Dreamtime: The Time Before Time
In Search of the Gods:
Dreamtime: The Time Before Time
In the beginning, the Earth was an infinite and murky plain, separated from the sky and from the gray salt sea and smothered in a shadowy twilight. There were neither Sun nor Moon nor Stars. Yet, far away, lived the Sky-dwellers: youthfully indifferent beings, human in form but with the feet of emus, their golden hair glittering like spiders' webs in the sunset, ageless and unageing, having existed forever in their green, well-watered Paradise beyond the Western Clouds.
On the surface of the Earth, the only features were certain hollows which would, one day, be waterholes. There were no animals and no plants, yet clustered round the waterholes there were pulpy masses of matter: lumps of primordial soup - soundless, Sightless, unbreathing, unaware and unsleeping - each containing the essence of life, or the possibility of becoming human.
Beneath the Earth's crust, however, the constellations glimmered, the Sun shone, Moon waxed and waned, and all forms of life lay sleeping: the scarlet of a desert-pea, the iridescence on a butterfly's wing, the twitching white whiskers of Old Man Kangaroo - dormant as seeds in the desert that must wait for a wandering shower.
On the morning of the First Day, the Sun felt the urge to be born. (That evening, the Stars and the Moon would follow.) The Sun burst through the surface, flooding the land with golden light, warming the hollows under which each Ancestor lay sleeping.
Unlike the Sky-dwellers, these Ancients had never been young. They were lame, exhausted greybeards with knotted limbs, and they had slept in isolation through the ages.
So it was, on this First Morning, that each drowsing Ancestor felt the Sun's warmth pressing on his eyelids, and felt his body giving birth to children. The Snake Man felt snakes slithering out of his navel. The Cockatoo Man felt feathers. The Witchetty Grup Man felt a wriggling, the Honey-ant a tickling, the Honeysuckle felt his leaves and flowers unfurling. The Bandicoot Man felt baby bandicoots seething from under his armpits. Every one of the "living things", each in its own separate birthplace, reached up for the light of day.
In the bottom of their hollows (now filling up with water), the Ancients shifted one leg, then another leg. They shook their shoulders and flexed their arms. They heaved their bodies upward through the mud. Their eyelids cracked open. They saw their children at play in the sunshine.
The mud fell from their thighs, like placenta from a baby. Then, like the baby's cry, each Ancestor opened his mouth and called out "I AM!" "I am - Snake... Cockatoo. Honey-ant.. Honeysuckle..." And this first "I am!", this primordial act of naming was held, then and forever after, as the most secret and sacred couplet of the Ancestor's song.
Each of the Ancients (now basking in the sunlight) put his left foot forward and called out a second name. He put his right foot forward and called out a third name. He named the waterhole, the reedbeds, the gum there were pulpy masses of matter: lumps of trees - calling right and left, calling all things into being and weaving their names into verses.
The Ancients sang their way all over the world. They sang the rivers and ranges, salt-pans and sand dunes. They hunted, ate, made love, danced, killed: wherever their track led, they left a trail of music.
They wrapped the whole world in a web of song; and at last, when the Earth was sung, they felt tired again. Again in their limbs they felt the frozen immobility of Ages. Some sank into the ground where they stood. Some crawled into caves. Some crept away to their "Eternal Homes" the ancestral waterholes that bore them.
-Australian Dreamtime Creation Story
According to Indigenous Australian spirituality ("Aboriginal"), all life, including fish, birds, animals, plants and humans, is part of one vast and unchanging network of relationships that can be traced to the Great Spirit Ancestors of the Dreamtime. As the above Dreamtime story illustrates, the Ancestors moved across the Earth, making every part of life that we see today: ants, crows, wallabies, lizards, lions, monkeys, humans and their tribes and clans, trees and plants... moving from Dreams to actions, they created the world. Once their task was complete, the Ancestors changed into animals, stars, trees, hills, or other objects, and are still alive and present until today.
The Dreamtime is the Aboriginal understanding of the world. It is the beginning of knowledge and the origin of the laws of existence. The expression "Dreamtime" is usually referring to the "time before time" or the time of the creation of all beings and things. The expression "Dreaming" is usually referring to an individual's spirituality. The Dreamtime consists of many stories describing things that have happened, such as how the Universe came to be, how human beings were created, and why animals have certain characteristics or behaviors. "These stories are songs, and every song traces the travels of an Ancestor," explained Pat, an Aboriginal tour guide. "Each is a roadmap for the country the Ancestor passed through. There are 200 Aboriginal languages and 600 dialects, and these stories cross many language barriers. But the 'taste' of the song, it's melody and/or rhythm remain intact across all those barriers." This means that any particular Dreamtime song/story can be sung by a native in the West, North or Central area and still be recognized by others natives that speak a different language or dialect. "The important language is the music itself, since each beat or note might define a landmark such as a river, water hole or forest."
One must understand the Dreamtime creation if one is to understand Dreaming. The Ancestors created themselves from clay, and each Ancestor is dedicated to a specific "totemic species". If an indigenous Australian says that he has a "Cockatoo Dreaming", this means that his totem is the cockatoo; he is a member of the cockatoo clan. Each member of the Cockatoo clan is descended from a universal Cockatoo Father, who is the ancestor of all of the Cockatoo humans and all living cockatoos. For a member of the Cockatoo clan, the cockatoo bird is his brother and totem animal - the cockatoo must never be killed for food or sport.
Each Ancestor scattered a trail of words and music along the line of his footprints as he traveled across the Earth. These "Dreaming tracks" remain over the land as means of communication between even the most separated tribes of people. A song is both a map and direction-finder. Providing that you know the song, you can always find your way across the country," explains Pat. "As long as you stick to the track you can always find people who shared ones Dreaming Anywhere in the bush, you can point to some feature of the landscape and ask the Aboriginal with you about the story he'll answer 'Kangaroo' 'Budgerigar' or 'Jew Lizard', depending on the Ancestor that walked that way."
As with many traditional and indigenous societies, Aboriginal culture has a distinct separation between men and women. Men's and Women's business in the society is separate and secret, and thus, there are songs/stories that are strictly for men and others that are strictly for women. Many stories are secret in nature and are told only to certain people. Men have stories associated with male initiation that must never be repeated to a non-initiate, and women have stories that can be shared only among married or older women. To tell a secret story to an ineligible person is a serious breach in spiritual laws. There are many stories of Dream- time, however, that are suitable for anyone, such as the story below.
One day Dinewan the emu and Brolga the native companion were on a large plain. They were quarreling and fighting. Brolga, in her anger, rushed to the nest of Dinewan and seized one of the huge eggs, and she threw it into the sky with all of her might. It broke on a piece of firewood, which burst into flames when the yolk spilled over it, lighting up the world and astonishing all creatures, who had been living in semi-darkness.
A good spirit who lived in the sky saw how bright and beautiful the Earth looked when it was lit by the blaze and thought it would be a good idea to make a fire every day. Since that day, this spirit has done just that - all night he and his attendant spirits collect wood and form a pile, and when the heap is big enough, they send out the morning star to warn those on Earth that the fire will be lit. The warning was not enough, though, because those who were sleeping did not see the fire. They decided that someone should make a noise at dawn to announce the coming of the sun and waken those who were sleeping. The only problem was that they could not decide on who should be given this duty.
One evening, they heard the laughter of the Goo- goor-gaga, the laughing jackass. "This is the noise we want," they said. They told the Goo-goor-gaga that, as the morning star faded and the day dawned, he was to laugh his loudest so that his laughter might waken all the sleepers before sunrise. If he did not agree to do this, then the spirits would no longer light the sun-fire and will allow the Earth to remain in darkness forever.
The Goo-goor-gaga agreed to laugh his loudest at every dawn at every day, saving the world from eternal darkness. "Goo goor gaga, goo goor gaga, goo goor gaga!" he laughs every morning. Children are not allowed to imitate the laughter of the Goo-goor-gaga, because if he would hear them, he would cease his morning laughter. If children do imitate his laugh, an extra tooth will grow above their eye- looth, carrying the mark of their mockery in punishment for it, for if the goo-goor-gaga ceases laughing to the herald sun, no more dawns will be seen on Earth.
