Curaezipirid
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Alaikumassalam,
It is mentioned to me that there could be users of this forum whom may like to know more certainty of Australian Aboriginal culture, and that perhaps a thread in which I can be questioned about Aboriginal culture could be found reason for. The suggestion coincides with a concern that I have about the way in which Aboriginal Australians are and are not enabled to interact with persons from other cultures, and so I have commenced such a thread. But I am beginning with a lengthy essay, so in time perhaps there may be questions that I am not yet aware of needing answers. The work is about fifteen A4 pages, and made in only one draft, so if there are any confusing passages with faulted punctuation, alert me and I can provide better. There are a few short expressions of a foundation mythology at the end, and I am wary to provide any that are not in accord with Qur'an, yet also aware that such are the only true measure of being able to genuinely teach of the culture that is.
I will state at the outset that we are a race with an unusual cultural manifestation that is has a unique biological base; and that this manifests as exposing our worst qualities in the first instance of any interaction. Thereby we are often weakened in that initial interaction. But at the same time, since our very survival depends upon overcoming any such weakness exposed, we are adept at recovering from every first perceived fault. This manifests into a strength by our ability to learn to know ourselves in our weakest manifestations through exposure of. Obviously the task is a difficult one, but once that first negotiation is complete, our strength can not be thereafter underestimated. What is interesting in this phenomenon, is that while it is culturally embedded, it is also manifestly a biological phenomena. This is amply apparent in that such behaviour exists among very many persons of Aboriginal descent whom are now of white skin so not readily identifiable as Aboriginal, and have also been raised entirely outside of the culture that sustains such manifestations. It is perhaps an unfortunate, and often indeed tragic, occurrence, that in modern Australian society, as we are still so overtly dominated by the British invasion of Australia in 1788, that our children are not being given the cultural pre-requisites with which to comprehend a need to be wary in our regard for other persons. We mostly recover well from being misinterpreted in our own first mishaps of chance faults exposed in initial interactions; but it is that our children are biologically inclined towards regarding that the worst in a stranger is that which they first manifest. Yet by knowing this about ourselves, and also by knowing that strangers may have learned this about us, we are enabled to be more self critical now in our observations of second, third and subsequence, chance mishaps of faults exposed in inter-cultural interaction. I will explain this with an example. I had a teaching Dream about this very matter only a few days ago. I had an initial interaction with a big fat American. At first I distrusted him by my own nature, and in that his presence was inconvenient, but in the first active interaction he manifested, I was well enabled to trust. Yet immediately thereafter he manifested a very frightening interaction, and my instinct was to abhor his self; yet I am that I could not judge him upon any but his first interaction, such that I was almost easily lead, by him, into a dangerous situation, all the while having comprehended such. But then I woke up in time to save my self. So here I am revealing this, only so as that any persons whom are not of Australian Aboriginal origin, whom may have taken advantage of us by this fact, can know that it was wrong to us. But also in the hope that Aboriginal persons will able to adapt our culture to be more critical in subsequent interactions of our responses to non-Aboriginal persons. It should be stated that while an aborigine, is a person who is native to the place there are at, an Aborigine, with a capital “A”, means a person native to Australia by racial origin. Quite an honour really that the English invading language gave us such a status.
So here I am lead into providing some further information about our culture and what are its unique attributes that we are proving as worthy of saving, in this age in which so much of antiquity is being exposed to the weather. It need to be stated that within our modern cultural etiquette it is that I need to substantiate my self as a person whom is a proper person to be imparting such knowledge before I take this matter any further. I could not in fact without. Therefore it is necessary to comprehend that all I can impart of Aboriginal culture is of me. My own true self. Therefore some parts of what I can teach will be most soundly based within my own experiential understanding, while other parts will be more soundly based within my own academic anthropological research. So it may seem that I meander often between non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal modes of expression, but always within a basically Aboriginal cultural form of story telling, of my own truly verified experiences. Stories are, in my opinion, the only way to teach culture. However I will here be telling my own story, and in my story, I have attained some worth in an academic sense within the discipline of anthropology, so thereby I may use some of that discipline as a short hand way of revealing our way.
Since I am white skin and well educated Australian, with a good orientation to mainstream Anglo-Saxon oriented culture, I need to substantiate that I live within empirical evidence that is of merit in authorising my self to engage in a process of imparting any of the worth of Aboriginal culture. It may already be obvious that what has happened to me in my life is that I have become comfortable with providence of a non-Anglo-Saxon way, within Anglo-Saxon means of expression. So this process is worthy of detailing. There are many things written about Aboriginal tradition, and how such had adapted to the modern urban context, but yet only a little about what is being retained by modern Australian contexts of the heritage of antiquity. We are not only a hunter gatherer society any more, yet we still value that way immeasurably. For only about 2% of the population, and a black population among a white majority, to be held so high in national regard as many Aboriginal Artists are these days, is no insignificant fact. Yet what I am here telling, is neither, even thought it is of a cultural comprehension that has been acquired within the Australian mainstream.
As a child I recall very well that the world seemed to be made up of mainly dumb and wrong phenomena, and that most persons seemed like totally ignorant idiots completely out of touch with reality. That is except for the natural world. However the man made environment was all too much like somebodies worst nightmare coming real. My experience of modern mainstream Australian society in this regard is not at all unique, and is factually common to many white Australians with some Aboriginal ancestry. It could be said that as a Nation we are all just waiting for somebody to wake us up to the fact that we are colluding in that nightmare by not overtly working to repudiate the modern world. But it is as though there is something in our genetics constantly reminding us that this world is not the real world. What I remember as important in that my father transmitted to me is that he very often provided all commentary from his own certain knowledge about the natural surroundings. Flora and fauna especially. He also never failed to provide any scientific empirical data that could repudiate any false belief he noticed. While these providences were at all times within a mainstream Australian outlook, his method of exposition was really only missing that key to Aboriginal belief, that we are at all time to identify every manifestation in our own self, that is not provenly a Human manifestation, with another living form. Factually this comprehension was provided to me by one of my parents closest friends and God Father to my brother, in the form of a good book of Legends of the Dreamtime. So as soon as I had that key of being able to base empirical evidence in such legends, my whole world re-oriented rapidly. That key is only the key to knowing my own true self, those parts of me in which I am true to Soul; and it is that I learned that key through a teaching belonging soundly within modern Islam. Yet this also was grounded by my parents. My mother is a devout Christian. My parents had many friends throughout my childhood, often enough whom were black skin persons, and whom are from different parts of the world and different cultures. I remember being looked after one evening by a Pakistani man called Zahee Kahn when I was six. But then my parents have always sustained unusual friendships. With persons of Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, and Shinto or Tao, Asian cultures, and also from Germany and America. All of these persons have been engaged in the work of environmental science. At pre-school one day my father visited with his friend called Graham Webb who is one of Australia’s crocodile hunters, and showed a turtle and a lizard to all the children. But I am in shame for having sat on a snake at Graham’s house. You may readily thus regard that I am raised within an Animist cultural foundation, even though it has a form from the Catholic church and all else that ‘the west’ is regarded as faulted with, superimposed over this foundation.
Additionally, as a teenager, I sort of happened to meander into a significant Traditional Aboriginal Corroboree, in 1988, at the exact location and time of the 200th anniversary of the invasion of Australia. Within this field of the effects of my participation by bearing witness, I am formally regarded as obligated to teach Aboriginal Kinship systems, that are integral to Australian Aboriginal culture. Therefore, it is that none can question my authority in this. However, it could readily be that any Aboriginal person may like to oppose my expressions, and within our culture we have a system of agreeing to disagree. Most likely the only opposition I could face would by from persons whom are socialised and enculturated within one of the various different cultural forms that are all included in the entirety of Australian cultural expression, but are not that inimical with my own experience of our unique Australian Indigenous culture. Therefore it is the prerogative of any
Aboriginal person to find me at fault if they so choose, and I will not fault them only for disagreeing with my expressions of a unity of culture here. Across Australia in 1788 there were more than 200 distinct languages each with many dialects, and each culturally distinct. Yet there are features common to each place that it is my intention to divulge. The foremost among these is that each place has its own unique Kinship system. A Kinship system is like the Ummah. However there is one cultural tenet that is needed before I begin to explain how various Aboriginal Australians orient within a concept that is similar to that of the Ummah.
Most of what I am detailing is matters that are more properly regarded as belonging to an inside part of the culture of other places, yet here in Traditional Australia, these are outside teachings. There is a strong cultural regard for the matter of distinguishing what is the difference between “inside” and “outside” business. That is, I am not allowed to relate any matter that could be an inside matter. My comprehension of Islam, is that generally The Ummah is a more inside teaching that Kinship is for Aboriginal Australians. Therefore it is that it must be held as discriminated to be of a unique and different definition, even though I have made a comparison. In the largest part, why Aboriginal Kinship is enabled to be an outside teaching is because Kinship is inclusive of the categorisation of all native Australian flora and fauna, as well as Human beings, and therefore it is distinct, definitively, from The Ummah.
However there is a cultural pre-requisite to comprehending Aboriginal Kinship. That is, we are all, who are truly within Aboriginal Tradition, within the regard, that each and ever person must: “go with the Dream that wakes you up.” Really it is like accepting that which is your own consequence through Prayer. Prayer in Aboriginal culture is defined as “Entering the Dreamtime”. Yet Dreamtime is a concept in which only a partial translation has been made quite on purpose. In some Aboriginal languages the word for “Dreamtime” could equitably be translated as Jannah, but only depending upon its use being correct to that which is the reality of Jannah of the future. Dreamtime, is also a state of mind, and it is regarded strongly that none of us are, in this time, enabled to properly, at every moment, discriminate the past from the future from the present, while in that state of mind. Therefore it is not actual Jannah. Yet it is that the Aboriginal cultural regard for Jannah is that our labours, when real work, are at all times work towards forging and sustaining that future Kingdom of Jannah. This is also a matter of external cultural expression. It is regarded heavily that ever physical expression that has no place within Jannah is a matter for the fire. No fear. This is our truth. One senior Aboriginal Elder, who passed away only a few years ago, expressed it in book that “every time you cut a tree a little bit, a little bit pain for you also after”. It is in fact the more correct expression than that I am here utilising, as unique to my own self. His expression is rather more that of the male form. In Aboriginal culture men talk about everything by any and every reference to the birds and the bees. That is, when Men talk about flora and fauna, they are talking also about esoteric secrets. That much is a part of the outside self of any Traditional Aboriginal person. But whether you comprehend any more than that the lizards are being discussed, will depend entirely upon whether any person has provided you with a key. There are seven keys of comprehension. Seven, like the seven skies as known of in Islam, or the seven levels of comprehension of the meaning of ever Hebrew consonant. Whether any person has access to any key, depends only upon their having accurately comprehended the transmission of the key. There may be many persons whom manifest as though they have a key in this modern world, but if they depend upon another person’s understanding, then the key is not yet validly their own. There are Aboriginal systems of giving in Alms of small portions of such comprehension that are equitable with the Alms giving of a Hijab; but ever it is that such gifts must be demonstrably needed and no right can ever be assumed to take of, as very many western occultists have assumed of Australian Aborigines.
However, I have veered away from defining what means: “go with the Dream that wakes you up”. Never talk about any place you’ve never been. Never get any substance you have not Dreamed. Always regard Dreams that you can not relate to your own memory of your own daily life as either a debt being incurred, or as disease caused by black magic. That is, a healthy Aboriginal Australian Dreams only of the real and memorable world. But since 1788, and a hundred odd years earlier even, Aborigines had been Dreaming of the ills of this period of cultural invasion. But like the Jews beginning to be rounded up during the Holocaust, before being gased and burnt, but also before receiving evidence that such was happening to other Jews, we did not believe in such nightmares as real. Not until the first sight of a ship. Never go any place without having first Dreamed of being there. That is, each and every day actively live true to only that Dream which awakened you, that Dream which aroused your five senses to the daily reality of mouths to feed and shelter to provide etc. So here it is that you can readily accept that Aboriginal Australia many not have needed to pray so often in 1770, while Captain Cook was on an exploratory voyage around the coast of Australia, but that in this day, we ought to be entering the Dreamtime in Allah as many times a day as any Muslim is in Prayer. By Prayer alone are we, as Human beings, enabled to cause that we are not being harmed each morning in the Dreams that awaken us by the shaytan. So it stands to reason, of course, that Aboriginal culture places large emphasis upon that work of sustaining the Dreamtime.
Before 1788 all of every persons life was engaged in a nomadic and hunter gather (albeit there are many farming applications within nomadic hunting and gathering) subsistence level of daily monotheistic belief. We woke up, found food, went to where it was safe to be, and raised our families; but when ever there was enough food we would gather and make Corroborees. Most of these were initiation ceremonies. But it may have been that we engaged in such for only one month out of twelve, depending only upon food availability. The rest of the year was spent in really very small family groups that wandered. Usually there were more than only a mother and father and children, but not always. The elderly always travelled with younger persons, but in the prime of life the most important leaders would often be alone with only their own immediate family, out in the bush for months on end. The only resources you own are what you can make from the materials at hand in the bush. The hard work ethic exists for good reason. Our culture teaches us to work or die. At larger gatherings future marriages are arranged, betrothals met, and initiations conducted. Also any death rites that preceded can be finalised. In this function alone we are quite different from modern Islam. But I should explain the death rites last.
The best way to explain Kinship is to run through the life cycle of any person. When a mother quickens a fetus in her womb, is when a Human Spirit has entered her. Where she is at that moment and what she first sees belong to the essential self of that child. Usually that is regarded as the first animal she sees, but not always, perhaps a plant, or even a rock. It is that what is outstanding in the environment at that moment, is where the child’s spirit has only just exited from, so as to become born once more in Human form. The place is of the utmost importance, and the mother must try to give birth close by. This is because the Earth’s Ley lines, that are called Dreamlines or Songlines in Aboriginal culture, are known to be the means of any travel of the Human Soul before being born. We each belong within one specific Ley line, so it is important that all the most significant incidents of our live occur upon that Ley line. There are Laws about the patterns in which families of Human beings relate to the Ley lines. These laws are constantly conformed to, without any possibility of variation. There exists within the study of immuno-genetics a modern scientific verification of this belief, that my father pointed out to me. There have been found to be molecules upon the surface of the skin called Major Histo-compatiblity Complex, that accord to each Human being and animal the status of either Crow or Eaglehawk, as such phenomena are named in every one of the Earth’s indigenous Animist based cultures. There is one set of persons whom behave more like crows, and another set whom behave more like eagles and hawks. Each Ley line has a side, crows on one side and Eaglehawk on the other, but it is that the category your own mother is in, is that one that you are born in, regardless of which side of the line you quicken or are born. So Crow and Eaglehawk are known as matri-moieties by anthropologists. In almost every example, the matri-moiety is extra-marital. That means, if you are crow you must marry an eaglehawk and if eaglehawk you must marry a crow. There are rare examples of exception to this Law of what is sustaining to Human health, and in those examples it is always that if marriage occurs within an extra-marital moiety, it can only be to a person who belongs to a different Ley line. This is a fundamental nature of the Human stability of Animist Faith.
However what you actual birth totem is can be also determined by your father. There is a patrilineal inheritance system also. But the matri-lineal will determine your true inside self, according to type, as in crow or eaglehawk, and according to generation, as in the generation below you mother within that matri-moiety, as is locally manifest by the local Ley lines. But your father’s animal totem provides you with an immediate external identification of clan. I am a Crocodile Clan person. But I am mostly more of a kangaroo on the outside. Also, it is that at my heart and in my bones, I am in identity most aligned with the snake. But watch out, because Aboriginal Kinship systems, through the patrilineal clan system, and marriage alliances, also have systems by which I might be something other than a real snake, and you would never know. In fact, it might just happen to me that I begin to Dream about being in any story, and then am taught that story from the tradition, and then I could become that also. It really depends upon how much responsibility I am able to accept, and what Dreams I identify as my own. But it is only by external identification of Dreams that any person is regarded as having any Human worth and merit in being that person responsible for the physical manifestations of that form of fauna. (Making me personally responsible for many of the red bellied black snakes in the Armidale region of New South Wales, and for some rare wallabies protected there in the National Parks; but thereby responsible also for many persons Dreams of such animals, and for those Dreams that are diseased Human expression that should better be manifesting as that animal. Thereby I am here in Queensland, with an array of other animals which manifest within my field of knowledge and actions, a responsible unit of the native population, and that is, within Kinship. I saw a marsupial hopping mouse right near my home in a big city! But I also know about the lung fish that live in this region – true they are fish with lungs as well as gills, but in such numbers that many are the kafir never formed since lung fish form in the place of.)
However, Kinship is also a system of the codes of conduct for all Human behaviour. I called a Nungarrayi in the Warlbiri language. Nungarrayi is my skin name. That means that my Husbands must be a Jangala, and his sisters, Nangalas, are likely to form good friendships with me. It is that I will only have one Husband but that all his brothers are to be regarded as liken to being a Husband. This usually has not the meaning that any sexual liason occur, but it means only that if need arose for such, then it could be managed within Law. A man may have more than one wife. My mother will always be a Nakamara, and her brothers, who are likely to instruct me in Law are called Jakamara. In fact all Nakamara women are mother to me, and all Jakamara are Law men. My children are all Jampidjimbas or Nampidjimbas. Every Nampidjimba and Jampidjimba is regarded as each others brothers and sisters, as I am sister to every other Nungarrayi, and Jungarrayi. For every Nampidjimba and Jampidjimba child I am called mother, because to any of them the word Nungarrayi is the word for mother, while for me, Nakamara means mother. These will be the first words that any child learns. So you can get that Kinship relations are very truly the most externalised manifestation of our culture. It is called, by anthropologists, a classificatory kinship system. Nunagarrayis and Jungarrayis are regarded with fear by most other persons since we got Rainbow Serpent Dreaming; and Rainbow Serpents are the only ones allowed to know what all other folks are Dreaming. Also Jangalas and Nangalas know most of what other folk can Dream, and they are Traditionally shamans and singers. The Crocodile, or rather in Warlbiri way, the Goanna. What your animal is depends upon what the local fauna is which aligns to the same Ley line as that you are born according to. Aboriginal Men have catalogued the entire flora and fauna of Australia according to which Ley line it belongs. Goanna Dreaming is better with picures while snake is better with words, and so that is why lizards are most often the Shamans, but snakes are more often those who are consulted in Law, because snakes speak true. So from infancy we are all accorded a name which allocates to us the nature of our Dreams, and also that animal which we must accept we will manifest as upon our death so as to ensure we are paying for all such Dreams we accept.
These names also accord specific behavioural demands. For example, I must provide mothering to all Jampidjimbas and Nampidjimbas to have ever been allocated the name Nungarrayi by Warlbiri speaking persons. This is part of my field of responsibilities. Those whom gave me this name are all true believers and a part of a Baptist Church congregation that meets in Yuendumu in the Northern Territory. They have been to the places I used to live in and accepted small parts of responsibility for place in Canberra, or else I could not have this name since I have not been to Warlbiri speaking places yet. But in many ways I am obliged to perform Hajj there prior even to a pilgrimage to Mecca, because of the degree of my obligations. I have already made a Hajj to my birth place, and such is regarded as essential within Aboriginal culture for every person to undertake whenever in any uncertainty. However, I am straying from the need to describe a few of the specifically important behavioural rules. I must avoid persons whom are within the category of son-in-law. In some places it is explained that two such persons get their flies mingling. (But not here in Queensland since the Kurilpa Dreaming in Brisbane is enabling of such, but only in an outside self form as a temporary measure within which to accommodate the invasion. Kurilpa is the water rat, who stole a duck girl and raped her and she made a platypus baby. Platypus bear a strange resemblance to an echidna, and echidnas, like many of the invaders, are the trickster. I am already born within such a story because my parents are in such a marriage as is accorded by the stories belonging in Armidale where I am born. But the rest of the Platypus story is a little lonely so I hope not to have to live in it for too much longer, and that I can be a hopping mouse now also; that is, so long as no snakes, or cats, eat that little mouse, so I am needing to Dream of snakes in victory over cats! In Yuendumu there is a death sentence in traditional law if a snake woman and a cat man get too intimate, so Praise Allah that I am not there now or else all the Baptists would have me for their dinner since a few cat men have been prowling around and I spoke with them.) A sister to a son-in-law is likely to be whom initiates me into any new aspect of culture. To a Jungarrayi I must retain total dignity at all times, and never make any reference what-so-ever to any matter in the slightest bit sexual, and if such occurs he has the right to hit me. That is the only time that any violence was ever allowed from any male to any female.
Now the thing about all these rules is that, while I only learned them by studying anthropology, I found that by adhering to them I was enabled to cause a major recovery in my health. I had received a prolapse when only three, most likely as a result of my parents being in a wrong way marriage, and it could not recover until I was, at 33, 100% committed to Kinship codes of conduct. I think that is enough direct knowledge about Kinship, but it defines every other aspect of Aboriginal culture. For example land tenure.
Land is owned not in portions within a boundary (except as is necessitated by inter-cultural need) but rather by relationship with the stories of how geological formations came into being. These are the stories that are accorded every person defined by their social place. It matters not whether the stories happened yesterday or are yet to happen, in this day today, it is our duty to live according to the stories that we are taught. Very very many Aboriginal Dreamtime stories are available in the form of children’s literature in Australia. All persons are welcomed into this aspect of our culture, of sharing in the process of Dreaming those stories in which we must each find our own accountability in Allah. Some of these stories tell of how Australian flora and fauna first became distinct and unique. Some tell of the faults of our ancestors that we become trapped into no matter how hard we try to resist. Yet these stories also accord to us, that if we follow the wrong one, we are immediately faulted. Qur’an provided us in many places already with a re-forging of most of those stories, and most of the older stories that are about entrapment have been ‘put to sleep’. In fact upon the invasion some elders chose to give the evidence that some stories had ever existed to those invaders whom had the resources to hide such, and were instructed that the stories were being ‘put to sleep’. My own comprehension of this process is that those of us whom were converted to Islam chose to use the process of invasion to cause that more of us be enabled to so convert. In knowledge that there was to be an assault upon our culture, some portions were better protected than others. This is a point of view with which many Aboriginal persons may still today disagree with me in. They can since their disagreement is that which identifies that they have chosen not to convert. In fact much of what is readily available of our culture along the eastern sea board, was let to include that which would cause that such persons are made obvious in falsifing a façade that Islamic converts were the loosers. But in this I will certainly be disagreed with. Critically the stories that you know determine what you own. But that accords only when by knowing a story you are also accepting yourself as responsible for adherence to the story. So to own any part of land, you need to have been given as an inheritance, the stories that transmit the teaching of the Leyline that travels through the place. A locality is measured in distance from significant geological features of the landscape rather than by area within a boundary. This is a significant feature of the difference in mental processing, to that of many other cultures. It is only Animal identification which accords that such mental processing is safe.
About marriage I should tell a little. Ideally at seven or eight, when a circumcision initiation is performed upon boys, He is betrothed to a baby girl and all necessary familial ties of reciprocal obligation are commenced. Such bonds include ongoing obligations in food provision etc. However, often when a boy is first more fully initiated, before marrying in his early twenties, he first is married to an old lady who has no Husband. He may marry his betrothed bride only when she is old enough some years later. The older wife will teach Him how to be a good Husband to her first. Occasionally also baby girls are betrothed to older men, and when the girl is mature enough to have her first baby she marries him. But he is likely to pass into the after life well before her, at which time she may be free to form a love match. In general men are allowed more than one wife, but women only one Husband at a time. Yet if her first Husband is not there any more then it is expected that she will become the property and full responsibility of another man. No female is allowed to do for herself any aspect of her own life. But her husband will surely enforce that she does take the responsibility for every part of her children’s life until they are married adults. A wife is regarded as responsible to provide to her Husband any part of her comprehension of the world that he could be in need of at all times of the day and night, so it is rightful that her world revolve around him, and that He provide to her in Love that her daily tasks orient towards providing for her children, as He provides for her. It is understood that only by such will children grow up well and learn to Love Allah by loving their Father. Many Aborigines have regarded that Christianity has strong merit in teaching one Husband one wife, and the community in general is moving closer to other cultures in this regard as a positive result of inter-cultural communication. It is also that such is made possible, and necessary, through more daily community contact than in the past. Before a girl marries she may become an apprentice to a young mother with a first baby, and in that way become accustomed to the duties of such a role. This is accomplished through a system of becoming a special person in a special function as an apprentice. The system prevents first time mothers from regarding themselves as in any way hard done by. There are also patterns in which no child is ever able to be regarded as special by cause of being the oldest or youngest, because there is always another sibling born, to a different mother, perhaps the same father, perhaps not, children might not know who another child’s actual biological parents are. But if they have the same skin name, they are a sibling. In general such matters as divorce are regarded as possible but not desirable. But if a man is not providing for a wife, it is her right to walk out of the marriage, and she may sing a younger Husband to her. The practise of singing a person to bring them to you is the most common way of establishing a Love bond rather than a marriage by betrothal. It is called Love magic, but is really only a way of establishing that an existing debt exists, and that in Love may it be paid. You will note that my way of explaining many cultural phenomenon is that of rambling through social relations, but it is really very important that a man’s way is that of discussing food availability and travel arrangements etc.
There is one more set of very significant social relations that needs to be explained. That of Kirda and Kurdungurlu, translated as Bosses and Managers, or owner and worker. It is critical to cultural maintenance. All men have a close bond with another man within a father son kinship arrangement, and women within mother daughter links of arrangements. Within these bonds all work is undertaken. Women’s business always distinct from men’s, and Men’s from women’s. Within any boss manager interaction one person is the responsible person ultimately for any mistakes and the actual land owner, and the other person is the operative party, who collects the food and is responsible for increase ceremonies on the land, receiving the Dreams, performing the Dances, and making the paintings etc. It may be that many paintings are made about which only the artist knows whom was accepting the responsible function of owner. This relationship is sustained by a distinct function of the Aboriginal anatomy and physiology that I will try to briefly explain. I am explaining as I learned terms for from within the teaching of G.I. Gurdjieff. Human disease is a function of the energy that for the reproductive function being displaced into different of the body’s functions that need for health their own energy. It is usual that there is energy transference between the reproductive centre and the movement centre, the lower feeling centre, the teaching centre, and the lower thought centre. In cases of extreme disease like TB (caused by brother sister intimate relations) there is a bizarre flow of these energies each one replacing the next in a circuit. In other cases such a flow exists by reasons only of black magic in the reverse direction. Among Aboriginal Australians such circuits of wrong way flows of energy of the various body centres can be established in which one of these named functions is entirely left out of any diseased exchanges. Or the whole physiology can alter and then a different function is that left out of disease exchanges. Or then a third pattern of a circuit of exchanges can be established, but in which a third of these centres is left out of the disease pattern. So in any given instance there is a guarantee that either the movements, or the heart/teaching centre, and thereby connected to it the lower feeling centre, or the lower thought centre, will be enabled to function perfectly, but with an obvious expense to the other functions. Ideally what occurs is that a child first learns with their movement centre working perfectly until about seven or eight, then with their heart centre working perfectly until adolescence, and then with their lower thought centre working perfectly, and thereby, even amid extreme depravity in social conditions, we are able to retain a realistic perspective, and to a definitive degree, avoid the works of black magic. So in the Boss and Manager social structure, one person is retaining perfect thought function, and the other perfect movement function if dancing or heart function if painting, and so working together they manifest ideally. The two persons then change roles in another aspect of work; but of course the system only works with other persons in the community whom are considering such working arrangements, during the process of their heart/feeling/teaching centre manifesting ideally, and providing the necessary love. In this way we all comprehend that we are interdependent upon one another. The phenomenon of Kirda/Kurdungurlu arrangments is mirrored by the practise that can be known in the modern context as equitable with that of genuine re-evalutation co-counselling as its most overt form; that is despite a few too many shaytans in that practise these days here in Australia.
There may be Muslims familiar with the phenomenon of a shape shifter, and these different patterns are occurring with such shifts. If a person to whom I am in debt regards me with the question in their mind of “what’s your animal” then I shift and if I am a being whom has ever adopted the form of life of the animal whom I am behaving like, my whole body kesdjan, or feeling body, will adopt that shape, while my thoughts will become crystal clear and I will notice what could have been a mistake in any of my behaviour. Then I will be shamed about being an animal, and correct myself into a true Human behaviour. The biology I have described also sustains a feature that makes it far more difficult for shaytan. Shaytan tend to practise false breathing that causes that material of sin is condensed in too fine a density, by drawing reproductive energy up through the spine into the minds eye, but bypassing various other physical functions that are necessary for the processing of such matter. Aborigines have an additional muscular function that accords a strong connection to the spine and that energy can not readily pass through without damaging the body. Shaytan have attempted openly to undermine such by means of anal rapes, and they failed in all respects except that of damaging our reputation.
At death, there are long processes of grieving, in which most of any persons self, Animal or Human identified, is “recycled”. That means, it is forgiven by friends and family where possible, and where friends and family are requiring such for their work. Meanwhile, Human Souls, within their own essential unique self, are sent off back into the landscape in a process of enforcing upon them every memory of every interaction in which they accepted being the responsible party for any mistake, even when not truly at fault. We might not know when any Human Soul will be able to be a Human again, but by this process we are all confident in our Humanity, since ever have we learned to trust our Faith in Allah that redemption is. Gratitude for existing as Human beings is thus culturally embodied by our race. Alongside genuine consideration of the positive attributes of all forms of life. Yet the hard work of managing any mourning process is that of ensuring that any non-Human attributes manifest strictly only as flora and fauna. Thereby we all can eat. We are all hardened to these processes, and I my self find it substantially frightening that I am not better culturally conditioned into an animist framework even to be considering these facts. We all learn the hard way to prefer to be judged with more severity than is necessary over being treated leniently by friends and family. When a culture goes soft the experience of the grave is harsher. Within an Animist culture we are conditioned to fear our own self whenever it is less than Human, so as to prevent us from harming life. Perhaps what determines that we are defined as Animists is only that we are able to make this a part of our outside self. What makes a Moslem a Moslem when fully converted is that similarity to which I am describing, that for Moslems is an aspect only of the inside self. But in far less need of fear, since to be known as Animists, is to have the worst about ourselves knowable by the outside world.
Shame is indeed the key to our culture. Though any Animist knows that accepting being culturally embedded within your own greed and hate are also essential aspects of Animism. But it is our management of pride that sets us apart from other Animist cultures. No tall poppies in Australia: Mr Steve Irwin could only have got away with that in America, and here, he is really just an ordinary bloke, just like he wanted really. It is the most notable aspect of modern Australian culture that is distinctly of Indigenous Australia, that if any person shows of too much, they get cut down. Nobody likes me being a Moslem, but that is probably only because they are trying to stop me going on ahead into Islam before everybody else is also ready to become knowable as long been a Moslem. Much of what I have mentioned about Kinship is from that form in which Traditions have better been upheld than the modern social forms of Kinship, but we all regard these lessons as retaining a critical nature. The codes of conduct in marriage are still very similar except where actual marriages are taking place outside of the established best suitability patterns that I have here described. Unfortunately it is that there has been a marked increase of unlawful marriages in very recent years, and such has been forced upon us by occultists whom were attempting to portray that Animist religion has such as its basis. It is that in many cultures people are only expected to become “turned into an animal” because they break with marriage laws; but among Aboriginal Australians it has always been the case for all of us. That is, for as long as we were being enabled to sustain our worth as I am here describing. There are shaytans among us who remember what they know in their minds to be an older pattern, but it was ever a wrongful pattern and is not what defines Aborigines as having any modern social worth. That Aboriginal shaytan have been portraying our worth in their faulted perceptions, has been causing a sale of our children and our health to the very process of invasion which they are trying to claim a debt owing against. However, this description I have given is of a harsh system of Law, in which only those truly Human of mind could ever have survived, and there are shaytan resentful about having been locked out of such systems by the nature of. Yet shaytan only ever can disprove their claims upon Human culture and Religion; therefore it is rightful that my description here excludes their disparities with such where they could dispute it. Theirs is the shame, but we absorb such of will as thereby are their means made told and knowable. I should add to all that is already stated, and for those persons in good self knownledge whom may read this, that Australians have a way with pride that is inimical to the Moslem way with vanity. A process of transpositions and transformations and gifts of Alms, through which our Animist base is able to be discerned as distinct from other belief in such phenomena. It is with considerable pride that we, true believing, Australians will adjust to the fact that Islam is our birthright, and our leaders are most often among the most silent of survivors of the nightmare of modern assaults upon reality, that assault that is letting us all know that The Hour is with even already our children.
Thankyou for your considerations of this, it is what is commonly regarded as the oldest surviving culture that I have described. It must be added that our survival has long been depended upon the fact that we governed our selves within these patterns by measures of iron-fisted leadership. Any leader need re-prove their leadership in every situation, and this fact has always been our way. Our leaders have most commonly been Men with a Rainbow Serpent Dreaming, and so I will tell some stories that are associated with this function. I hope that these stories can orient readers correctly also to the fact of the horror that we face in this day as being an experience we have been tempered by Allah to be first to face the full extent of. I should add in preface to the stories I will put in here that our most distinct mechanism of cultural survival has been that of listening to the stories of newcomers to our land, and replacing such with our own stories. We have factually aborbed much of what was not needed, but at that, are amid the facts of a society within an argument made by shaytans as to what were our own true stories in the first place. Therefore it is that I am require to preface this piece of writing with statements as to my authority in the telling. It is that all of our creation myths have a shaytans perferred version and a Human preferred version, and often it has been that those versions more often published have been the shaytans versions of our mythology. In my own telling of many of these it is that I am open to being accused by Aboriginal shaytans of stealing from their myths and differing from, but only in that they have letters and certificates of Aboriginality, while my own ancestry is not legally identified. The truth of the matter is simply that for each and every one of us, the stories are usually revealed indistinctly and it is that we are only culturally permitted to retell any story exactly as it is true to our own experience. So thereby I bear no objection to the Shaytans versions, and none could object to my naming Allah as Creator Spirit, and neither that Allah worked through Bhyame to initiate us. So in this I will tell that story of Bhyame's first initiation, but I will include only those details within which my own experience is bonded. Most certainly it is the fact, that now reading back, I am astonished at the degree to which my life has accorded to that story. I am using a version published in a collection by A.W. Reed, but I am providing only those parts which have direct relation to my own experience. I should add another important aspect of Aboriginal culture. It is held that if you can speak a word for a thing, then you must own that thing. So we tend to be of smaller vocabularies than many persons. But I ought to state the in the story I have retold of Bhyame's first initiation, I have leaned upon the names given in the rendition by A. W. Reed, in part because my own telling might seem even less kind, but I must express that there are many names in different Aboriginal languages that I am not oriented to as my own, and here in this story are a few of.
This is the story of the first initiation ceremony and the first Corroboree. It is from a time when Bhyame was a Man at Earth before He arose to Heaven and then returned, and when animals were still men. Bhyame was a Great Wirrun, or medicine man, through whom Allah will was enacted. He gathered all the people together from many distant places. As many tribes as there are the animals of the animal kingdom. There were: Wahn the Crow; Du-mer, the pigeons; Baiamul the Black Swans; Madhi the Dogs; and many others. Everbody was ready after months of perparation, and much business dealings were contracted.
After a few days Bhyame gathered everybody together and told them that it is good to have been enjoying each others company, but now the serious matters must commence. He told, you know what must be done because I have implanted these thoughts in your mind; and he described that initiation of men. There were other wirruns there helping him. Everybody set to work preparing the area for the event. Most worked quitely and silently, but often they were interrupted by senseless laughter and chatter of the Madhi tribe. Little notice was taken at first, for they are well known to be empty headed. Surely soon they would settle down. Occasionally they were instructed to be quite and work, but they took no notice. Eventually they were threatened, and they laughted contemptuously and swaggered around throwing insults, criticising, and being generally more and more rude the more they were frowned upon.
Bhyame observed the Madhi tribe closely. He too thought they would settle down because he knew they are afraid of the Wirruns. Eventually he decided to punish the Madhi. He told everybody that he was saddened by the behaviour of the Madhi, and that people could be happy by abiding within the law, but the Madhi were being proud and rebellious, not listening to wisdom, and making a mockery of an important occasion. Then he said: very well, they can get what they want, they may go on howing and laughing to their hearts content, and no longer would he give them the dignity of naming them among men. Go away madhi and howl. One by one the madhi dropped onto all fours, grew thick hair, and their hands and feet became paws. They tried to call out that they were sorry, but it was too late. They could only bark and howl. Scared by their own noises they ran away.
Now everyone was afraid of Bhyame. The next day some of the women were not grinding seeds into flour any more. He asked them why, worried that they were too afraid. They explained that all their grinding stones had gone missiing. He thought it was funny since only a woman can leave a grinding stone and no grinding stone ever left a woman. Bhyame suggested that they might have lent their grinding stones to the Du-mer. The woman said no, but Bhyame insisted, and the women, in fear, agreed to go an see. Du-mer said no, they did not have them, but the women heard thunder, and told Bhyame, so he came to find out why that sign had manifested, saying, perhaps I have done you an injustice. At the Du-mer camp Bhyame had his magic tools, and the Du-mer were not there. A woman with sharp eyes saw their grinding stones hidden. There was more loud noises and they all could see the grinding stone were visibly moving without any Humans, all moving across a plain to a mountain, and the Du-mer were chasing them. Gradually the Du-mer turned into pigeons in their chase. Allah manifested a mountain made only out of grinding stone.
Now the boys were put to the final test before entering manhood. They had already been pushed to the limits of what they supposed was their endurance, and yet had to endure more. Bhyame instructed: “my children must be strong, Strong to father sons, to care for their women, to overcome appetite and pain and fear. They must learn the wisdom of the tribes, the mystery of the water, and all the stars of Heaven, of winds that blow, the flight of the bee to its honey store, the food that is hidden in the Earth, and the seeing eye that can follo the light-footed trail of the kangaroo rat over the stoney ground; teach them.” And all the Wirruns taught the boys. A part of the stamina the boys had to develop was sustaining consciousness whilst without food and water for many days. Thus memories of older ways were lost to this, then new teaching. Also they were bitten by ants adding insult to injustice, but needed to sustain their self all the same.
Meanwhile the mothers decided to leave early because they did not want to meet their sons straight after such initiations. They did not want their sons to see their tears. So they headed for home. But they encountered a woman whom had been left behind on the way to the initiation ceremony. She swore. Her children had been too little and too many to keep up. She could not find water for them, and they had all died. She accused all of the other mothers, you were in too much of a hurry to wait for us, and you have killed my children, and with that, she began turning them all into trees, and turning herself into a tree also. Then more and more people came to see, and each and every one among began to be turned also into animals as they watched. The Baiamuls into Black Swans, etc. (There is a companion story about the Black Swans but I can not find it today; and it seems to have become that part of many of our stories which became too expensive to maintain; even as the name Baiamuls suggests. Though this name predates such expenses being known.)
After all the initiation ceremonies were over, and the boys were formally welcomed into manhood, the men began to follow the trail of the women and children. The trail was easy, and Bhyame's own dog ran ahead. But it lay down under bushes and gave birth to pups which had the head of the porcupine, and no body dared go near those fierce creatures. Bhyame was sad by the time he arrived back at his home, nobody was left. But Bhyame is old and wise, and knows that from evil comes good; and he knew that when the sharp memories the initiation were over that the world would be a richer place because of the presence of the plants and animals that had come from his great Corroboree.
That is all about that story now, and here is another, that is a story my son is the owner of:
There was a time of much drought. All the animals were dying. There was a man and his wife and his friend travelling. The woman said, we can eat these animals so we shall not starve. The men said no, it is wrong to eat meat, but she showed a way she had observed to cook meat. Her husband ate. The other man said, you eat or we will both starve, and he wandered away. After she had eaten her fill the woman worried for him and they followed him together, but they kept offering him meat to live by. He ran away and passed out of his body inside a hollow tree trunk, then some cockatoos came and rested in the branches. And the man and his wife witnessed a miracle that the man who would not eat meat arose into the sky as the southern cross.
Here is another that belongs where I am born:
There is a big kangaroo, and he looks all over for the best place for his family to live. He digs a bit too big hole in the riverbank to make a pool. It is too deep to swim in, but there is always plenty of drinking water for his family. After some time the dogs come. They chase the kangaroos family and all his clan dispurse. Eventually to get away from the dogs he jumps into that swimming hole, and at the bottom he is turned into the Rainbow Serpent. After a time a black headed snake appears on the rocks in the sunshine around the part of the river about that pool, and then a wallaby.
That is a story that my own life is commanded by, so I only tell the shortest version so that I can stay able to prevent others from using it against me. Here is another, but this one intrigues me, since archeological evidence is that dogs have only been in Australia for ten thousand years. There are also other stories about Australia having been a place of only birds before all the animals came here, but I don't tell those stories since they are not mine. But this part is:
There was an animal who wanted to be better than all the other animals, so he prayed to Allah that he would be the best. Allah put a spell on him so that the dogs began to chase him. He was chased and chased and chased, and to no avail, he could not get away from that dog. All over the country he was chased. Then just when he though he could go no further, on both back legs together he bounded and rapidly hopped away from the dog, but the dog had its teeth into his tail and pulled. But the dog pulling his tail stretched it out longer until he realised that was how he had learned to hop. That is how the Kangaroo got its tail.
So I hope you can discern more about our culture from these stories. If you have a true interest in learning more about Aboriginal culture I can suggest any publications from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies AIATSIS, and also any films that are available and made by Aboriginal Australians, but especially “Yolngu Boy” and “Ten Canoes”. The National Museum of Australia in Canberra is also a new and significant educational experience in respect of Aboriginal culture.
What is missing from modern Australians psychology is really only that piece of stablising dogma in establishing what among all our Dreams is needing to be believed in, and what can be dismissed as fuel for the fire; but our tradition has these details in sound teaching provided. Where we are these days unable to connect with traditional mythology after our childhood's are regressed into the retarded mental capacity of the west, (that has become necessary in this time so as to establish scientific method above occult), we are able nevertheless to connect with ecological science and often as adults make random enquiry into the nature of many different belief structures, as though searching for evidence of what we have lost. And we retain our strong faith in Human narratives as the means of communication. In that the rainbow serpent is an embodiment of our establishing traditions, we are yet very focussed upon the correct time sequencing of stories. In this the work of traditional Aborigines is amply apparent at many turns in the modern Australian experience. But far today from all being co-counselling narrative therapists, we are often manifesting in extremes of the fall of Humanity. But in my own experience having found an Islamic teaching that lifted my own life up and out of similar, I find I can not progress through any Islamic experience without dragging all those who have only not yet found a modern structured Faith within which to validate our experiential wealth as I here describe. So it is that while I must accept to my self the burden of this form of expression of Aboriginality having been made, it is also that any benefits from this expression belong to all Aboriginal Australians whom have sustained faith in Allah. Their Faith also has sustained mine, but most often without their knowing whom they have been sustaining. Insha Allah my representation of our way is enough to commend to Moslems to make further enquiry. But I might also add that the very best means of such enquiry is only to make your own business needful of interacting within Australia's Tradition.
Mu’asalam
It is mentioned to me that there could be users of this forum whom may like to know more certainty of Australian Aboriginal culture, and that perhaps a thread in which I can be questioned about Aboriginal culture could be found reason for. The suggestion coincides with a concern that I have about the way in which Aboriginal Australians are and are not enabled to interact with persons from other cultures, and so I have commenced such a thread. But I am beginning with a lengthy essay, so in time perhaps there may be questions that I am not yet aware of needing answers. The work is about fifteen A4 pages, and made in only one draft, so if there are any confusing passages with faulted punctuation, alert me and I can provide better. There are a few short expressions of a foundation mythology at the end, and I am wary to provide any that are not in accord with Qur'an, yet also aware that such are the only true measure of being able to genuinely teach of the culture that is.
I will state at the outset that we are a race with an unusual cultural manifestation that is has a unique biological base; and that this manifests as exposing our worst qualities in the first instance of any interaction. Thereby we are often weakened in that initial interaction. But at the same time, since our very survival depends upon overcoming any such weakness exposed, we are adept at recovering from every first perceived fault. This manifests into a strength by our ability to learn to know ourselves in our weakest manifestations through exposure of. Obviously the task is a difficult one, but once that first negotiation is complete, our strength can not be thereafter underestimated. What is interesting in this phenomenon, is that while it is culturally embedded, it is also manifestly a biological phenomena. This is amply apparent in that such behaviour exists among very many persons of Aboriginal descent whom are now of white skin so not readily identifiable as Aboriginal, and have also been raised entirely outside of the culture that sustains such manifestations. It is perhaps an unfortunate, and often indeed tragic, occurrence, that in modern Australian society, as we are still so overtly dominated by the British invasion of Australia in 1788, that our children are not being given the cultural pre-requisites with which to comprehend a need to be wary in our regard for other persons. We mostly recover well from being misinterpreted in our own first mishaps of chance faults exposed in initial interactions; but it is that our children are biologically inclined towards regarding that the worst in a stranger is that which they first manifest. Yet by knowing this about ourselves, and also by knowing that strangers may have learned this about us, we are enabled to be more self critical now in our observations of second, third and subsequence, chance mishaps of faults exposed in inter-cultural interaction. I will explain this with an example. I had a teaching Dream about this very matter only a few days ago. I had an initial interaction with a big fat American. At first I distrusted him by my own nature, and in that his presence was inconvenient, but in the first active interaction he manifested, I was well enabled to trust. Yet immediately thereafter he manifested a very frightening interaction, and my instinct was to abhor his self; yet I am that I could not judge him upon any but his first interaction, such that I was almost easily lead, by him, into a dangerous situation, all the while having comprehended such. But then I woke up in time to save my self. So here I am revealing this, only so as that any persons whom are not of Australian Aboriginal origin, whom may have taken advantage of us by this fact, can know that it was wrong to us. But also in the hope that Aboriginal persons will able to adapt our culture to be more critical in subsequent interactions of our responses to non-Aboriginal persons. It should be stated that while an aborigine, is a person who is native to the place there are at, an Aborigine, with a capital “A”, means a person native to Australia by racial origin. Quite an honour really that the English invading language gave us such a status.
So here I am lead into providing some further information about our culture and what are its unique attributes that we are proving as worthy of saving, in this age in which so much of antiquity is being exposed to the weather. It need to be stated that within our modern cultural etiquette it is that I need to substantiate my self as a person whom is a proper person to be imparting such knowledge before I take this matter any further. I could not in fact without. Therefore it is necessary to comprehend that all I can impart of Aboriginal culture is of me. My own true self. Therefore some parts of what I can teach will be most soundly based within my own experiential understanding, while other parts will be more soundly based within my own academic anthropological research. So it may seem that I meander often between non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal modes of expression, but always within a basically Aboriginal cultural form of story telling, of my own truly verified experiences. Stories are, in my opinion, the only way to teach culture. However I will here be telling my own story, and in my story, I have attained some worth in an academic sense within the discipline of anthropology, so thereby I may use some of that discipline as a short hand way of revealing our way.
Since I am white skin and well educated Australian, with a good orientation to mainstream Anglo-Saxon oriented culture, I need to substantiate that I live within empirical evidence that is of merit in authorising my self to engage in a process of imparting any of the worth of Aboriginal culture. It may already be obvious that what has happened to me in my life is that I have become comfortable with providence of a non-Anglo-Saxon way, within Anglo-Saxon means of expression. So this process is worthy of detailing. There are many things written about Aboriginal tradition, and how such had adapted to the modern urban context, but yet only a little about what is being retained by modern Australian contexts of the heritage of antiquity. We are not only a hunter gatherer society any more, yet we still value that way immeasurably. For only about 2% of the population, and a black population among a white majority, to be held so high in national regard as many Aboriginal Artists are these days, is no insignificant fact. Yet what I am here telling, is neither, even thought it is of a cultural comprehension that has been acquired within the Australian mainstream.
As a child I recall very well that the world seemed to be made up of mainly dumb and wrong phenomena, and that most persons seemed like totally ignorant idiots completely out of touch with reality. That is except for the natural world. However the man made environment was all too much like somebodies worst nightmare coming real. My experience of modern mainstream Australian society in this regard is not at all unique, and is factually common to many white Australians with some Aboriginal ancestry. It could be said that as a Nation we are all just waiting for somebody to wake us up to the fact that we are colluding in that nightmare by not overtly working to repudiate the modern world. But it is as though there is something in our genetics constantly reminding us that this world is not the real world. What I remember as important in that my father transmitted to me is that he very often provided all commentary from his own certain knowledge about the natural surroundings. Flora and fauna especially. He also never failed to provide any scientific empirical data that could repudiate any false belief he noticed. While these providences were at all times within a mainstream Australian outlook, his method of exposition was really only missing that key to Aboriginal belief, that we are at all time to identify every manifestation in our own self, that is not provenly a Human manifestation, with another living form. Factually this comprehension was provided to me by one of my parents closest friends and God Father to my brother, in the form of a good book of Legends of the Dreamtime. So as soon as I had that key of being able to base empirical evidence in such legends, my whole world re-oriented rapidly. That key is only the key to knowing my own true self, those parts of me in which I am true to Soul; and it is that I learned that key through a teaching belonging soundly within modern Islam. Yet this also was grounded by my parents. My mother is a devout Christian. My parents had many friends throughout my childhood, often enough whom were black skin persons, and whom are from different parts of the world and different cultures. I remember being looked after one evening by a Pakistani man called Zahee Kahn when I was six. But then my parents have always sustained unusual friendships. With persons of Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, and Shinto or Tao, Asian cultures, and also from Germany and America. All of these persons have been engaged in the work of environmental science. At pre-school one day my father visited with his friend called Graham Webb who is one of Australia’s crocodile hunters, and showed a turtle and a lizard to all the children. But I am in shame for having sat on a snake at Graham’s house. You may readily thus regard that I am raised within an Animist cultural foundation, even though it has a form from the Catholic church and all else that ‘the west’ is regarded as faulted with, superimposed over this foundation.
Additionally, as a teenager, I sort of happened to meander into a significant Traditional Aboriginal Corroboree, in 1988, at the exact location and time of the 200th anniversary of the invasion of Australia. Within this field of the effects of my participation by bearing witness, I am formally regarded as obligated to teach Aboriginal Kinship systems, that are integral to Australian Aboriginal culture. Therefore, it is that none can question my authority in this. However, it could readily be that any Aboriginal person may like to oppose my expressions, and within our culture we have a system of agreeing to disagree. Most likely the only opposition I could face would by from persons whom are socialised and enculturated within one of the various different cultural forms that are all included in the entirety of Australian cultural expression, but are not that inimical with my own experience of our unique Australian Indigenous culture. Therefore it is the prerogative of any
Aboriginal person to find me at fault if they so choose, and I will not fault them only for disagreeing with my expressions of a unity of culture here. Across Australia in 1788 there were more than 200 distinct languages each with many dialects, and each culturally distinct. Yet there are features common to each place that it is my intention to divulge. The foremost among these is that each place has its own unique Kinship system. A Kinship system is like the Ummah. However there is one cultural tenet that is needed before I begin to explain how various Aboriginal Australians orient within a concept that is similar to that of the Ummah.
Most of what I am detailing is matters that are more properly regarded as belonging to an inside part of the culture of other places, yet here in Traditional Australia, these are outside teachings. There is a strong cultural regard for the matter of distinguishing what is the difference between “inside” and “outside” business. That is, I am not allowed to relate any matter that could be an inside matter. My comprehension of Islam, is that generally The Ummah is a more inside teaching that Kinship is for Aboriginal Australians. Therefore it is that it must be held as discriminated to be of a unique and different definition, even though I have made a comparison. In the largest part, why Aboriginal Kinship is enabled to be an outside teaching is because Kinship is inclusive of the categorisation of all native Australian flora and fauna, as well as Human beings, and therefore it is distinct, definitively, from The Ummah.
However there is a cultural pre-requisite to comprehending Aboriginal Kinship. That is, we are all, who are truly within Aboriginal Tradition, within the regard, that each and ever person must: “go with the Dream that wakes you up.” Really it is like accepting that which is your own consequence through Prayer. Prayer in Aboriginal culture is defined as “Entering the Dreamtime”. Yet Dreamtime is a concept in which only a partial translation has been made quite on purpose. In some Aboriginal languages the word for “Dreamtime” could equitably be translated as Jannah, but only depending upon its use being correct to that which is the reality of Jannah of the future. Dreamtime, is also a state of mind, and it is regarded strongly that none of us are, in this time, enabled to properly, at every moment, discriminate the past from the future from the present, while in that state of mind. Therefore it is not actual Jannah. Yet it is that the Aboriginal cultural regard for Jannah is that our labours, when real work, are at all times work towards forging and sustaining that future Kingdom of Jannah. This is also a matter of external cultural expression. It is regarded heavily that ever physical expression that has no place within Jannah is a matter for the fire. No fear. This is our truth. One senior Aboriginal Elder, who passed away only a few years ago, expressed it in book that “every time you cut a tree a little bit, a little bit pain for you also after”. It is in fact the more correct expression than that I am here utilising, as unique to my own self. His expression is rather more that of the male form. In Aboriginal culture men talk about everything by any and every reference to the birds and the bees. That is, when Men talk about flora and fauna, they are talking also about esoteric secrets. That much is a part of the outside self of any Traditional Aboriginal person. But whether you comprehend any more than that the lizards are being discussed, will depend entirely upon whether any person has provided you with a key. There are seven keys of comprehension. Seven, like the seven skies as known of in Islam, or the seven levels of comprehension of the meaning of ever Hebrew consonant. Whether any person has access to any key, depends only upon their having accurately comprehended the transmission of the key. There may be many persons whom manifest as though they have a key in this modern world, but if they depend upon another person’s understanding, then the key is not yet validly their own. There are Aboriginal systems of giving in Alms of small portions of such comprehension that are equitable with the Alms giving of a Hijab; but ever it is that such gifts must be demonstrably needed and no right can ever be assumed to take of, as very many western occultists have assumed of Australian Aborigines.
However, I have veered away from defining what means: “go with the Dream that wakes you up”. Never talk about any place you’ve never been. Never get any substance you have not Dreamed. Always regard Dreams that you can not relate to your own memory of your own daily life as either a debt being incurred, or as disease caused by black magic. That is, a healthy Aboriginal Australian Dreams only of the real and memorable world. But since 1788, and a hundred odd years earlier even, Aborigines had been Dreaming of the ills of this period of cultural invasion. But like the Jews beginning to be rounded up during the Holocaust, before being gased and burnt, but also before receiving evidence that such was happening to other Jews, we did not believe in such nightmares as real. Not until the first sight of a ship. Never go any place without having first Dreamed of being there. That is, each and every day actively live true to only that Dream which awakened you, that Dream which aroused your five senses to the daily reality of mouths to feed and shelter to provide etc. So here it is that you can readily accept that Aboriginal Australia many not have needed to pray so often in 1770, while Captain Cook was on an exploratory voyage around the coast of Australia, but that in this day, we ought to be entering the Dreamtime in Allah as many times a day as any Muslim is in Prayer. By Prayer alone are we, as Human beings, enabled to cause that we are not being harmed each morning in the Dreams that awaken us by the shaytan. So it stands to reason, of course, that Aboriginal culture places large emphasis upon that work of sustaining the Dreamtime.
Before 1788 all of every persons life was engaged in a nomadic and hunter gather (albeit there are many farming applications within nomadic hunting and gathering) subsistence level of daily monotheistic belief. We woke up, found food, went to where it was safe to be, and raised our families; but when ever there was enough food we would gather and make Corroborees. Most of these were initiation ceremonies. But it may have been that we engaged in such for only one month out of twelve, depending only upon food availability. The rest of the year was spent in really very small family groups that wandered. Usually there were more than only a mother and father and children, but not always. The elderly always travelled with younger persons, but in the prime of life the most important leaders would often be alone with only their own immediate family, out in the bush for months on end. The only resources you own are what you can make from the materials at hand in the bush. The hard work ethic exists for good reason. Our culture teaches us to work or die. At larger gatherings future marriages are arranged, betrothals met, and initiations conducted. Also any death rites that preceded can be finalised. In this function alone we are quite different from modern Islam. But I should explain the death rites last.
The best way to explain Kinship is to run through the life cycle of any person. When a mother quickens a fetus in her womb, is when a Human Spirit has entered her. Where she is at that moment and what she first sees belong to the essential self of that child. Usually that is regarded as the first animal she sees, but not always, perhaps a plant, or even a rock. It is that what is outstanding in the environment at that moment, is where the child’s spirit has only just exited from, so as to become born once more in Human form. The place is of the utmost importance, and the mother must try to give birth close by. This is because the Earth’s Ley lines, that are called Dreamlines or Songlines in Aboriginal culture, are known to be the means of any travel of the Human Soul before being born. We each belong within one specific Ley line, so it is important that all the most significant incidents of our live occur upon that Ley line. There are Laws about the patterns in which families of Human beings relate to the Ley lines. These laws are constantly conformed to, without any possibility of variation. There exists within the study of immuno-genetics a modern scientific verification of this belief, that my father pointed out to me. There have been found to be molecules upon the surface of the skin called Major Histo-compatiblity Complex, that accord to each Human being and animal the status of either Crow or Eaglehawk, as such phenomena are named in every one of the Earth’s indigenous Animist based cultures. There is one set of persons whom behave more like crows, and another set whom behave more like eagles and hawks. Each Ley line has a side, crows on one side and Eaglehawk on the other, but it is that the category your own mother is in, is that one that you are born in, regardless of which side of the line you quicken or are born. So Crow and Eaglehawk are known as matri-moieties by anthropologists. In almost every example, the matri-moiety is extra-marital. That means, if you are crow you must marry an eaglehawk and if eaglehawk you must marry a crow. There are rare examples of exception to this Law of what is sustaining to Human health, and in those examples it is always that if marriage occurs within an extra-marital moiety, it can only be to a person who belongs to a different Ley line. This is a fundamental nature of the Human stability of Animist Faith.
However what you actual birth totem is can be also determined by your father. There is a patrilineal inheritance system also. But the matri-lineal will determine your true inside self, according to type, as in crow or eaglehawk, and according to generation, as in the generation below you mother within that matri-moiety, as is locally manifest by the local Ley lines. But your father’s animal totem provides you with an immediate external identification of clan. I am a Crocodile Clan person. But I am mostly more of a kangaroo on the outside. Also, it is that at my heart and in my bones, I am in identity most aligned with the snake. But watch out, because Aboriginal Kinship systems, through the patrilineal clan system, and marriage alliances, also have systems by which I might be something other than a real snake, and you would never know. In fact, it might just happen to me that I begin to Dream about being in any story, and then am taught that story from the tradition, and then I could become that also. It really depends upon how much responsibility I am able to accept, and what Dreams I identify as my own. But it is only by external identification of Dreams that any person is regarded as having any Human worth and merit in being that person responsible for the physical manifestations of that form of fauna. (Making me personally responsible for many of the red bellied black snakes in the Armidale region of New South Wales, and for some rare wallabies protected there in the National Parks; but thereby responsible also for many persons Dreams of such animals, and for those Dreams that are diseased Human expression that should better be manifesting as that animal. Thereby I am here in Queensland, with an array of other animals which manifest within my field of knowledge and actions, a responsible unit of the native population, and that is, within Kinship. I saw a marsupial hopping mouse right near my home in a big city! But I also know about the lung fish that live in this region – true they are fish with lungs as well as gills, but in such numbers that many are the kafir never formed since lung fish form in the place of.)
However, Kinship is also a system of the codes of conduct for all Human behaviour. I called a Nungarrayi in the Warlbiri language. Nungarrayi is my skin name. That means that my Husbands must be a Jangala, and his sisters, Nangalas, are likely to form good friendships with me. It is that I will only have one Husband but that all his brothers are to be regarded as liken to being a Husband. This usually has not the meaning that any sexual liason occur, but it means only that if need arose for such, then it could be managed within Law. A man may have more than one wife. My mother will always be a Nakamara, and her brothers, who are likely to instruct me in Law are called Jakamara. In fact all Nakamara women are mother to me, and all Jakamara are Law men. My children are all Jampidjimbas or Nampidjimbas. Every Nampidjimba and Jampidjimba is regarded as each others brothers and sisters, as I am sister to every other Nungarrayi, and Jungarrayi. For every Nampidjimba and Jampidjimba child I am called mother, because to any of them the word Nungarrayi is the word for mother, while for me, Nakamara means mother. These will be the first words that any child learns. So you can get that Kinship relations are very truly the most externalised manifestation of our culture. It is called, by anthropologists, a classificatory kinship system. Nunagarrayis and Jungarrayis are regarded with fear by most other persons since we got Rainbow Serpent Dreaming; and Rainbow Serpents are the only ones allowed to know what all other folks are Dreaming. Also Jangalas and Nangalas know most of what other folk can Dream, and they are Traditionally shamans and singers. The Crocodile, or rather in Warlbiri way, the Goanna. What your animal is depends upon what the local fauna is which aligns to the same Ley line as that you are born according to. Aboriginal Men have catalogued the entire flora and fauna of Australia according to which Ley line it belongs. Goanna Dreaming is better with picures while snake is better with words, and so that is why lizards are most often the Shamans, but snakes are more often those who are consulted in Law, because snakes speak true. So from infancy we are all accorded a name which allocates to us the nature of our Dreams, and also that animal which we must accept we will manifest as upon our death so as to ensure we are paying for all such Dreams we accept.
These names also accord specific behavioural demands. For example, I must provide mothering to all Jampidjimbas and Nampidjimbas to have ever been allocated the name Nungarrayi by Warlbiri speaking persons. This is part of my field of responsibilities. Those whom gave me this name are all true believers and a part of a Baptist Church congregation that meets in Yuendumu in the Northern Territory. They have been to the places I used to live in and accepted small parts of responsibility for place in Canberra, or else I could not have this name since I have not been to Warlbiri speaking places yet. But in many ways I am obliged to perform Hajj there prior even to a pilgrimage to Mecca, because of the degree of my obligations. I have already made a Hajj to my birth place, and such is regarded as essential within Aboriginal culture for every person to undertake whenever in any uncertainty. However, I am straying from the need to describe a few of the specifically important behavioural rules. I must avoid persons whom are within the category of son-in-law. In some places it is explained that two such persons get their flies mingling. (But not here in Queensland since the Kurilpa Dreaming in Brisbane is enabling of such, but only in an outside self form as a temporary measure within which to accommodate the invasion. Kurilpa is the water rat, who stole a duck girl and raped her and she made a platypus baby. Platypus bear a strange resemblance to an echidna, and echidnas, like many of the invaders, are the trickster. I am already born within such a story because my parents are in such a marriage as is accorded by the stories belonging in Armidale where I am born. But the rest of the Platypus story is a little lonely so I hope not to have to live in it for too much longer, and that I can be a hopping mouse now also; that is, so long as no snakes, or cats, eat that little mouse, so I am needing to Dream of snakes in victory over cats! In Yuendumu there is a death sentence in traditional law if a snake woman and a cat man get too intimate, so Praise Allah that I am not there now or else all the Baptists would have me for their dinner since a few cat men have been prowling around and I spoke with them.) A sister to a son-in-law is likely to be whom initiates me into any new aspect of culture. To a Jungarrayi I must retain total dignity at all times, and never make any reference what-so-ever to any matter in the slightest bit sexual, and if such occurs he has the right to hit me. That is the only time that any violence was ever allowed from any male to any female.
Now the thing about all these rules is that, while I only learned them by studying anthropology, I found that by adhering to them I was enabled to cause a major recovery in my health. I had received a prolapse when only three, most likely as a result of my parents being in a wrong way marriage, and it could not recover until I was, at 33, 100% committed to Kinship codes of conduct. I think that is enough direct knowledge about Kinship, but it defines every other aspect of Aboriginal culture. For example land tenure.
Land is owned not in portions within a boundary (except as is necessitated by inter-cultural need) but rather by relationship with the stories of how geological formations came into being. These are the stories that are accorded every person defined by their social place. It matters not whether the stories happened yesterday or are yet to happen, in this day today, it is our duty to live according to the stories that we are taught. Very very many Aboriginal Dreamtime stories are available in the form of children’s literature in Australia. All persons are welcomed into this aspect of our culture, of sharing in the process of Dreaming those stories in which we must each find our own accountability in Allah. Some of these stories tell of how Australian flora and fauna first became distinct and unique. Some tell of the faults of our ancestors that we become trapped into no matter how hard we try to resist. Yet these stories also accord to us, that if we follow the wrong one, we are immediately faulted. Qur’an provided us in many places already with a re-forging of most of those stories, and most of the older stories that are about entrapment have been ‘put to sleep’. In fact upon the invasion some elders chose to give the evidence that some stories had ever existed to those invaders whom had the resources to hide such, and were instructed that the stories were being ‘put to sleep’. My own comprehension of this process is that those of us whom were converted to Islam chose to use the process of invasion to cause that more of us be enabled to so convert. In knowledge that there was to be an assault upon our culture, some portions were better protected than others. This is a point of view with which many Aboriginal persons may still today disagree with me in. They can since their disagreement is that which identifies that they have chosen not to convert. In fact much of what is readily available of our culture along the eastern sea board, was let to include that which would cause that such persons are made obvious in falsifing a façade that Islamic converts were the loosers. But in this I will certainly be disagreed with. Critically the stories that you know determine what you own. But that accords only when by knowing a story you are also accepting yourself as responsible for adherence to the story. So to own any part of land, you need to have been given as an inheritance, the stories that transmit the teaching of the Leyline that travels through the place. A locality is measured in distance from significant geological features of the landscape rather than by area within a boundary. This is a significant feature of the difference in mental processing, to that of many other cultures. It is only Animal identification which accords that such mental processing is safe.
About marriage I should tell a little. Ideally at seven or eight, when a circumcision initiation is performed upon boys, He is betrothed to a baby girl and all necessary familial ties of reciprocal obligation are commenced. Such bonds include ongoing obligations in food provision etc. However, often when a boy is first more fully initiated, before marrying in his early twenties, he first is married to an old lady who has no Husband. He may marry his betrothed bride only when she is old enough some years later. The older wife will teach Him how to be a good Husband to her first. Occasionally also baby girls are betrothed to older men, and when the girl is mature enough to have her first baby she marries him. But he is likely to pass into the after life well before her, at which time she may be free to form a love match. In general men are allowed more than one wife, but women only one Husband at a time. Yet if her first Husband is not there any more then it is expected that she will become the property and full responsibility of another man. No female is allowed to do for herself any aspect of her own life. But her husband will surely enforce that she does take the responsibility for every part of her children’s life until they are married adults. A wife is regarded as responsible to provide to her Husband any part of her comprehension of the world that he could be in need of at all times of the day and night, so it is rightful that her world revolve around him, and that He provide to her in Love that her daily tasks orient towards providing for her children, as He provides for her. It is understood that only by such will children grow up well and learn to Love Allah by loving their Father. Many Aborigines have regarded that Christianity has strong merit in teaching one Husband one wife, and the community in general is moving closer to other cultures in this regard as a positive result of inter-cultural communication. It is also that such is made possible, and necessary, through more daily community contact than in the past. Before a girl marries she may become an apprentice to a young mother with a first baby, and in that way become accustomed to the duties of such a role. This is accomplished through a system of becoming a special person in a special function as an apprentice. The system prevents first time mothers from regarding themselves as in any way hard done by. There are also patterns in which no child is ever able to be regarded as special by cause of being the oldest or youngest, because there is always another sibling born, to a different mother, perhaps the same father, perhaps not, children might not know who another child’s actual biological parents are. But if they have the same skin name, they are a sibling. In general such matters as divorce are regarded as possible but not desirable. But if a man is not providing for a wife, it is her right to walk out of the marriage, and she may sing a younger Husband to her. The practise of singing a person to bring them to you is the most common way of establishing a Love bond rather than a marriage by betrothal. It is called Love magic, but is really only a way of establishing that an existing debt exists, and that in Love may it be paid. You will note that my way of explaining many cultural phenomenon is that of rambling through social relations, but it is really very important that a man’s way is that of discussing food availability and travel arrangements etc.
There is one more set of very significant social relations that needs to be explained. That of Kirda and Kurdungurlu, translated as Bosses and Managers, or owner and worker. It is critical to cultural maintenance. All men have a close bond with another man within a father son kinship arrangement, and women within mother daughter links of arrangements. Within these bonds all work is undertaken. Women’s business always distinct from men’s, and Men’s from women’s. Within any boss manager interaction one person is the responsible person ultimately for any mistakes and the actual land owner, and the other person is the operative party, who collects the food and is responsible for increase ceremonies on the land, receiving the Dreams, performing the Dances, and making the paintings etc. It may be that many paintings are made about which only the artist knows whom was accepting the responsible function of owner. This relationship is sustained by a distinct function of the Aboriginal anatomy and physiology that I will try to briefly explain. I am explaining as I learned terms for from within the teaching of G.I. Gurdjieff. Human disease is a function of the energy that for the reproductive function being displaced into different of the body’s functions that need for health their own energy. It is usual that there is energy transference between the reproductive centre and the movement centre, the lower feeling centre, the teaching centre, and the lower thought centre. In cases of extreme disease like TB (caused by brother sister intimate relations) there is a bizarre flow of these energies each one replacing the next in a circuit. In other cases such a flow exists by reasons only of black magic in the reverse direction. Among Aboriginal Australians such circuits of wrong way flows of energy of the various body centres can be established in which one of these named functions is entirely left out of any diseased exchanges. Or the whole physiology can alter and then a different function is that left out of disease exchanges. Or then a third pattern of a circuit of exchanges can be established, but in which a third of these centres is left out of the disease pattern. So in any given instance there is a guarantee that either the movements, or the heart/teaching centre, and thereby connected to it the lower feeling centre, or the lower thought centre, will be enabled to function perfectly, but with an obvious expense to the other functions. Ideally what occurs is that a child first learns with their movement centre working perfectly until about seven or eight, then with their heart centre working perfectly until adolescence, and then with their lower thought centre working perfectly, and thereby, even amid extreme depravity in social conditions, we are able to retain a realistic perspective, and to a definitive degree, avoid the works of black magic. So in the Boss and Manager social structure, one person is retaining perfect thought function, and the other perfect movement function if dancing or heart function if painting, and so working together they manifest ideally. The two persons then change roles in another aspect of work; but of course the system only works with other persons in the community whom are considering such working arrangements, during the process of their heart/feeling/teaching centre manifesting ideally, and providing the necessary love. In this way we all comprehend that we are interdependent upon one another. The phenomenon of Kirda/Kurdungurlu arrangments is mirrored by the practise that can be known in the modern context as equitable with that of genuine re-evalutation co-counselling as its most overt form; that is despite a few too many shaytans in that practise these days here in Australia.
There may be Muslims familiar with the phenomenon of a shape shifter, and these different patterns are occurring with such shifts. If a person to whom I am in debt regards me with the question in their mind of “what’s your animal” then I shift and if I am a being whom has ever adopted the form of life of the animal whom I am behaving like, my whole body kesdjan, or feeling body, will adopt that shape, while my thoughts will become crystal clear and I will notice what could have been a mistake in any of my behaviour. Then I will be shamed about being an animal, and correct myself into a true Human behaviour. The biology I have described also sustains a feature that makes it far more difficult for shaytan. Shaytan tend to practise false breathing that causes that material of sin is condensed in too fine a density, by drawing reproductive energy up through the spine into the minds eye, but bypassing various other physical functions that are necessary for the processing of such matter. Aborigines have an additional muscular function that accords a strong connection to the spine and that energy can not readily pass through without damaging the body. Shaytan have attempted openly to undermine such by means of anal rapes, and they failed in all respects except that of damaging our reputation.
At death, there are long processes of grieving, in which most of any persons self, Animal or Human identified, is “recycled”. That means, it is forgiven by friends and family where possible, and where friends and family are requiring such for their work. Meanwhile, Human Souls, within their own essential unique self, are sent off back into the landscape in a process of enforcing upon them every memory of every interaction in which they accepted being the responsible party for any mistake, even when not truly at fault. We might not know when any Human Soul will be able to be a Human again, but by this process we are all confident in our Humanity, since ever have we learned to trust our Faith in Allah that redemption is. Gratitude for existing as Human beings is thus culturally embodied by our race. Alongside genuine consideration of the positive attributes of all forms of life. Yet the hard work of managing any mourning process is that of ensuring that any non-Human attributes manifest strictly only as flora and fauna. Thereby we all can eat. We are all hardened to these processes, and I my self find it substantially frightening that I am not better culturally conditioned into an animist framework even to be considering these facts. We all learn the hard way to prefer to be judged with more severity than is necessary over being treated leniently by friends and family. When a culture goes soft the experience of the grave is harsher. Within an Animist culture we are conditioned to fear our own self whenever it is less than Human, so as to prevent us from harming life. Perhaps what determines that we are defined as Animists is only that we are able to make this a part of our outside self. What makes a Moslem a Moslem when fully converted is that similarity to which I am describing, that for Moslems is an aspect only of the inside self. But in far less need of fear, since to be known as Animists, is to have the worst about ourselves knowable by the outside world.
Shame is indeed the key to our culture. Though any Animist knows that accepting being culturally embedded within your own greed and hate are also essential aspects of Animism. But it is our management of pride that sets us apart from other Animist cultures. No tall poppies in Australia: Mr Steve Irwin could only have got away with that in America, and here, he is really just an ordinary bloke, just like he wanted really. It is the most notable aspect of modern Australian culture that is distinctly of Indigenous Australia, that if any person shows of too much, they get cut down. Nobody likes me being a Moslem, but that is probably only because they are trying to stop me going on ahead into Islam before everybody else is also ready to become knowable as long been a Moslem. Much of what I have mentioned about Kinship is from that form in which Traditions have better been upheld than the modern social forms of Kinship, but we all regard these lessons as retaining a critical nature. The codes of conduct in marriage are still very similar except where actual marriages are taking place outside of the established best suitability patterns that I have here described. Unfortunately it is that there has been a marked increase of unlawful marriages in very recent years, and such has been forced upon us by occultists whom were attempting to portray that Animist religion has such as its basis. It is that in many cultures people are only expected to become “turned into an animal” because they break with marriage laws; but among Aboriginal Australians it has always been the case for all of us. That is, for as long as we were being enabled to sustain our worth as I am here describing. There are shaytans among us who remember what they know in their minds to be an older pattern, but it was ever a wrongful pattern and is not what defines Aborigines as having any modern social worth. That Aboriginal shaytan have been portraying our worth in their faulted perceptions, has been causing a sale of our children and our health to the very process of invasion which they are trying to claim a debt owing against. However, this description I have given is of a harsh system of Law, in which only those truly Human of mind could ever have survived, and there are shaytan resentful about having been locked out of such systems by the nature of. Yet shaytan only ever can disprove their claims upon Human culture and Religion; therefore it is rightful that my description here excludes their disparities with such where they could dispute it. Theirs is the shame, but we absorb such of will as thereby are their means made told and knowable. I should add to all that is already stated, and for those persons in good self knownledge whom may read this, that Australians have a way with pride that is inimical to the Moslem way with vanity. A process of transpositions and transformations and gifts of Alms, through which our Animist base is able to be discerned as distinct from other belief in such phenomena. It is with considerable pride that we, true believing, Australians will adjust to the fact that Islam is our birthright, and our leaders are most often among the most silent of survivors of the nightmare of modern assaults upon reality, that assault that is letting us all know that The Hour is with even already our children.
Thankyou for your considerations of this, it is what is commonly regarded as the oldest surviving culture that I have described. It must be added that our survival has long been depended upon the fact that we governed our selves within these patterns by measures of iron-fisted leadership. Any leader need re-prove their leadership in every situation, and this fact has always been our way. Our leaders have most commonly been Men with a Rainbow Serpent Dreaming, and so I will tell some stories that are associated with this function. I hope that these stories can orient readers correctly also to the fact of the horror that we face in this day as being an experience we have been tempered by Allah to be first to face the full extent of. I should add in preface to the stories I will put in here that our most distinct mechanism of cultural survival has been that of listening to the stories of newcomers to our land, and replacing such with our own stories. We have factually aborbed much of what was not needed, but at that, are amid the facts of a society within an argument made by shaytans as to what were our own true stories in the first place. Therefore it is that I am require to preface this piece of writing with statements as to my authority in the telling. It is that all of our creation myths have a shaytans perferred version and a Human preferred version, and often it has been that those versions more often published have been the shaytans versions of our mythology. In my own telling of many of these it is that I am open to being accused by Aboriginal shaytans of stealing from their myths and differing from, but only in that they have letters and certificates of Aboriginality, while my own ancestry is not legally identified. The truth of the matter is simply that for each and every one of us, the stories are usually revealed indistinctly and it is that we are only culturally permitted to retell any story exactly as it is true to our own experience. So thereby I bear no objection to the Shaytans versions, and none could object to my naming Allah as Creator Spirit, and neither that Allah worked through Bhyame to initiate us. So in this I will tell that story of Bhyame's first initiation, but I will include only those details within which my own experience is bonded. Most certainly it is the fact, that now reading back, I am astonished at the degree to which my life has accorded to that story. I am using a version published in a collection by A.W. Reed, but I am providing only those parts which have direct relation to my own experience. I should add another important aspect of Aboriginal culture. It is held that if you can speak a word for a thing, then you must own that thing. So we tend to be of smaller vocabularies than many persons. But I ought to state the in the story I have retold of Bhyame's first initiation, I have leaned upon the names given in the rendition by A. W. Reed, in part because my own telling might seem even less kind, but I must express that there are many names in different Aboriginal languages that I am not oriented to as my own, and here in this story are a few of.
This is the story of the first initiation ceremony and the first Corroboree. It is from a time when Bhyame was a Man at Earth before He arose to Heaven and then returned, and when animals were still men. Bhyame was a Great Wirrun, or medicine man, through whom Allah will was enacted. He gathered all the people together from many distant places. As many tribes as there are the animals of the animal kingdom. There were: Wahn the Crow; Du-mer, the pigeons; Baiamul the Black Swans; Madhi the Dogs; and many others. Everbody was ready after months of perparation, and much business dealings were contracted.
After a few days Bhyame gathered everybody together and told them that it is good to have been enjoying each others company, but now the serious matters must commence. He told, you know what must be done because I have implanted these thoughts in your mind; and he described that initiation of men. There were other wirruns there helping him. Everybody set to work preparing the area for the event. Most worked quitely and silently, but often they were interrupted by senseless laughter and chatter of the Madhi tribe. Little notice was taken at first, for they are well known to be empty headed. Surely soon they would settle down. Occasionally they were instructed to be quite and work, but they took no notice. Eventually they were threatened, and they laughted contemptuously and swaggered around throwing insults, criticising, and being generally more and more rude the more they were frowned upon.
Bhyame observed the Madhi tribe closely. He too thought they would settle down because he knew they are afraid of the Wirruns. Eventually he decided to punish the Madhi. He told everybody that he was saddened by the behaviour of the Madhi, and that people could be happy by abiding within the law, but the Madhi were being proud and rebellious, not listening to wisdom, and making a mockery of an important occasion. Then he said: very well, they can get what they want, they may go on howing and laughing to their hearts content, and no longer would he give them the dignity of naming them among men. Go away madhi and howl. One by one the madhi dropped onto all fours, grew thick hair, and their hands and feet became paws. They tried to call out that they were sorry, but it was too late. They could only bark and howl. Scared by their own noises they ran away.
Now everyone was afraid of Bhyame. The next day some of the women were not grinding seeds into flour any more. He asked them why, worried that they were too afraid. They explained that all their grinding stones had gone missiing. He thought it was funny since only a woman can leave a grinding stone and no grinding stone ever left a woman. Bhyame suggested that they might have lent their grinding stones to the Du-mer. The woman said no, but Bhyame insisted, and the women, in fear, agreed to go an see. Du-mer said no, they did not have them, but the women heard thunder, and told Bhyame, so he came to find out why that sign had manifested, saying, perhaps I have done you an injustice. At the Du-mer camp Bhyame had his magic tools, and the Du-mer were not there. A woman with sharp eyes saw their grinding stones hidden. There was more loud noises and they all could see the grinding stone were visibly moving without any Humans, all moving across a plain to a mountain, and the Du-mer were chasing them. Gradually the Du-mer turned into pigeons in their chase. Allah manifested a mountain made only out of grinding stone.
Now the boys were put to the final test before entering manhood. They had already been pushed to the limits of what they supposed was their endurance, and yet had to endure more. Bhyame instructed: “my children must be strong, Strong to father sons, to care for their women, to overcome appetite and pain and fear. They must learn the wisdom of the tribes, the mystery of the water, and all the stars of Heaven, of winds that blow, the flight of the bee to its honey store, the food that is hidden in the Earth, and the seeing eye that can follo the light-footed trail of the kangaroo rat over the stoney ground; teach them.” And all the Wirruns taught the boys. A part of the stamina the boys had to develop was sustaining consciousness whilst without food and water for many days. Thus memories of older ways were lost to this, then new teaching. Also they were bitten by ants adding insult to injustice, but needed to sustain their self all the same.
Meanwhile the mothers decided to leave early because they did not want to meet their sons straight after such initiations. They did not want their sons to see their tears. So they headed for home. But they encountered a woman whom had been left behind on the way to the initiation ceremony. She swore. Her children had been too little and too many to keep up. She could not find water for them, and they had all died. She accused all of the other mothers, you were in too much of a hurry to wait for us, and you have killed my children, and with that, she began turning them all into trees, and turning herself into a tree also. Then more and more people came to see, and each and every one among began to be turned also into animals as they watched. The Baiamuls into Black Swans, etc. (There is a companion story about the Black Swans but I can not find it today; and it seems to have become that part of many of our stories which became too expensive to maintain; even as the name Baiamuls suggests. Though this name predates such expenses being known.)
After all the initiation ceremonies were over, and the boys were formally welcomed into manhood, the men began to follow the trail of the women and children. The trail was easy, and Bhyame's own dog ran ahead. But it lay down under bushes and gave birth to pups which had the head of the porcupine, and no body dared go near those fierce creatures. Bhyame was sad by the time he arrived back at his home, nobody was left. But Bhyame is old and wise, and knows that from evil comes good; and he knew that when the sharp memories the initiation were over that the world would be a richer place because of the presence of the plants and animals that had come from his great Corroboree.
That is all about that story now, and here is another, that is a story my son is the owner of:
There was a time of much drought. All the animals were dying. There was a man and his wife and his friend travelling. The woman said, we can eat these animals so we shall not starve. The men said no, it is wrong to eat meat, but she showed a way she had observed to cook meat. Her husband ate. The other man said, you eat or we will both starve, and he wandered away. After she had eaten her fill the woman worried for him and they followed him together, but they kept offering him meat to live by. He ran away and passed out of his body inside a hollow tree trunk, then some cockatoos came and rested in the branches. And the man and his wife witnessed a miracle that the man who would not eat meat arose into the sky as the southern cross.
Here is another that belongs where I am born:
There is a big kangaroo, and he looks all over for the best place for his family to live. He digs a bit too big hole in the riverbank to make a pool. It is too deep to swim in, but there is always plenty of drinking water for his family. After some time the dogs come. They chase the kangaroos family and all his clan dispurse. Eventually to get away from the dogs he jumps into that swimming hole, and at the bottom he is turned into the Rainbow Serpent. After a time a black headed snake appears on the rocks in the sunshine around the part of the river about that pool, and then a wallaby.
That is a story that my own life is commanded by, so I only tell the shortest version so that I can stay able to prevent others from using it against me. Here is another, but this one intrigues me, since archeological evidence is that dogs have only been in Australia for ten thousand years. There are also other stories about Australia having been a place of only birds before all the animals came here, but I don't tell those stories since they are not mine. But this part is:
There was an animal who wanted to be better than all the other animals, so he prayed to Allah that he would be the best. Allah put a spell on him so that the dogs began to chase him. He was chased and chased and chased, and to no avail, he could not get away from that dog. All over the country he was chased. Then just when he though he could go no further, on both back legs together he bounded and rapidly hopped away from the dog, but the dog had its teeth into his tail and pulled. But the dog pulling his tail stretched it out longer until he realised that was how he had learned to hop. That is how the Kangaroo got its tail.
So I hope you can discern more about our culture from these stories. If you have a true interest in learning more about Aboriginal culture I can suggest any publications from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies AIATSIS, and also any films that are available and made by Aboriginal Australians, but especially “Yolngu Boy” and “Ten Canoes”. The National Museum of Australia in Canberra is also a new and significant educational experience in respect of Aboriginal culture.
What is missing from modern Australians psychology is really only that piece of stablising dogma in establishing what among all our Dreams is needing to be believed in, and what can be dismissed as fuel for the fire; but our tradition has these details in sound teaching provided. Where we are these days unable to connect with traditional mythology after our childhood's are regressed into the retarded mental capacity of the west, (that has become necessary in this time so as to establish scientific method above occult), we are able nevertheless to connect with ecological science and often as adults make random enquiry into the nature of many different belief structures, as though searching for evidence of what we have lost. And we retain our strong faith in Human narratives as the means of communication. In that the rainbow serpent is an embodiment of our establishing traditions, we are yet very focussed upon the correct time sequencing of stories. In this the work of traditional Aborigines is amply apparent at many turns in the modern Australian experience. But far today from all being co-counselling narrative therapists, we are often manifesting in extremes of the fall of Humanity. But in my own experience having found an Islamic teaching that lifted my own life up and out of similar, I find I can not progress through any Islamic experience without dragging all those who have only not yet found a modern structured Faith within which to validate our experiential wealth as I here describe. So it is that while I must accept to my self the burden of this form of expression of Aboriginality having been made, it is also that any benefits from this expression belong to all Aboriginal Australians whom have sustained faith in Allah. Their Faith also has sustained mine, but most often without their knowing whom they have been sustaining. Insha Allah my representation of our way is enough to commend to Moslems to make further enquiry. But I might also add that the very best means of such enquiry is only to make your own business needful of interacting within Australia's Tradition.
Mu’asalam
and Ramadan Kareem sister!