Aboriginal art

THE DREAMING

introduction

• The religious life of the Aboriginal people centres on the Dreaming. The Dreaming is a European term used by Aborigines to describe the spiritual, natural and moral order of the cosmos.
• It relates to the period of time from the genesis of the universe to a time beyond living memory.
• The period is also known as the Dreamtime.
• The terms do not refer to the state of dreams or unreality, but rather to a state of a reality beyond the mundane.

The Dreaming focuses on the activities and epic deeds of the supernatural beings and creator ancestors such as the Rainbow Serpents, the Lightning Men, the Wagilag Sisters, the Tingari and Wandjina, who, in both human and non-human form, travelled across the unshaped world, creating everything in it and laying down the laws of social and religious behaviour.

The Dreaming is not merely a guide for living, an agent of social control, or simply a chronicle of creation, restricted in time to a definable past. The Dreaming provides the ideological framework by which human society retains a harmonious equilibrium with the universe – a charter and mandate that has been sanctified over time.

Some Dreamings relate to a particular place or region and belong to those who reside there. Other Dreamings travel over vast distances and connect those whose lands they cover. People may be connected to several Dreamings. The all-pervasive powers of the ancestral beings of the Dreamings are present in the land and in natural species, and to reside within individuals. They are activated by ceremony and art to nourish generation after generation of human descendants. An individual’s links with the ancestral beings in the Dreaming, and his or her spiritual identity, are expressed through associations with natural species and phenomena, ritual songs, dances, objects and graphic designs. The events of the Dreaming provide the great themes of Aboriginal art.

from page 10; Aboriginal art by Wally Caruna, Thames and Hudson, 1987