Aboriginal Cosmology
"The universes are our models of the Universe. They are the great schemes of intricate thought—grand cosmic pictures— that rationalise human experience; these universes harmonise and invest with meaning the rising and setting Sun, the waxing and waning Moon, the jewelled lights of the night sky, the landscape of rocks and trees and clouds. Each uni-verse is a self-consistent system of ideas, marvellously organised, interlacing most of what is perceived and known ...
Wherever we find a human society, however primitive, there is a universe, and wherever we find a universe, of whatever kind, there is a society; both go together, and the one does not exist without the other. Each universe coordinates and unifies a society, enabling its members to communicate their thoughts and share their experiences. Each universe determines what is perceived and what constitutes valid knowledge, and the members of each society believe what is perceived and perceive what is believed."
"In Aboriginal ideas about the universe, nature and society, with all its cultural accoutrements, were formed at the same time by powerful creative spirits who wandered the earth during an eternal time (still existing), known these days simply as ‘The Dreaming’. 2 These ancestral spirits still abound but are usually no longer visible, having withdrawn from human view into another space/time realm."
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