In the hundreds of Aboriginal languages, there is no concept or word for time. The ever-present moment of eternal Dreamtime continues, shaping and shifting reality as each day passes in a never-ending dance of nature’s cycles on Earth and the time the stars in the cosmos tell of creative epochs.
As with Creation, Aborigines perceive the passage of time and history not as a movement from past to future but as a passage from a subjective state to an objective one.
The first step in entering into the Aboriginal world is to abandon the conventional view of time and replace it with the movement of consciousness from dream to reality as a model that describes the universal activity of Creation.
Aborigines similarly believe Ancestral spirits created the Earth and humankind through a sequential swing between internal dream and physical objectification.
The ritual dances and Songs that the Aborigines performed every day celebrate the movement from subjective to objective that created the world. This perception guides every aspect of daily life.
The Dreamtime epoch concluded with the achievement of three fundamental conditions that made the embodiment of conscious life possible: the Earth’s unique topography, speciated life forms, and patterns for social relationships.
These three can be regarded as the sacred trinity of Aboriginal Spirituality.
Dream Myths & Creation
With this task complete, the Ancestors transferred their vibratory potency into the hills, creeks, lakes, and trees, then departed, diving into the Earth and rising into the Sky.
The stage was now set for the physical emergence of the tribes, the animals, and the plants. From then on, the entire cosmos is continually revitalised by the primal potency flowing from the great Ancestors: the unconscious and conscious, Earth and Heaven, the All-Mother ( Bugal Wena) and the All-Father (Nguthungulli).
The divine marriage between the great Ancestral couple also appears in the Creation myths of Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, Central America, and other places.
In all these myths, Creation is brought about through a great cosmic copulation – the “Divine marriage” or hieros gamos to achieve fertility, cosmic balance and physiological wholeness.
The image of the primal couple, the All-Mother and the All-Father, suggests the Aborigines’ belief that they can experience the vast creative process through ecstatic dance and sexuality. They, and all the world, share in the currents of life emanating from this cosmic union.
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