The Religions Book

34

I

n the Australian Aboriginal

tradition, the time of the

creation was once called the

Dreamtime, but is now referred to

as the Dreaming. This term better

captures the crucial element of

Aboriginal faith—that the creation is

continuous and ongoing, existing in

the real, eternal present, as opposed

to the remote past. It also accords

ETERNITY

IS NOW

THE DREAMING

IN CONTEXT

KEY BELIEVERS

Australian Aborigines

WHEN AND WHERE

From prehistory, Australia

AFTER

8000 BCE The date ascribed

to certain changes to the

Australian landscape in

Aboriginal oral tradition;

this has been supported

by geological evidence.

4000–2000 BCE Aboriginal

rock art depicts the ancestral

beings of the Dreaming; some

experts estimate the earliest

portrayals of the Rainbow

Serpent to be even older, dating

them to some 8,000 years ago.

1872 Uluru is first seen by

a non-Aborigine, Ernest Giles,

who called it “the remarkable

pebble.” European settlers give

it the name Ayers Rock in 1873.

1985 The ownership of Uluru

is returned to the Pitjantjatjara

and Yankunytjatjara peoples.

In the Dreaming, the ancestral beings shaped the land.

We can access that power and enter the eternal Now.

The power of the Dreaming is eternal and ever-present.

The land is alive with this power.

They embedded their spiritual power within the land.

with the Aboriginal belief that the

Dreaming can be accessed through

acts of ritual, song, dance, and

storytelling, and through physical

things such as sacred objects, or

paintings on sand, rock, bark, the

human body, and even canvas.

Myths of the Dreaming, called

Dreamings, tell of the ancestral

beings, who are known as the