CHAPTER XXVII
RELIGIOUS IDEAS
Religious instincts of aboriginal—Nature worship—Fire ceremony—Fire legends—Mythical fire thief called “Ngardaddi”—Water legends and ceremonial—Sun worship—Sun myths—The moon man—The mythical serpent—The kobong and totem—The tjuringa—Tjuringa legend—Ancestor worship—“Knaninja” or “Totem” deities—The significance of the tjuringa—Sacred tjuringa caves—“Totemic” diet restrictions—Gradation of sacred ceremonial—Great emu ceremony—The “Altjerringa”—The sacred yam or “Ladjia” ceremony—The “Etominja” design—Sex worship—The phallus—Mythical origin of phallus—Ideas concerning procreation—Grey hairs blackened artificially—A phallic monolith known as “Knurriga Tjilba Purra”—Foetal elements or “Rattappa”—The “Tjilba Purra” embodied in the headgear—“Waraka,” a phallic stone on the Roper River—Similar Kukata legend—Phallic ceremonial on Cambridge Gulf—Cylindro-conical stones of phallic significance—Matronal chasm of Killalpaninna—“Arrolmolba,” a sacred stone possessing stimulating principles—Phallic drawing of “Mongarrapungja”—Evil spirits—Disenchanted enclosures—Aboriginal belief in Supreme Being—Etymology of His name—The eternal home of all deities and spirit ancestors.
It has often been written that the Australian aboriginal is without religious ideas and without religious ceremonies. Such assertions are grossly incorrect and by no means portray the psychological side of the primitive man in its true light. He has, on the contrary, religious institutions and obligations which verge on the basis of all modern conceptions and recognition of divine supremacy. If we can class Nature-worship, Ancestor-worship, and Sex-worship as the beginnings of all religious teachings, then the Australian aboriginal has certainly inherited by instinct and tradition a very solid foundation from which we might trace the origin of many, if not most, of our most sacred beliefs in Christianity. At the same time, it must not be forgotten that it is really a difficult matter to distinguish clearly between mythological beliefs and what we class as religion. Religious thought has fluctuated with the advance of civilization and science to such a degree that, even within the short space of time covered by the more reliable records of our history, several revolutionary modifications have come about. As time advances, man becomes more sceptical and more exacting in his demand for proofs, and in his despair over finding nothing tangible to worship, he resorts to the recognition, by instinct or persuasion, of a God who is a Spirit. But all the while, as this secular metamorphosis is proceeding, he keeps his innermost feelings and faith alive by appealing to his knowledge of the gospel or his belief in salvation, in the manner it was presented to him by myth, by legend, or by the Scriptures. His principal guide is his intellect; the less it is trained the stronger his inherited conviction; the more scientific it becomes, the greater his desire to probe the truth.
The modern man has so accustomed himself to an artificial environment that he takes the so-called “elements” of Nature, especially water and fire, in a strictly matter-of-fact sort of way. But the primitive man, who realizes that his very existence is dependent upon these factors, has learned to respect, preserve, and worship them as legacies he imagines to have been left him by some of his illustrious forbears who, he supposes, have gone to an unknown realm where they live in peace and can only return temporarily to their former haunts in the invisible form or through the medium of some other object which is related to the individual in some mysterious way.
The aboriginal looks upon fire as one of the great indispensible quantities of his social existence; it is the element which dispels the evil spirits from his camp; it is the means by which comfort and friendship are made accessible to him; it is his universal companion. More than this, it is the fire, with its warmth and its light, which draws individuals, families, groups, and tribes together and through its agency and influence that social concourse is established which lies at the bottom of all conviviality, oracular discussion, and ceremony. How well this sentiment agrees with the knowledge we possess of the origin of civilization! Indeed the appreciation of fire together with the knowledge of its preservation is perhaps the mightiest factor responsible for making our species human. Once man learned to nurse an original flame he found through accidental cause and kept it constantly by his side, his progress became an established fact. His crude camp-fire talks developed into discussions which he further expanded by means of drawings on the walls of caves he occupied. The free exchange of thought brought about by congregation round the cheerful flame could not fail to incite the intellect; and thus he ascended to the high road of civilization and gathered the fruits of culture he now enjoys.
The Aluridja, Wongapitcha, and some of the north-western coastal tribes believe that many years ago, a party of ancestral creatures, more animal than human, came down from the sky through the branches of tall gum-trees to confer with the spirits which roam about at night and conceal themselves in inanimate objects during the day. These monsters brought a fire-stick with them and when they reached the earth, they lit a fire to cook some grubs which they had taken from the bark of the trees during their descent. As they were feasting, the spirits called them and they went with them to a cave where the bones of the persons rested, originally occupied by the spirits themselves. Whilst they were away, the fire which had been left unguarded, decided to run into the bush and, being in a mischievous mood, started an enormous blaze which burned down much of the forest and the tall gum-trees as well. The spirit-ancestors and the heavenly monsters beheld the disaster with consternation and called upon the fire to come back. This it did. But it so happened that some of the tribes’ fathers were hunting in the area, and when they saw the fire, which was strange to them, they snatched portion of it away and ran with it to their camp, where they kept it and fed it with dry grass and sticks. The spirits and their visitors were very angry and never left the fire out of their sight, lest it might abscond again; they were compelled to live on earth for a very long time until the trees grew up again to their lofty domain. The hunters, on the other hand, zealously guarded their prize fearing that it might run away from them. Even to the present day, this belief exists among the older folks, and they always take great care that the ground is cleared of inflammable matter to stop the fire from bolting; to be on the safe side, they invariably carry or keep near to them a fair-sized, glowing fire-stick.
Among the Minning this legend is circulated in a slightly modified form. Two ancestral spirits had their fires burning in the sky at points represented by the pointers of the Southern Cross constellation, when one day they decided to come down to the earth to hunt opossum. They took their fires with them, but while engaged in the chase they left them at their camp. When they had obtained a sufficient number of opossums to make a good meal, they returned to their camp, where they noticed six young men sitting around the fires, who immediately made off, and, in doing so, each took a fire-stick away with him. The spirits gave chase and re-captured five of the thieves, but the sixth, who was named “Warrupu,” reached the camp of his tribe and handed the fire-stick to his mother, “Wenoinn.” The woman ran with it to the white sand hills about Eucla in which she intended hiding it. But the spirits had noticed her and came towards her from above with a spear. In her predicament, the woman threw the fire-stick away, which immediately set the whole of the country ablaze between Eucla and Israelite Bay. All the tribes were thus enabled to seize some of the fire which they have carefully watched over ever since.
PLATE XXXIII