra-group tensions and conflicts Magico-religious rituals: These rituals emphasise techniques, of an incarnation or ritual action to produce a predictable effect. These include healing rituals, harming rituals or sorcery, love-magic rituals and rain-making rituals Rituals are organised and led by the songmen, the custodians and sometimes inventors (more stictly, communicators from the spirit world) of the songs and dances used in rituals. No one simple makes up a sacred song or ritual, they come from the Dreaming by tradition, are borrowed from another groups dreaming. There are female ritual leader who organise women-only rituals, or parts of common rituals. Symbols Symbols refer to something beyond their surface meaning. A painting of a kangaroo may be not just a kangaroo, but an ancestral creator spirit. An arrangement circles, dots and lines may be a map of the "Dreaming tracks" followed by spirit beings. An abstract design may be the mark of a particular clan or totemic group. The background colour may be represent a particular moiety. Some symbols have different meanings. A series of a concentric circles may indicate a waterhole, a tree, a campfire, a sexual organ or a footprint or more than one of these at once, since there are often levels of meanings. |
Social Structure
Every aspects of Aboriginal Australian society was infused with religious meaning that went unquestioned for thousands of years. Traditionally, Aboriginal Australian society is governed by a system of Elders. There are male Elders for men's business and female elders for women's business. The Elders play a role in dispute resolutions in offenses concerning sacred things, such as people inadvertently witnessing a ritual they shouldn't. They also have a role in initiating people into aspects of religion and spirituality.
Every aspects of Aboriginal Australian society was infused with religious meaning that went unquestioned for thousands of years. Traditionally, Aboriginal Australian society is governed by a system of Elders. There are male Elders for men's business and female elders for women's business. The Elders play a role in dispute resolutions in offenses concerning sacred things, such as people inadvertently witnessing a ritual they shouldn't. They also have a role in initiating people into aspects of religion and spirituality.