Traditional Aboriginal Spirituality
The Beginning and the Land
Every religion accounts for the beginning of the human worldas we know it, be it Genesis or other alternatives. For the Aboriginal people there was the Dreamtime. There were different names for it in different tribes from different languages: creative period, ancestral times, dreaming, eternal dreamtime; these are just some examples of the different names referred to the beginning. The Dreamtime was the founding myth. Where the spirits came from the land and left manifestations of themselves on the land. The form of manifestations are not only humans but also animals. Both now and in the past, they continue to live on in a spiritual and a non-material fashion, affecting the lives of aborigines today and in the indefinite future.
At the beginning there was the Law. The Dreamtime established the Law. The Law is their stories, songs, ceremonies and myth. The Dreamtime is sacred knowledge and moral truth. The Law is eternal and permeates everyday life. It is a continual thing. This is a very important concept to the Aboriginal people and an immediate contrast to the western philosophy. That is the past is still here, in the present and is part of the future as well.
Aboriginal people see their land differently. Land is itself a living thing and the mother-source of all the living. Aboriginal people always centre their lives in the natural-spiritual world. only through their spiritual connection to the earth can they continue in their identity. This is why they conceive themselves in terms of the land. The earth is sacred.
Aboriginal spirituality is the belief and feeling within that allows one to become a part of the whole environment – the built environment but the natural environment where birth, life and death are all a part of it and you welcome each.
There exists an idea of wholeness: everything on the land is living and has worth. Everything is interconnected and interdependent. Everything was meant to be, life patterns had been determined by the Dreamtime and could not be changed by man. So man play a insignificant role in the scheme of things.
Aboriginal people’s identity is continued only through their connection with the land. The Aboriginal people didn’t question their fate. They didn’t question the way they lived. And they didn’t question the way everything worked in the cosmos. The land made their existence possible, and they feel that they owe the land, Mother Nature and the spirit beings everything. They have never known a state of perfection or the desire to strive for one. No entities we recognize as Gods were worshipped or sought after. For us, there is heaven and hell for redemption, deliverance and judgment. But for the Aboriginal people, there exists no higher realm; we think it’s possible. To them, it is not possible. Life was and has been and will be the way it is for eternity. Thus maintaining the established order was most important priority.
During the extraordinary time span of the aboriginal people’s occupation of Australia, they did not know war, subjection of one group to another or inequalities of wealth and power. Their development of technologies, ideas, religion and social ordering, are based on spirituality and survival purpose. Here, we are talking about a purity of race, culture and religion unlike the rest of the world.
Aboriginals, enter themselves into a caring partnership with the land for their survival and spiritual support. This is their way of life, where spiritual development is preferred to the technological development.
We cannot underestimate their connection with the land. They are a fixture to the land, inseparable. Removing the land away from the Aboriginal people not only removes their identity but it also removes a part of their soul. This close relationship that they have had with the land has slowly diminished through the years and for those who are lucky enough to live on sacred land, such practices and respect on and for the land are still very much apart of their lives.
Rituals and Magic
Rituals were a necessity. By performing rituals, both religious and non-religious, they are able to strengthen their relationship with the land. Rituals are also a way of explaining or re-telling important myths to the people, reminding what the spirits have done and what they should do themselves to preserve their way of life on the land.
The main idea is that rituals functioned as a mechanical lever. It was performed to trigger some phenomenon. To engage supernatural forces, not to persuade or beg, but to bluntly force them. When we pray or perform magic, we are begging for divine intervention, there is a chance that it may happen, there is a bigger chance that it may not happen at all. But for Aboriginal people, rituals were believed to work. They must work and will work. Rituals trigger the supernatural forces, like a chain reaction, cause and effect. E.g. pressing a button to turn on a computer. The forces are summoned; the chain of events initiated and the result is expected and demanded.
Magic had a wide range of applications in traditional Aboriginal society; it helped in all aspects of lifee.g. assistance in hunting, success in love, even to cause death. Same principle applies here to magic. It is activating what is dormant, with the effect being to actualize existing potentiality. That is, the possibilities already exist, magic and ritual trigger the process and thus must produce an end result.
Sources:
Dreamtime politics: religion, world view and utopian thought in Australian aboriginal society / Erich Kolig. – Berlin: Reimer, 1989
Australian Aboriginal Culture / Australian National Commission for UNESCO
Hume, Lynne. Ancestral Power: the Dreaming, consciousness, and Aboriginal Australians / Melbourne University Press 2002
Anne Pattel-Gray, Through Aboriginal Eyes, the cry from the wilderness /Aboriginal and Islander Commission of the Australian Council of Churches 1991
Ronald M. Berndt and Catherine H. Berndt, World of First Australians
H.E.A Meyer, Manners and Customs of the aborigines of the EncounterBay tribe; SA
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ARCHITECTURE YEAR 2 Ingrid Shi [305166670] Raymond Tam [305133322] Silvia Xiao Xiao Chen [305170112]