Aboriginal Religion
Sacred and Profane
Among aboriginals, we find the distinction
between the sacred and the profane.
Sacred = holy, totally other, separated.
Profane = everyday, ordinary, mundane.
Ordinary Life – cycles of the seasons,
generations, birth and death, etc.
The Dreaming
A realm outside of chronological
time/Sacred Time
Ordinary Life (the profane)
The Dreamtime
(Not subject to the cycles of time)
Everywhen (Not only at the beginning of time)
Legendary figures (human like)
Ancestors
These ancestors molded life’s essential structures (i.e., male,
female, human, bird, fish, etc.) as well as its essential activities
(i.e., hunting, war, gathering, love-making)
The Dreaming
An eternal realm/Sacred
Deities (ancestors)
Ordinary Life (the profane)
Deities (ancestors)
The Dreaming
Deities (ancestors)
The Dreaming
The Dreaming in Australian
Aboriginals
Ancestors arose out of the land, created or gave birth to
people, plant life and animal life, and connected
particular groups of people with particular regions and
languages.
The Dreaming beings (ancestors) continue to control the
natural world, but their willingness to release the
powers of fertility depends upon people continuing to
perform certain rituals.
Ritual
When aboriginal man performs ritual, he will emulate the behaviour of
an ancestor or deity as depicted in their myths. In doing this, it is
believed that sacred time (dreamtime) is made contemporary with
profane time, and thus profane time is renewed.
When the Arunta go
hunting, they do more
than mime the exploits
of the first and
archetypal hunter,
Rather, they fit so
completely into the
mold of their ancestral
archetypes that each
becomes the First
Hunter. So too with
other activities, i.e.,
basket weaving,
cooking, fishing, etc.
Ritual
Aboriginal man would never hunt “outside of” ritual. A hunt was always
preceded by ritual acts. Hunting, and every other activity, is a religious act,
a participation in the life of the ancestor or deity.
Pygmy Hunting Ritual
• Before sunrise, clear and smooth a space on top of a hill.
This space represents the world (microcosm), with its four corners
(north, south, east, west).
• On cleared ground and in the center, one would draw a three footlong antelope, while all recited a ritual formula.
•Wait in silence for sunrise.
•Sun would rise, rays of the sun would fall on the drawing, women
would cry out and raise their hands to the sun, one of the men shot an
arrow into the neck of the drawing.
Ritual
•
Women continue to cry out (petition), men would head out into the bushes.
• That afternoon, hunters would return with antelope with an arrow through its
jugular vein.
• Next morning, returned to the hilltop with tufts of antelope hair and blood.
The hair would be used as brushes, and the blood would be smeared on the
drawing, remove arrow, erase drawing
Ritual and the Axis Mundi
Blood symbolizes the sacred life of the animal. This is returned to the Earth,
from which it came. This is a sacrificial act, an act of thanksgiving.
The sun symbolizes the sky-father whose union with
the earth-mother produces life (sun beam or rays
join with the earth at sunrise).
Union produces life, and they saw that they needed
permission from these two before life could be taken.
The sun beam meets the center of the cleared
ground, which represents the center of the world (the
cosmic axis, or axis mundi). This axis connects
heaven (dreamtime), earth (profane), and the
underworld. It is a sacred place, often represented by
a tree, or a mountain, or a pole—or the sunbeam.
Intitiation Ritual
To make a
man out of a
boy
To introduce
them into
the sacred
(culture)
Initiation Ritual
3 Parts
1. Rites of Separation
2. Rites of Transition
3. Rites of Incorporation
“Selection of sacred ground”, the site where initiate will be
isolated for the liminal period (liminal: intermediate, on the
threshhold). A ceremonial house is built. This is an imago
mundi, a model of the world (microcosm)
1: Rite of separation: boys are separated from their
mothers. Symbolizes: end of childhood. (Boys are
terrorized, mothers think child will be killed. Told
that they will be devoured by divine beings. Men
are masked, bullroarers are whirled (representing
the sound of the gods). Purpose: to fill them with
the foreboding of death. Child is placed on cleared
ground and covered with twigs and branches,
symbolizing death.
2: Rite of transition or liminal period
Boys are taught the tribes sacred myths. Skills and knowledge
they need are explained as gifts of the gods (divine learning).
Skills such as hunting, food gathering, the tribe’s understanding
of the meaning of death.
Operations are performed on the initiate. Boys might be
circumcised, or a tooth knocked out, or tattooed, scarred. The
mark of their initiation. Identity: adult male of the tribe.
3: Rite of Incorporation: They are incorporated into the tribe as
men. Faces painted white to resemble ghosts—symbolizing
resurrection from the dead.
Final act: sharing of a meal: incorporation. One life shared.
The tribe is renewed by this, made larger.
Uninitiated are not people, but the initiated are human beings.
Aboriginal man has an acute sense of the deeply personal character of the
natural world. They see nature as a kind of vast network of sacrificial
offerings to them.
In their myths, it is clear that foods, such as beans, melons, yams, etc., are
often understood to have originated from the body of a murdered deity.
These foods exist ‘for us’, and there is a deep sense of gratitude to the
ancestors for these gifts.
Animals too offer their lives for us, allowing themselves to be killed so
that we might live. The aborigines see the generosity of the ancestors in
the world of nature.
Even though regarded as ancestors of the people, such
deities may not appear in a human form, but may be a
plant or animal, for example. In Aboriginal religious
belief, a person’s spirit may return in human, animal
or plant form after death.
So an Ancestral Being may have the appearance of a
plant or animal, but have done deeds similar to a
human in the past.
Totemic ancestors
These represent the original form of an animal, plant or other object (totem), as it was in
the Creation Period. Aboriginal people see themselves as being derived from the different
Totemic Beings.
Every individual has come from at least one Totemic Being, and these help define a person’s
origins and connections with the world, their relationships with the past, present and
future.
For example: A person connected with a yam (native potato) totem might believe that
some yams are his relatives, and that a particularly prominent rock feature in his clan
estate represents the embodiment of his yam ancestor. This, or another area nearby,
might also be a sacred “center” (an axis mundi) where rituals are performed to ensure the
maintenance of this food supply. Each clan will have several totems, so this person will
have a close human relative living on the same clan estate who is not of the yam totem.
That person might belong to the kangaroo totem and similarly be related to kangaroos
and have another feature of the landscape representing their kangaroo totem.
Aboriginal Religion:
Not about worship. It is about
participation in the life of the
ancestors.
It is about participating—through
ritual– in the realm of the sacred, the
dreamtime.
Oral Tradition
In order to keep their heritage alive in the collective
memory and revered by the tribe, they speak, they
rehearse, they tell the stories of the ancestors.
First Nations Myths
Iroquois (Earth Diver)
Blackfoot (Earth Diver)
Igluik (World Parent)
Huron (World Parent)
Cree (World Parent)
Siouian (Emergence)
Haida (Conflict and Robbery)
Tsimshian (Rebirth of a Corpse)
Mi'kmaq (Two Creators and their
Conflicts)
Algonquin (Brother)
Dene (Creation of Seasons)
Place
The importance of place
Landscape features may be the symbolic
embodiment of an ancestor itself, such as a
particular rock representing a specific figure, or
they may be the result of something the deity did
or that happened to the deity in the Creation
Period, such as a river having formed when the
Rainbow Serpent (Australian myth) passed
through the area in the Creation Period, or a
depression in a rock or in the ground representing
the footprint or sitting place of an Ancestral
Being.
Aboriginal people do not believe in animism. This is
the belief that all natural objects possess a soul.
They do not believe that a rock possesses a soul,
but they might believe that a particular rock
outcrop was created by a particular deity in the
creation period, or that it represents a deity from
the Creation Period. They believe that many
animals and plants are interchangeable with
human life through re-incarnation of the spirit or
soul, and that this relates back to the Creation
Period when these animals and plants were once
people.
The importance of place
Each place triggers the memory of legendary
events that they were a part of.
These places become a source of empowerment, because
it is through sacred places that one has access to the
realm of the sacred, the realm of the gods or ancestors.
Eternal Time
Primal or sacred time is not linear, nor cyclical
It is atemporal – now
The Dreaming
Time
Time and Value
Past: signifies closer proximity to the
originating source of things. Source =
ancestors who gave the world viable
structure and order, the golden age.
Before creation suffered ravages of time
and mismanagement, the world was as it
should be.
A certain enfeeblement has occurred which requires that steps
be taken to restore the world to its original condition. I.e., rites
of renewal – the annual sun dance is the dance for world and life
renewal.
Proximity to the divine source tends to be a badge of worth.
Thus, animals are frequently venerated for having been created before humans. I.e.,
Otter is relatively stupid. Hence, the Winnebagos infer it was created last.
Pioneers are more celebrated than their
descendants.
Hence, they have deep respect for their elders.
The idea that the most recent is the most
advanced is rejected.
The Tribe
The Tribe: No identity outside the tribe.
Individualism = death. One’s identity is
discovered in community with the tribe.
Separation = death – both physically and
psychologically.
"hierophanies" (hieros=sacred)
For Aboriginal man, the entire cosmos is a book that speaks to us of
God.
Nothing could be further from the truth than to imagine that the
Aborigines adore rocks, pieces of wood, the sun as a star, the moon
as a planet, etc. If an inhabitant of Mars arriving on earth one day
enters a Catholic church, would not his first impression be that
people are adoring statues of stone, a piece of bread, a cup of wine?
There is in reality among the people of all religions a far more
mysterious idea of God than we in the modern world imagine. The
visible signs are to be considered not as ends of adoration, but as
manifestations of the mystery, as hierophanies.
Here are some examples of hierophanies
The divine
magnitude,
which
inspires awe.
The
permanence
of God.
The starry sky, in all religions, appears as the expression of the permanence of
God in the regularity of its movement, as opposed to the atmosphere which
surrounds the earth, which is characterized by its perpetual changeableness.
Notice how we have retained the expression "heaven" to designate the divine
places. We have borrowed it from this hierophanic symbolism. When we say that
after death we shall go to heaven, it does not mean, except for the Pythagoreans,
that we are going to the stars.
The storm shows forth the
power of God
The pagans had a more profound sense of things than many of our contemporary
atheists. Thus the Africans have often kept this elementary sense of the sacred
which confers on them a certain facility for resisting our lay, profane, totally
secularized spirit. In point of fact, there is in the thunderstorm something which
expresses the irresistible power of God. This appears also in the Bible. The
thunderstorm there is eminently hierophanic. Yahweh shows Himself on Sinai in
thunder and fire, which signify His brilliant and irresistible power.
The rock has theophanic value, first of all, because of its permanence. Men pass
away, the rock remains. And then, too, because of its resistance: everything
breaks on the rock. And finally, because of its solidity: one can lean on it and it
will not give way nor will it yield. "Rock" is one of the names of Yahweh in the Old
Testament, and we find it again in the New Testament to express the solidity of
Christ Himself.
The cosmic religions are essentially the discovery of God through His
manifestation in the hierophanies of the universe. This is why they are basically,
in their roots, religions of nature. The rhythm of natural life constitutes their
fundamental source.