Primal Religions
Primal Religions
Primal Religions
The Ancestors gave shape to the landscape and created the various forms of life, including the first human beings.
They organized humans into tribes, specified the territory each tribe was to occupy, and determined each tribes language, social rules and customs. The Ancestors left behind symbols of their presence.
Ayers Rock
Rituals
Ritual is essential if life is to have meaning.
Only through ritual can the sacred power of the Dreaming be accessed and experienced. Aborigines believe that the rituals themselves were taught to the first humans by the Ancestors in the Dreaming. Behind every ritual lies a myth that tells of certain actions of the Ancestors during the Dreaming. An example- the creation of the kangaroo, a chief food source, spell out exactly how and where the act of creation took place.
The Dieri tribe of south-central Australia had an unusual initiation rite: Around a boys ninth birthday, the initiates two lower middle teeth were knocked out and buried in the ground
At some time during the period of initiation, the young boy was left by himself in the wilderness for several months. When he returned, he was greeted with rejoicing and celebration and the young boy had become a man.
Aboriginal Art
The Dreaming
Ground paintings, a communal effort, were fashioned directly on the sand.
They were made during secret rites that celebrated the creation ancestors - supernatural beings who were thought to have formed every detail of the landscape, from sandhill ro riverbank. Each Aborigine inherited responsibility for a particular Dreaming story and the parcel of land on which it took place.
This type of painting involved thousands of dots and after the ceremony was over, the painting was destroyed.