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Fred Alan Wolf opens chapter nine of The Dreaming Universe (1994) entitled The Dreamtime with a quote from The Last Wave, a film by Peter Weir: <blockquote> Aboriginals believe in two forms of time. Two parallel streams of activity. One is the daily objective activity ... The other is an infinite spiritual cycle called the "dreamtime," more real than reality itself. Whatever happens in the dreamtime establishes the values, symbols, and laws of Aboriginal society. Some people of unusual spiritual powers have contact with the dreamtime. </blockquote>
The traditions and lore of Australia's indigenous peoples belong to what may be the oldest continuous culture on Earth (circa 50,000 years). Indigenous Australian peoples conceive of all things beginning with The Dreaming or Altjeringa (also called the Dreamtime), a sacred 'once upon a time' [1] time out of time that forms an endemic cultural memeplex where archetypal shapeshifting ancestral Totemic Spirit Beings formed The Creation.
As Lawlor (1991: p.36) evocatively codifies: <blockquote> The great ancestral beings were vast, unbounded, intangible, vibratory bodies, similar to fields of energy. They created by drawing vibratory energy out of themselves and stabilizing this energy and by specifying or naming - the inner name is the potency of the form or creature. The comparable image is the creation of sounds, words, or songs from the vibration of breath. Aborigines refer to the Dreamtime creation as the world being "sung" into existence. [2] </blockquote>
In The Dreaming Everywhen of unbounded timelessness, these shapeshifting Totemic Spirit Beings (sometimes called Sky Heroes, or Creative Ancestors) dream: dream of waking, waking in dream. Their dreamings are of their future waking pastimes, dreaming their past. Upon dreaming and waking these shapeshifting Creative Spirit Beings transform into one another. The dreaming constitutes the seed-patterning (refer Guruwari), the archetypal patterning, the 'dreamform' thoughtform of their future waking pastimes. Upon waking in play, they embody and manifest their dreamforms of animals, plants, people, constellations, land features, elemental processes and natural phenomena and/or inanimate objects and their energetic existence is revealed by their formative journeyings, their relationships and in their engaging archetypal pastimes. This formative manifestation of The Dreaming is in turn a phantasmagoria and archetypal play of energy. This primordial formation in nonlocal timelessness is a temporal and spatial confluence, a simultaneous happening: evocative dreamings, dreams within dreams, each dreaming the other into being.
The Totemic Spirit Beings invest and merge their primordial archetypal essence-quality into all aspects of phenomenality; animate and inanimate. The totemic life spirit of human beings derives from these connections with the Spirit Beings and The Dreaming of the land. Therefore, each human being may be considered an emanation of the primordial totemic Spirit Beings and their spirit invested in The Dreaming and totems of the land. At death, the spirit returns to The Dreaming.
The expression "Dreamtime" was coined in 1899 by Spencer and Gillen (who conducted formative anthropological work on Australian prehistory) from alcheringa of the Arrernte language. "Dreamtime" is often used as a collective term for all the Dreamings of the indigenous peoples, though "The Dreaming" is a synonym for "Dreamtime" and is culturally preferred by Indigenous Australian peoples. "The Dreaming" in modern scholarship often refers to the "time before time", "time outside of time" or "time of the creation of all things", as though it were the past. But The Dreaming in a real sense is also present and in the future. The anthropologist and historian W.H. Stanner preferred "the Dreaming" to "the Dreamtime" and saliently describes it as "the Everywhen".[3] This is an apt and evocative approximation to what the Indigenous Australian Peoples refer to in translation as the "All-at-once" Time which is experienced as a co-existing confluence of past, present and future. This does not counter the Indigenous Australians Peoples concept of linear time, but it informs and qualifies it. Indigenous Australians considered the Everywhen of the Dreaming to be objective, whilst linear time was considered a subjective construction of waking consciousness of one's own lifetime. This is in the converse of the European concept which views dreams as subjective and linear time as objective.
'Dreaming' is also often used to refer to an individual's or group's set of beliefs or spirituality. For instance, an Indigenous Australian might say that they have Kangaroo Dreaming, or Shark Dreaming, or Honey Ant Dreaming, or any combination of Dreamings pertinent to their 'country'. However, many Indigenous Australians also refer to the creation time as 'The Dreaming'.
Dreaming stories vary throughout Australia and there are different versions on the same theme. For example the story of how the birds got their colours is different in New South Wales and in Western Australia. Stories cover many themes and topics, as they are stories about creation of sacred places, landforms, people, animals and plants, law and custom. It is a complex network of knowledge, faith and practices that derive from stories of creation, and which pervades and informs all spiritual and physical aspects of indigenous Australian's life.
They believe that every person in an essential way exists eternally in the Dreaming. This eternal part existed before the life of the individual begins, and continues to exist when the life of the individual ends. Both before and after life, it is believed that this spirit-child exists in the Dreaming and is only initiated into life by being born through a mother. The spirit of the child is culturally understood to enter the developing foetus during the 5th month of pregnancy. When the mother felt the child move in the womb for the first time, it was thought that this was the work of the spirit of the land in which the mother then stood. Upon birth the child was considered to be a special custodian of that part of their country and taught of the stories and songlines of that place. As Wolf (1994: p.14) states: "A black 'fella' may regard his [sic] totem or the place from which his spirit came as his Dreaming. He may also regard tribal law as his Dreaming." [4]
Traditional Australian indigenous peoples, embrace all phenomena and life as part of a vast and complex system-reticulum of relationships which can be traced directly back to the ancestral Totemic Spirit Beings of The Dreaming. This structure of relations, including food taboos, was important to the maintenance of the biological diversity of the indigenous environment and may have contributed to the prevention of overhunting of particular species.
The Dreaming establishes the structures of society, the rules for social behaviour and the ceremonies performed in order to ensure continuity of life and land. The Dreaming governs the laws of community, cultural lore and how peoples are required to behave in community. The condition that is The Dreaming is met when peoples live according to law, and live the lore: perpetuating initiations and Dreaming transmissions or lineages, singing the songs, dancing the dances, telling the stories, painting the Songlines and Dreamings.
The creation was believed to be the work of culture heroes that in the creative epoch travelled across a formless land, creating sacred sites and significant places of interest in their travels. In this way songlines were established, some of which could travel right across Australia, through as many as six to ten different language groupings. The songs and dances of a particular songline were kept alive and frequently performed at large gatherings, organised in good seasons.
In the Aboriginal world view, every event leaves a record in the land. Everything in the natural world is a result of the actions of the archetypal beings, beings whose actions created the world. Whilst Europeans consider these cultural ancestors to be metaphysical many Aboriginal people still believe in their literal existence. The meaning and significance of particular places and creatures is wedded to their origin in the Dreaming, and certain places have a particular potency, which the Aborigines call its dreaming. In this dreaming resides the sacredness of the earth. For example in Perth, the Noongar believe that the Darling Scarp is said to represent the body of a Wagyl - a snakelike being that meandered over the land creating rivers, waterways and lakes. It is taught that the Wagyl created the Swan River.
In one version (there are many Aboriginal cultures) Altjira was the god of the Dreamtime; he created the Earth and then retired as the Dreamtime vanished. Alternative names for Aktjira in other Australian languages include Alchera (Arrernte), Alcheringa, Mura-mura (Dieri), and Tjukurpa (Pitjantjatjara).
The dreaming and journeying trails of the Spirit Beings are the songlines (or "Yiri" in the Walpiri language). The signs of the Spirit Beings may be of spiritual essence, physical remains such as petrosomatoglyphs of body impressions or footprints, amongst natural and elemental simulacrae. To cite an example, the Yarralin people of the Victoria River Valley venerate the spirit Walujapi as the Dreaming Spirit of the black-headed python. Walujapi carved a snakelike track along a cliff-face and deposited an impression of her buttocks when she sat establishing camp. Both these dreaming signs are currently discernable.
There is much in C.G. Jung's work on the Collective unconscious and Synchronicity which touches upon these dreamtime Aboriginal concepts as being functional theories.
Tad Williams' four-volume science fiction epic Otherland touches upon Dreamtime and other aboriginal myths.
Richard McKenna's 1960 speculative fiction novelette, "Fiddler's Green", also touches upon "Alcheringa," or Dreamtime.
Sam Kieth's comic Maxx relies heavily on psychology and concept of Dreamtime.
Two feature films present the concept of the Dreamtime in the context of the clash between Australian Aboriginal traditions and Western society. Werner Herzog's "Where The Green Ants Dream" shows the ecological and spiritual relevance of the Dreamtime and the destructive impacts of civilization upon Native communities, while Peter Weir's "The Last Wave" is a more mystical story of a white lawyer's discovery of the mysteries of the Dreamtime. Both films feature Aboriginal actors and portray the Dreamtime seriously and sensitively, though both understandably view the Aboriginal culture through white characters whose journey of awareness hopefully takes the audience into greater understanding of Aboriginal culture.
"Project Alchera" from the computer game Dreamfall: The Longest Journey draws heavily from the concept of Dreamtime, as well as from other Aboriginal mythologies.