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In the case of the Atherton Tableland myths telling of the origins of Lake Eacham, Lake Barine, and Lake Euramo, geological research had dated the same formative volcanic explosions described by Aboriginal myth tellers, as having occurred more than 10 000 years ago. Pollen fossil sampling from the silt that'd settled to the bottom of those craters since their formation confirmed Aboriginal myth-tellers advice that at the time eucalypt forests dominated rather than the current wet tropical rain forests.
Dixon observed, from the evidence available, Aboriginal myths regarding the origin of the Crater Lakes might be dated as accurate back to 10 000 years ago.. Further investigation of these observations by the Australian Heritage Commission lead to the Crater Lakes myth being listed nationally on the Register of the National Estate, and included within Australia's World Heritage nomination of the wet tropical forests, as an "unparalleled human record of events dating back to the Pleistocene era".
Since then Dixon assembled a number of similar examples of Aboriginal myths performed or told around Australia accurately describing the landscapes of an ancient past, particularly noting the large number of myths telling of previous sea levels, including
* the Port Phillip Bay myth recorded as being told to Mr Robert Russell in 1850, describing Port Phillip Bay as dry land once, and the course of the Yarra River being once different (following the then Carrum Carrum swamp) - an oral recollection that would have been accurate 10 000 years ago
* the Great Barrier Reef coastline myth told to Dixon himself in Yarrabah, just south of Cairns telling of a past coastline (since flooded) which stood at the edge of the current Great Barrier Reef, and naming places now completely submerged after the forest types and trees that once grew there - an oral record that would have been accurate 10 000 years ago
* the Lake Eyre myths recorded by J.W Gregory in 1906 telling of the deserts of Central Australia once being fertile, well watered plains and the deserts around present Lake Eyre having been one continuous garden - an oral recollection which matches geologists' understanding that there was a wet phase to the early Holocene when the Lake would have had permanent water.
The aboriginal tribe, the Bad, revered "a supreme being" called Djamar. According to tradition he manifested in a manner highly suggestive of "something" landing and leaving behind a physical record. Of course the reverse can argued. That is that the aborigines invested supernatural dimensions into many prosaic features of the natural landscape.
The young initiates of the tribe were led to the stony bed of a creek and were shown the holes where Djamar had planted his "bullroarer". In aboriginal lore the sound of the "bullroarer" -- a roaring wind noise -- symbolised the approach of the god. The original accounts indicate that Djamar's bullroar or "galuguru" are representations of the "being" itself. According to E.A. Worms:
"Earnestly the old men impress on the youths the terrible force of the original tjurunga, by pointing out the baldness of the surrounding hills and the damaged bark of the trees struck by Djamar when he whirled the bull-roarer. It smashed the rocks of the foreshore."
After the manifestation of Djamar, which left behind all this damage, the supreme being himself ascended once again into the sky with his "tjurunga". Such accounts lost in prehistory are full of emotive similarities but beyond that they are only diverting tales of the Australian aboriginal 'dreamtime'.
At the turn of the last century, anthropologists Spencer and Gillen, in their book The Northern Tribes of Central Australia (1904), provided a classic account of the extraordinary shaman genre.
An aborigine, Kurkutji, was set upon by two spirits, Mundadji and Munkaninji, in a cave:
"Mundadji cut him open, right down the middle line, took out all of his insides and exchanged them for those of himself, which he placed in the body of Kurkutji. At the same time he put a number of sacred stones in his body. After it was all over, the youngest spirit, Munkaninji, came up and restored him to life, told him that he was now a medicine-man and showed him how to extract bones and other forms of evil magic out of them. Then he took him away up into the sky and brought him down to earth close to his own camp, where he heard the natives mourning for him, thinking that he was dead. For a long time he remained in a more or less dazed condition, but gradually he recovered and the natives knew that he had been made into a medicine-man. When he operates the spirit Mukaninji is supposed to be near at hand watching him, unseen of course by ordinary people."
Elkin pointed out one particularly evocative example of shamanic lore:
"Amongst the powers of the Mara medicine-men is that of climbing at night by means of a rope invisible to ordinary mortals up to the sky, where he can hold converse with the star people."
Eliade quotes A.W. Howitt's "The Native Tribes of South-East Australia, when he recounts the initiation of a Wiradjuri medicine man:
"We will go up to Baiames camp. He got astride of a Muir (thread) and put me on another, and we held by each other's arms. At the end of the thread was Wombu, the bird of Baiame. We went through the clouds, and on the other side was the sky. We went through the place where the Doctors go through, and it kept opening and shutting very quickly. My father said that, if it touched a Doctor when he was going through it would hurt his spirit and when he returned home he would sicken and die. On the other side we saw Baiame sitting in his camp."
In modern parlance we have a lesser, but never the less similar Australian account:
"...a beam of white light dazzled my inner eye and I felt myself soar through the air, upwards into the sky and I was spinning all the while ... I was drawn along this beam of light, but then the effort was too much and it flickered away. Then in what seemed only minutes later I burst back to full conscious awareness ... I was lying on a floor of a room which was dimly lit ... I looked up ... and saw the figure of a man..."
This description comes from an Australian UFO contactee and "astral" abductee named Frank Lavery. His account appeared in Psychic Australian, July, 1977.
Even then in 1977 I was pointing out the common denominators between UFO contact and abduction accounts with shaman initiation accounts, for example the alien entity, the period of disorientation, the travelling into the sky in some cases, and the "experience of death and rising again."
Originally posted by SantaClaus
As far as the alien theory and the aborigines, I certainly always found something very "unique" to their art. It seemed way too well done for such an early form of humanity. And there are, to this day, depictions of some very ET-looking characters. I am no expert on aborigines, just a big fan of their history based on my love for all things Aussie.
Now on them being the early "Gods," I would ask this, just as I would ask anybody in any religion.. If God came down and spoke to us back THEN, why not NOW? If aliens came and chilled with their earthly homies THEN, why now NOW?
I think it comes back to the seas.. When we have our oceans mapped in their entirety, I think we will know a helluva lot more about our origins, and maybe even about our visitors.
In one Native American story, an evil serpent kills one of the gods' cousins, so the god kills the serpent in revenge. But the dying serpent unleashes a great flood. People first flee to the mountains and then, when the mountains are covered, they float on a raft until the flood subsides
In the Hebrew Bible (the Tanach) of Judaism, the speaking serpent (Hebrew nahash) in the Garden of Eden brought forbidden knowledge
According to Joseph Campbell's Occidental Mythology, Yahweh is believed to have originated as a serpent consort of the Jewish earth mother goddess Asherah.
Jörmungandr, alternately referred to as the Midgard Serpent or World Serpent, is a sea serpent of the Norse mythology, the middle child of Loki and the giantess Angrboða.
Serpents figured prominently in archaic Greek myths. According to some sources, Ophion ("serpent", a.k.a. Ophioneus), ruled the world with Eurynome before the two of them were cast down by Cronus and Rhea
Serpents, or nagas, play a particularly important role in Cambodian mythology. A well-known story explains the emergence of the Khmer people from the union of Indian and indigenous elements, the latter being represented as nagas
In Fiji Ratumaibulu was a serpent god who ruled the underworld and made fruit trees bloom.
In Ancient Egypt, where the earliest written cultural records exist, the serpent appears from the beginning to the end of their mythology
The Vision Serpent was also a symbol of rebirth in Mayan mythology, fuelling some cross-Atlantic cultural contexts favored in pseudoarchaeology.
Sometimes serpents and dragons are used interchangeably, having similar symbolic functions
Originally posted by KTK
Ill try and describe to the best of my ability.
Do you have nylon washing line rope where you are? Maybe hedge trimmer rope?? Imagine the noise it would make if I was to swing a length around till I had a vibrationary noise. Mind the bullroarer sound is much more powerful.
The word mythology (from Greek([μυθολογία] (help·info))[1]) refers to a body of folklore/myths/legends that a particular culture believes to be true and that use the supernatural to interpret natural events and to explain the nature of the universe and humanity
Originally posted by Skyfloating
The word mythology (from Greek([μυθολογία] (help·info))[1]) refers to a body of folklore/myths/legends that a particular culture believes to be true and that use the supernatural to interpret natural events and to explain the nature of the universe and humanity
If myth is fiction, then why, as the opening post shows, have aboriginal myths turned out to know scientific facts of which we are told they were "discovered" just recently?
This fact invites us to re-define the meaning of mythology entirely.
Naga (Sanskrit)Serpent; the symbol of immortality and wisdom, of renewed births, of secret knowledge and, when the tail is held in the mouth, of eternity. The nagas or serpents of wisdom are, therefore, full initiates: "the first Nagas -- beings wiser than Serpents -- are the 'Sons of Will and Yoga,' born before the complete separation of the sexes, 'matured in the man-bearing eggs produced by the power (Kriyasakti) of the holy sages' of the early Third Race" (SD 2:181).
These first nagas were the original human adepts, who were later symbolized by the terms serpents and dragons. "These 'originals' -- called to this day in China 'the Dragons of Wisdom' -- were the first disciples of the Dhyanis, who were their instructors; in short, the primitive adepts of the Third Race, and later, of the Fourth and Fifth Races. The name became universal, and no sane man before the Christian era would ever have confounded the man and the symbol" (SD 2:210).
Its a psychological fear ancient humans had of snakes., nothing more